Commissioner was defending illegal nightclub in Allapattah

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Predatory scheme to buy and sell homes may have targeted the elderly

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And now the commission may reward the driver with a new job

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The city of Miami has sued a mayoral candidate for $3,400 in court costs after she was disqualified from the race on the grounds that she didn’t meet the residency requirements.

In case anyone was wondering, Mayra Joli — a one-time Coral Gables commission candidate who campaigned in the Miami mayoral race last month, even though she was disqualified by a judge — would have come in third.

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Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo is gone, but his shadow is still hanging out in City Hall.

Acevedo was fired Thursday after a 5-hour hearing in front of the city commission who tried real hard, with the help of the city manager, to make it look like it was because of eight specific job issues, which include failure to report damage to his car, gaffes with members of the public, taking time off without reporting it and accusing three commissioners of misconduct.

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Miami City Commissioner Ken Russell was not able to get even a second on his motion to fire City Attorney Victoria Mendez Thursday.

Russell had made the move to terminate Mendez because he said she intentionally withheld emails that he had asked her for. He said the 26 emails not provided to him painted a different picture than the ones he got when he made the same request of IT — which was that Mendez was helping a developer get approval for a lot split in Coconut Grove to build five houses on one property. He said he lost trust in the city attorney.

But as if that wasn’t enough, he also mentioned another instance in which Mendez made him uncomfortable — when she advised him to get a cell phone services that would help him avoid having to make his text messages public.

“My very first week in office, in my very first meeting with Ms. Mendez, her first advice to me was which phone company I should use because it erases your text messages sooner,” Russell said at the meeting.

“It’s Sprint by the way.

“And my heart sank because this is not what I wanted to hear from the city attorney,” said Russell, who added that he stuck with AT&T.

Which made Ladra wonder who uses Sprint. So I asked. And the answer is nobody. Unless Commissioner Frank Carollo uses the service provider, because he was the only one that couldn’t be reached over the weekend.

Commissioners Willy Gort, Keon Hardemon and Francis Suarez each said they, too, use AT&T.

Certainly not what Ladra expected.

It seems odd that everybody would ignore the city attorney’s advice, but Suarez — who has been critical of Mendez on other professional issues — also said that the city attorney had never advised him to use a particular cell phone company.

“She’s never said anything remotely similar to me like that,” he said.

He wouldn’t go as far as calling Russell a liar.

“I don’t think he’s a dishonest person. I also don’t think she’s a dishonest person. We get told a lot of things,” Suarez said.

And since he uses AT&T, whatever he gets told in text, stays put for longer.