Munilla Construction Management — a frequent county bidder doing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of projects — will likely get an additional $6 million and a one-year extension Thursday for “miscellaneous” renovations and repairs at Miami International Airport.

Just like that. No open bidding, no competitive process. Just $6 million more for work that they just didn’t get to and that needs to get done.

Sure, the item is actually before the Miami-Dade Commission’s Economic Development and Tourism Committee, but once it’s passed there it will likely pass the full commission as early as next week. There’s even language in the “change order” ordinance that says Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez can execute the adjusted contract without subsequent approval from the board. Ladra takes that to mean it only needs one reading.

Pedro Munilla, pictured here with his wife, is often out at galas with Mayor and Lourdes Gimenez.

Basically, according to all the whereases on the ordinance, MCM was hired on a “miscellaneous construction contract” for identified projects at the airport, but then got sidetracked — or even reassigned — to different work due to the growth at MIA and was unable to finish all the work it was hired for. So now, their friend Carlitos is giving them a break. Rather than go out to bid again, like the county will have to in a year anyway because the growth is going to continue — and, for some reason, there is another item on this committee agenda rejecting six bids for “miscellaneous construction” — Gimenez wants the commission to give MCM, his pals, another year and another $6 million in airport work.

How long was the original contract? It doesn’t say on the materials provided in Thursday’s agenda. But when Ladra looked up the contract number on the county’s website, we found another change order request from 2014, with a recommendation from Gimenez that the four-year $50 million contract go up by a whopping $30 million. I can’t tell if it was approved or not.

But then last year, on March 8, the mayor recommended that the contract be extended for a year and for $10 million more. So does that mean that MCM, with Thursday’s approval, has gotten two extra years and $16 million more for “miscellaneous” work?

Juan and Pedro Munilla flank Carlos Gimenez and Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera

This item Thursday is an emergency, of course, because the contract expired last month and the county could be left with nobody to make as-needed repairs at the busy, growing airport. How can you let this expire? For two years in a row? Will someone please tell me again what a great administrator this mayor is?

Or is it, more likely, that he let the urgency happen because the company is owned by familia.

Munilla Construction is owned by Pedro Munilla and his brothers, who Ladra has been repeatedly told are related to Gimenez through marriage. They give generously to the mayor’s multiple election campaigns and his political action committees. But they give to a lot of electeds, at the county and also municipal levels. I guess it’s a small price to pay for county work.

From 2009 to 2014, according to the change order from that year, MCM had been awarded at least $176 million in county contracts.

One has to wonder how much of that is in change orders.

A group of West Kendall residents in a longtime fight against the redevelopment of the Calusa Golf Course won an important battle last week when the Miami-Dade Commission basically did nothing — and, effectively, killed a proposal to turn the 168 acres into more homes.

But Ladra has a feeling that the war is not over and the plan could come back from the dead.

And the whole ordeal has left us with little trust in a government land use and zoning mechanism called a covenant.

Developers want to turn the abandoned golf course in the Calusa community into 670 homes buffered by 100 feet of green space that also includes a bike and pedestrian path. They tried to buy the adjacent and opposing residents — and commission votes to transmit the request for a land use change to Tallahassee — with the promise of potential picnic pavillions, zen gardens, play lots and a dog park on the 3.5 mile perimeter loop.

But homeowners have consistently said they don’t want any of that. And they point to a 99-year covenant with 49 more years on it and say they bought their homes based on this promise that the county made that the golf course would remain a golf course unless 75 percent of the adjacent and affected homeowners agreed with a new plan.

That’s not close to happening and Commissioner Audrey Edmonson suggested it would not ever happen — but she doesn’t know that. Commissioner Sally Heyman said their attitude is “We want a golf course and nothing else.” But they haven’t said that. Both of them called the development urban infill. In West Kendall. Really.

