The hand-wringing process of replacing or rebuilding the Miami-Dade County garbage incinerator that burned down in Doral in February of last year has been long and messy.
It was supposed to be decided in September. Then they put it off until after the election. In November, they put it off to this Tuesday. But the mayor has already requested a 90-day deferral of the matter — after the future president weighed in. We haven’t seen her memo explaining her reasons yet.
Let’s review the events of the last few days.
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, whose staff previously recommended, based on a paid study, unused county land across the Urban Development Boundary and close to the city of Miramar — which threatened to sue — seemed to have changed course last weekend and recommended the county rebuild the waste-to-energy plant right where it burned down. It’s the cheapest, fastest option.
Miramar celebrated. Doral booed.
Last week, president elect Donald Trump, who owns the Trump National Doral golf resort, one of the city’s biggest properties, apparently weighed in through his son, Eric Trump, who had lunch with Commissioner Juan Carlos “JC” Bermudez and the family’s local lobbyist, Felix Lasarte last week, according to the Miami Herald. Bermudez, the former Doral mayor, who has been leading the fight against the Doral location.
Read related: To keep a new Miami-Dade garbage incinerator away, get ready to pay
Bermudez told Juan Camilo Gómez at Actualidad Radio Monday morning that he had also talked to developer Armando Codina, a habitual political campaign contributor who built Downtown Doral and was also concerned.
Doral’s current Mayor Christi Fraga is over the moon.
“This deferral for an additional 90 days is a clear testament to the power of our collective action,” she wrote in an email blast Sunday. “The united efforts of our community, including input from community leaders and organizations like Trump National Doral, have put significant pressure on the county mayor to reconsider her recommendation and proposal. This demonstrates our city’s strength and determination to protect the health, quality of life, and future of all who live, work, and enjoy Doral.”

The city had planned to bus residents to the commission meeting Tuesday to object to the $1.5 billion plant being rebuilt there.
County commissioners had previously asked both the cities of Doral and Miramar what is was worth to them to keep the incinerator away. They basically tried to create a bidding NIMBY war.
It’s weird to see the Trumps on the same side as people like former Miami Commissioner Ken Russell, a onetime Democrat candidate for Congress who now advocates for the Sierra Club, and environmental activists that have asked the county to be more creative and think beyond burning garbage. Principally, they want Miami-Dade residents — who produce at least twice as much trash as anywhere in the country — to recycle more, reduce their waste and, get this, compost.
In November, Commissioner Eileen Higgins successfully passed a resolution to phase out the use of single-use plastics and styrofoam in all future county contracts and county-run concessions.
Higgins had an item about composting on Tuesday’s agenda, but it has been withdrawn. A report from the Department of Regulatory Resources (RER) and Solid Waste Management (DSWM) identified some immediate actions the county could take to advance and promote composting, but warned about possible contamination of the Biscayne Aquifier.
Still, there are things that can be addressed right away.

A zoning code amendment to exempt commercial composting operations on farms from requiring public hearings, to streamline the approval process
An Environmental Quality Control Board (EQCB) Class Variance Order to provide for administrative approvals for composting operations on properties without public water or sewer systems
An evaluation of how composting projects would compete with existing solid waste management systems

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Broward prosecutors on Wednesday announced that they had dropped the public corruption charges against former Miami Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, arrested in September of last year, basically because they couldn’t make the case.
‘This case fails to meet the legal standards for prosecution,” wrote Broward Assistant State Attorney Kayla Bramnick in her close-out memo. “The evidence does not demonstrate corrupt intent, unlawful benefits, or falsification of records. Witness testimony is unreliable, and lawful actions have been misconstrued as criminal.
“Substantial follow-up investigation and depositions have occurred that revealed the foundation of this entire investigation was misguided and buttressed by unverified information. In a purely circumstantial case, as opposed to a case with direct evidence, the State is required to present competent evidence inconsistent with the Defendant’s theory of defense. Here, the State does not possess competent evidence to present to a jury that would allow them to exclude every reasonable hypothesis of innocence beyond a reasonable doubt, particularly the hypothesis that each of these acts were suspicious but legal.”
Suspicious?
Central to the decision, according to the Bramnick memo, is the standing of a prior proposal to use the public space at Biscayne Park for a Miami-Dade Public School project — which was not the point.
What does one thing have to do with the other?
It’s totally irrelevant if the plan to build the MDCPS iPrep Academy was dead in the water or not when Diaz de la Portilla decided to sponsor the item that gave a licensing agreement to The Centner Academy to build a $10 million sports complex that would be for use by their students only some of the time and for the public one third of the time — but maybe for a fee. The school plan has nothing to do with the $245,000 given to ADLP’s political action committee through a newly-formed Delaware company. The school plan had nothing to do with the 57 days that Diaz de la Portilla stayed at the East Hotel in downtown Miami, racking up $30,000 in expenses paid for by the attorney for the owners of the Centner Academy, or, more likely, the owners of the Centner Academy through their attorney, William Riley, who was also arrested.
Read related: Miami’s Alex Diaz de la Portilla arrested on corruption, pay-for-play park deal
And, in fact, it wasn’t dead until Diaz de la Portilla became involved. When the Centner’s owners talked to former Commissioner Ken Russell, who was the Omni CRA chair before ADLP, there was still a path for both the private school and the public school board to work together. In fact, when Russell voted for the Centner’s sports dome, he said he wanted the conversation to include the school board and their needs.

