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Records indicate that Coral Gables commission candidate and attorney Jorge L. Fors has committed Homestead exemption fraud for several years.
Fors owns a condo in Little Havana, unit 205 at 1039 SW 5th Street, where he has paid taxes, claiming a Homestead exemption since at least 2010, the furthest that the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser’s office posts records online. That includes 2013, 2015 and 2017, three years in which Fors voted in the Coral Gables elections, according to records from the Miami-Dade Elections Department. He also voted with his Coral Gables address for every primary and general election since 2012.
How could he live in both places at once? He can’t. He didn’t, he admits.
“I lived there a few times,” Fors said about the 2/2 condo he bought in 2007 for $114,000. “It’s a property I originally bought with the idea of making an investment. I lived there right before law school and right after law school.”
He hasn’t lived there since at least 2011 — and he never registered to vote there — but Fors kept the exemption, which gave him a $25,000 break on property taxes every year. Even though, he admitted, he rented it out a few times.
“I was going to move back in,” Fors said. “That area has gotten nice lately, but it was a bad neighborhood when I bought it. I intended to live there. You are allowed to have a Homestead if you intend to reside at that place.”
Um, no, says Miami-Dade Property Appraiser Pedro Garcia.
“That’s illegal,” Garcia told Political Cortadito.
“He has to live in that property. If he moves to another place, he cannot keep the Homestead exemption there. I don’t care if he moved to his father’s house, he is not supposed to have a Homestead exemption,” Garcia said, adding that it doesn’t matter whether the apartment sits empty or is rented out.
“If he doesn’t live there, he doesn’t deserve a Homestead and he is committing Homestead fraud,” Garcia said, adding that his office would investigate, looking at the voting records himself.
“I always vote where I live,” Fors told Ladra.
Which means he either knew he was getting away with fraud or he is an attorney and former president of the Coral Gables Bar Association who doesn’t know the law.
Fors’ voter registration history with the Miami-Dade Elections Department shows he first registered to vote in 2003 at the age of 20 at his parents house on Country Club Prado. In 2005, he registered in another county. That’s probably because he was at the University of Florida in Gainesville getting his Bachelor’s degree in political science.
When he returned in 2008, he registered at Country Club Prado again, until last April, when he registered at his new home on Segovia Street.
Read related: Coral Gables candidate’s campaign yard sign, uninvited trespasser or mistake?
Records also show Fors — who faces former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera and onetime Interim City Manager Carmen Olazabal in the April election for the seat vacated by Commissioner Frank Quesada — bought his home on Segovia Avenue in mid March of 2018, which would be just a couple of weeks over the required year of residency needed in Coral Gables to run.
He also lived for a little more than a year in an apartment at 322 Madeira Ave., right after he was married. Neighbors told Ladra the couple often fought. The unit is owned by his parents and Fors’ mother sits on the homeowner board, the neighbors said, adding that the building was in “shambles.”
Fors was never registered to vote there either.
And his mother apparently knows better than to claim a Homestead exemption on the unit.
From the Where Are They Now? file: Former Miami-Dade Commissioner and onetime mayor of Homestead Lynda Bell is running for state office — in North Florida.
Bell, who is town manager of Sneads (pop. 1,796), filed earlier this month to run in the special election for House District 7, vacated by State Rep. Halsey Beshears after he was tapped by Gov. Ron DeSantis to lead the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation.
She faces three other Republican candidates — Virginia Fuller, Jason Shoaf and Mike Watkins — and then faces one Democrat, but it’s deep red country so whoever wins the primary is likely a shoe-in.
The special election primary is April 9 and the special general election for the seat is on June 18.
Read related: Levine-Cava gets to work while Lynda Bell finishes term
Bell, who lost her seat to Commissioner Daniella Levine-Cava in 2014, ran for House District 118 in 2016 but came in third behind Anthony Rodriguez (No.2) and David Rivera, who lost to Robert Asencio, who, in a turn of events, lost last November to Anthony Rodriguez. In August of 2018, she took the $16,500-a-year job in the Jackson County town. She lives in Tallahassee, which is within the district’s boundaries.
Somewhere in between, she stayed politically relevant, getting an appointment from former Gov. Rick Scott to the Florida Communities Trust that governs the Florida Department of Environmental Protection — she is still listed on the board, according to the agency website — and becoming the president of the non-profit Florida Right to Life.
Read related: Mark Bell’s Homestead loss ripples over to wife Lynda Bell
Lynda Bell and her husband Mark Bell — who also lost a 2013 bid for mayor — sold their historic Redland Hotel in January 2016 for $950,000. Nifty little profit because records indicate they bought the property for $250,000 in 2012. The next year, the county commissioner secured a $25,000 community redevelopment grant for “her husband’s hotel” for facade improvements.
The Bells must have invested that money into other properties, because they own six rental properties, according to her financial disclosure: Five in Tallahassee and one duplex in Homestead.
Does that mean that they could come back?