The residents are opposed to wt developers are presenting now because they don’t like the density, which could add between 1,000 and 1,500 cars to their roads daily. Ladra is certain they like the dog park and the other shiny bells and whistles. Who wouldn’t? There could be room for negotiating if they go down in density. They say they’ve already come down from 1,100 units — 481 single-family houses and 619 town homes — which has to have been a bait and switch because nobody can legitimately conceive of that many units there. The comparible properties are between 2.5 and .64 dwellings per acre, so that would mean a maximum of 210 dwellings, though residents probably want to see it closer to around 54.

So, maybe something in the middle? How about 100? Developers still stand to make a ton of money.

And add a clubhouse with an indoor gym and basketball court. Or a public pool. Make it a deal the adjacent residents can’t refuse.

That’s what Commissioner Xavier Suarez, Ladra is certain, had in mind when he first suggested delaying the vote on the application until May so that, perhaps, the developers and the residents could come to some kind of an agreement. But he got pushback on that from commissioners who preferred to transmit the application, which sends the proposed redevelopment to state agencies for whatever input they would have — which, in this case, seems minimal and inconsecuential.

Both Commissioners Bruno Barreiro and Jose “Pepe” Diaz kept insisting that they were only seeking more information, though Ladra is uncertain what kind of information any state agency could provide on the impact of the redevelopment of this golf course. At least, what kind of information that would be more important than the facts at hand. Namely, the covenant that homeowner after homeowner referred to as part of their property rights.

The whole time this golf course has been discussed, the conversation centers on the 99-year covenant? If you look up the word covenant in the dictionary, some of its synonyms, you will find, are contract, agreement, commitment, guarantee, pledge, promise, bond.

How can commissioners continue to talk about covenants on other projects when they come back and pretend that this one doesn’t exist? Commissioner Rebeca Sosa had some difficulty with an action that should have given each and every one of them great pause.

“Who’s going to trust us,” Sosa asked.

Exactly.

It forced Suarez to make a motion to deny the transmittal, which died in a tie vote and was not resurrected before the meeting ended, so it, in effect, goes back to square one.

Suarez said that out of 484 letters or emails he got about the controversial plan, 480 mention the covenant. So it’s ont like this obscure, real estate term that none of the homeowners really knew what it meant. Just getting 484 letters or emails against a project is enough of a message to tell commissioners what they should do, even without a covenant. Dozens of them have attended at least three public hearings to urge our county government to deny the request.

But it’s going to come back. Golf courses have become the next horizon for developers who snatch them up, have them rezoned and then build whatever they want on what was once a grassy view.

Nobody is saying that this has to remain a golf course, if that is truly no longer a feasable use. But if this comes back without the resident’s approval, how can we ever believe that a covenant on any development — including, for example, the American Dream megamall — will be worth anything at all if this one is broken?

We can’t. Any break of a covenant will further erode what little trust we have left in local government.

It looks like the Hialeah Hoodlums — otherwise known as Mayor Carlos Hernandez and his Seguro Que Yes crew of crooked council members –– were recruiting for their criminal enterprise last week.

And they peeled a few members off of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez‘s old G-Men gang.

Campaign Finance Chair and graft master Ralph Garcia-Toledo, shake-down artist Brian Goldmeier and campaign strategist Jesse Manzano-Plaza were all at an event last week for Hernandez’s re-election campaign. Who is that guy to the right? He looks familiar. And just look at how giddy they are to be back in business — stealing ballots, taking money from developers for promised payola later, coming up with narratives to distract from Hernandez’s abysmal record and the chaos the last couple of years at the new fancy smancy water plant.

Just look at those smiles in this photo posted on Goldmeier’s Instagram. They look like a gang of cats that swallowed unos pajaritos zunzún.

Manzano-Plaza must have been the happiest as the event was at Hialeah Park and he is likely back representing casino giant Genting now that the Gimenez campaign is over. He only resigned temporarily (read: not at all) and after he was caught representing both Genting and Gimenez. He is certainly back at work now.

They don’t care that Hernandez is an admitted loan shark and proven liar who abuses his power. This is simply payback for Hernandez’s help getting Gimenez the ballots from residents in Hialeah Housing. Or is it just another public trough for these little piglets (possible gang name: Three Little Pigs). Ladra is going to have to start looking more closely at the water and sewer contracts and public works projects in the City of Progress.