But still, that plan had nothing to do with the scheme that Diaz de la Portilla Riley planned, which led to the 11 felony charges against the commissioner, including bribery and money laundering. Prosecutors don’t file felony charges against an elected without plenty of probable cause (read: evidence) because they know the case will be followed and scrutinized by the press. Suddenly the evidence was weak?
ADLP’s main attorney, Ben Kuehne, issued a statement on Wednesday that sounds like sermon.
“Today is a day of Celebration for the return to Justice and Fairness in our court system with the decision of the Broward County State Attorney to Drop all charges against Alex Diaz de la Portilla,” Kuehne wrote. His caps, not mine.
“This is a day of complete Vindication for Alex, who did not do anything wrong. We thank the Broward State Attorney’s Office for its thoughtful and correct decision that ends the weaponized use of prosecutorial power in this case.
“When this case was first brought at a time chosen for election interference, Alex Diaz de la Portilla promised the community that he had done nothing wrong. Today is a clear demonstration of the fulfillment of his promise.
“As the Broward State Attorney’s Office confirmed in its detailed Close-Out Memo: ‘The evidence does not demonstrate corrupt intent, unlawful benefits, or falsification of records. Witness testimony is unreliable and lawful actions have been misconstrued.’”
Read related: Private Centner Academy gets to run Miami public park for $10 million
Kuehne further expressed ADLP’s thanks to God and “those in the community who continued to express their unwavering support.” Then he said Alex had recently quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., saying, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
Doesn’t sound at all like him. That’s all Ben.

Kuehne, as always, took the opportunity to pat himself on the back, saying that Diaz de la Portilla recognized the efforts of his legal team, which also included Michael T. Davis, and Johan Dos Santos of Kuehne Davis Law, P.A., Jonathan K. Osborne and Miguel Diaz de la Portilla of Gunster, Richard J. Diaz, and Susy Ribero-Ayala.
He should have included Bramnick, whose close out memo sounds more like the office worked hard to find reasons why not to prosecute, instead of the other way around. In fact, it kinda sounds like Kuehne wrote it based off the depositions taken by the defense.
“While these allegations raise serious concerns, a thorough review of the evidence that has been discovered through extensive follow-up investigation and depositions reveal significant weaknesses in the case,” Bramnick wrote in the memo. “Witness testimony proved inconsistent and critical elements of the crimes charged cannot be supported by the evidence.”
Testimony from three key witnesses “was undermined during depositions,” she wrote, throwing them under the bus:

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As expected, a plantidate in the Miami Lakes mayoral race has forced a runoff between Commissioner Josh Dieguez and Vice Mayor Tony Fernandez, who came out of Tuesday’s first round with 47% and 42%, respectively. Yuniett Gonzalez, a political newbie who had donated to Dieguez before jumping in the race — not a good sign for a candidate — got 11%.

We can expect Gonzalez to endorse Dieguez any day now, hoping to throw her 1,793 votes his way. There were only 731 votes difference between Dieguez and Fernandez in Tuesday’s results.

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It was a good day for Republicans in the nation, Florida and in Miami-Dade, where all five constitutional offices were won by GOP candidates. Quite comfortably.

And a bad day for political consultant Christian Ulvert, who less than three months ago was celebrating a first round win for Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

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The Coral Gables commission spent some time at last week’s meeting hablando mierda — literally.

Commissioners voted unanimously last month to change the city’s code so that enforcement officers could fine residents who drop their doggie’s doodoo bags in their neighbors’ trash pits. First they get a warning. Then it’s a $100 fine. Then it’s a $500 fine on the third and consequent incidents.

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The day has come. Tuesday will be a historic day in Miami-Dade for two reasons. Not only are we electing our first female president. We will also be electing local constitutional officers, some for the very first time ever.

It will be the first time we vote for sheriff since the office was eliminated in the 1960s for rampant corruption. Let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself.

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