Why isn’t tricky pollster Dario Moreno and Absentee Ballot Fraud King Al Lorenzo there? Did they not pass the gang initiation test?

Read related story: Liquor store owner gets it: Carlos Hernandez is a criminal

Hernandez is running for his third term. The former cop was the council president when former Mayor Julio Robaina left the office to run for county mayor against Gimenez in the recall result race of 2011. He served as acting mayor and then was elected in November 2011 against former Mayor Raul Martinez and former Sen. Rudy Garcia to serve the remaining two years of the term. In 2013, he was re-elected against former Mayor Julio Martinez and an active resident named Juan Santana, who he had harassed outside his home (and that is the kind of behavior that Goldmeier and Manzano are condoning).

Hopefully, this will Hernandez’s his last campaign. Maybe it takes a woman.

2011 at IHOP: Gavelgirl and The Rock were pals

Ladra hears that Gavelgirl herself, Councilwoman Isis Garcia-Martinez — a former Hernandez ally who, las malas lenguas say, has quit the Hoodlums — is going to challenge Hernandez. Ladra never thought she would say this, but You go, Gavelgirl! It ain’t easy to leave the thug life!

Yeah, sure, we’ve had our issues. Garcia-Martinez defended Hernandez all the time. She even went to his famous pancake breafast at IHOP, which was a campaign event paid for by city dollars and exposed by Ladra in 2011.

Read related story: Gavelgirl files false police report

She also had police eject me from a council meeting, had me illegally trespassed from both City Hall, which is a public building, and the campaign headquarters and tried to get a restraining order against me so that I wouldn’t attend any more meetings — or catch her at campaign breakfasts that were paid for by public money. She couldn’t because she had no legal justification.

But the past is the past. Ladra believes she has seen the error of her ways. She’s broken up with the bully, hasn’t she? She is willing to take him on publicly. Last year, she broke with the rest of the hoodlums to support former Miami-Dade School Board Member Raquel Regalado against Gimenez. She certainly isn’t all lockstep, Seguro Que Yes anymore.

So, until anybody else with a better shot challenges The Rock — an admitted loan shark and liar who had the audacity to pay an ethics fine with thousands of pennies — Ladra will be giving Gavelgirl the benefit of the doubt. And our support. What do they say about the enemy of my enemy?

Hashtag I’m with her. We’ll start a rival gang.

One of the great truths of politics is that the devil is in the details. It’s true of almost everything. but it is especially true in politics. Another thing that is becoming clear is that the details are in the committees.

Is it me, or are the Miami-Dade County committee meetings getting more interesting?

This week, we have discussion at the committee level about millions of dollars in contracts, discussions about sea level rise and the cooling canals at Turkey Point, $26 million in new vehicles for solid waste, $2.3 million for road improvements in Doral and the purchase of environmentally sensitive lands in South Dade, just for starters.

We all have to start paying more attention.

Please keep the information about your meetings, campaign events, speakers and what not coming. It’s a lot of work to find out about these things if you don’t tell Ladra — or is that the idea? Well, sorry to spoil it for ya.

MONDAY — March 13

All day — Last day to register to vote for the April 11 election in Coral Gables. You can register online with Miami-Dade Elections here, but if it is your first time registering, you must print out the form and deliver it to the Miami-Dade Elections Department in Doral by 5 p.m.

TUESDAY — March 14

9 a.m. — Coral Gables Commissioners will talk about a recommendation from the city’s school and community relations committee (committees are doing it for themselves!) urging the City Beautiful to “purchase” a classroom at West Lab Elementary School for $4.2 million, ensuring that at least 180 students from kindergarten to eighth grade can attend the school. They will also discuss and could give a preliminary vote to swapping its public safety building — where the police and fire headquarters are located at 2801 Salzedo — to another building in the downtown that will be redeveloped with a parking garage (that’s at 10 a.m. time certain). There will also be a discussion on the Cocoplum bridge project, a report on abandoned properties and an update on the proposed plans for “the Plaza of Coral Gables,” formerly known as “Mediterranean Village.” Commissioner Vince Lago will also ask his colleagues to consider a citywide ban on the distribution of single-use plastic retail bags, which he says contribute to litter and cause environmental problems. The meeting at City Hall, 405 Biltmore Way, will be followed by closed executive sessions with the city attorney on a couple of different lawsuits, including one filed by Starbucks against the city.

9:30 a.m. — The Miami-Dade County Commission’s Infrastructure and Utilities Committee will consider spending $26.5 million on new vehicle leases for the solid waste department and $19.4 million on equipment and products for the information technologies department. They could also spend $1.4 million on air conditioning for the water and sewer department and $60,000 to buy 10 acres of environmentally sensitive lands in Cutler Bay. Also on the agenda for the meeting in commission chambers at County Hall, 111 NW First Street: The January and February monthly reports from Mayor Carlos Gimenez on the ongoing water and sewer projects.

6 p.m. — Retired Coral Gables Police officer Randy Hoff is running for city commissioner and has a cocktail reception fundraiser Tuesday night at George’s on Sunset, 1549 Sunset Drive. Hoff is running for the empty seat vacated by Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick’s move to the mayoral race and he is facing thee other candidates, including Marlin Ebbert, who ran against Vince Lago in 2013. Hoff has spent more than $14,500 of the $24,000 he raised through Feb. 28, so drop a little something in the bucket. Consider it a tip for his 30 years of police service.

WEDNESDAY — March 15

6:30 p.m. — The kick off fundraiser for David Borrero, who is running for a Sweetwater commission seat, starts at 6:30 p.m. at 109 Burger Joint, a popular eatery for some FIU students at 646 SW 109th Ave. The host committee is topped by former Doral Councilwoman Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera and includes such notable young Republicans as Jessica Fernandez, Armando Ibarra, Maria Wadsworth, Juan Fiol, Jose Mallea and Eric Diaz-Padron. Borrero, who worked on the campaign of State Rep. Carlos Trujillo, is running against incumbent Eduardo Suarez — who was appointed in 2015 to fill out the term of Orlando Lopez, who ran for mayor –and Isidro Ruiz, who is one of Lopez’s campaign volunteers. Sweetwater needs some real candidates to straighten that city out. Is Borrero a start?

THURSDAY — March 16

9:30 a.m. — Because mass transit and traffic solutions have become the main subject at every other commission meeting — and MPO meeting, and MDX meeting and CITT meeting — the Miami-Dade Commission’s Transportation and Public Works Committee will be heavy on trains this week. In addition to the reconstruction of the Florida East Coast railroad crossing and traffic control devices at NE 16th Avenue and approximately 131st Street, the committee will also consider the refurbishment or installation of four railroad crossings, at North River Drive, NW 46th and 62nd streets and 22nd Avenue and Ali Baba Avenue in Opa-Locka, with the county paying the annual maintenance of each. Maybe this is a good time to talk about the future development along that rail line? The committee may also approve a $2.3 million contract to Gannett for road improvements in Doral, on Northwest 25th Street from 87th to 117th avenues in Doral, which is Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz‘s district. The meeting is in commission chambers at County Hall, 111 NW First Street.

1:30 p.m. — The Miami-Dade Commission Economic Development and Tourism Committee will consider giving the politically-connected Munilla Construction Management company a one year extension and $6 million more for renovations and repairs at Miami International Airport (specifically something called the e Satellite and the “Federal Inspection Services,” which sounds like Customs. This is not the first time Munilla gets a bump in their contract as far as dollars and time (more on that later). The committee may also approve a five-year, $5.5 million contract with Ricondo & Associates for “aviation planning and master planning services,” which certainly seems like something we should be able to do in-house. They will also get updates on Florida Power & Light’s cooling canals by Turkey Point and the county’s efforts to address sea level rise. Commissioner Rebeca Sosa wants to discuss the Beacon Council’s use of public funds of the county’s business tax revenues. They could also instruct the mayor to look into “best practices” (read: regulations) for hosts with AirBnB and other such home-sharing services, which have come under fire lately (Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado wants to ban the practice in residential neighborhoods). This committee takes over the commission chambers from the last committee.

6:30 p.m. — Learn about how local government works from a panel of real experts at this event sponsored by the Downtown Democrats Club. The horses with mouths here are former Pinecrest Mayor and former State Rep. Cindy Lerner, Miami City Manager Daniel Alfonso and Miami Beach Assistant City Manager Susie Torriente. It’s $5 for Downtown Dem members and $15 for non members for the two-hour lesson at the Miami Center for Architecture & Design, 100 NE 1st Ave. Two hours of inside info! This should be good.

Former Miami Beach City Commissioner Michael Góngora will confirm weeks of speculation and file Monday for the commission race in Group 3.

Góngora was a commissioner from 2009 to 2013 in that seat before he ran for mayor in 2013 against Philip Levine. He also lost a race for Florida senate last year, but only because his name did not resonate outside the city. ven though there were five other candidates, he won almost 60% of the vote in Miami Beach and led in every precinct in the city.

“It shows me Miami Beach residents want me back in office,” Góngora told Ladra Sunday night as he left an Equality Florida event. “Now that my former Commission seat is vacant, I have a responsibility to return to office and help work on the issues Miami Beach is facing, which include transportation, development, flooding and mass transit.”

Read reated story: Michael Gongora, Jason Pizzo rack up endorsements for Senate

Gongora said that things haven’t really gotten better since he left office and that perhaps they have gotten worse.

“It’s time to get back to basics,” Góngora said. “Miami Beach has been focused on trying to e a player in the national arena,” Gongora said, referring to the offer of a Cuan embassy, the minimum wage ordinance and Levine’s attention on sea level rise and climate change.

“What we need are clean streets that are not flooded, a safer city, more transparency and financial oversight,” Góngora said, referring to the recent discovery that $3.6 million has been stolen from a city account and wasn’t even noticed missing for six months.

“That’s a huge issue,” he said adding that former Commissioner Deede Weithorn had warned about oversight in the finance department. “Nobody wants to own up to the problem. We’re spending money to study how to tighten up when we know what we need are more people and more oversight.”

Weithorn, former Mayor Matti Bower and current Vice Mayor Kristen Rosen Gonzalez — who has got to be hungry for an ally — are going to host the kick-off event for Góngora’s campaign on March 29, he said.

Read related story: Mike Grieco first to run for open Miami Beach mayor’s seat

The former commissioner is running for the seat now occupied by Commissioner Joy Malakoff, a pocket vote for Mayor Levine who has said she will not seek relection because theres nothing there for her when he’s gone.

Two other candidates have filed paperwork indicating they will run. Adrian Gonzalez has raised almost $7,500 and Cindy Mattson, who hadn’t raised anything as of the last report available, through February.

Góngora definitely enters the race as the frontrunner due to his leadership and likely support from a number of community organizations that he has been involved with for a long time, from before being elected in 2009 until the present. Last year, he was elected president of the Miami Beach Bar Association.

“I am confident the voters will choose my proven leadership and trusted experience to move Miami Beach forward,” Góngora said in a statement.

“I look forward to an energetic and positive campaign, communicating with voters about my vision for our City’s future, improving our traffic and infrastructure, and bringing back residents into government decisions by listening to the people about what their city government must focus on to improve their quality of life.”

Why not run for mayor?

“My personal and professional commitments don’t allow me the increased time and expense to run for mayor again right now,” Góngora said.

“I also believe that once a new mayor is elected this November the de facto strong mayor position will also be a thing of the past and we will go back to a system where the mayor and commissioners have nearly equal authority with regard to governance as one more vote on the commission,” he said in a not so sideways stab at Levine’s style.

“I will be more effective as commissioner as the senior member of the commission with the most years of experience,” Góngora added.

“And Miami Beach needs my leadership now.”