Eye Scoop: U.S. Rep. Candidate Raul Martinez Revealed In Interview! by Sunshine Underground

"Too much influence is given to people that contribute to campaigns. And basically, campaigns have become so expensive that you have no choice but to do it, otherwise you'll be off the air. We need to also ask the TV stations not to double the price of advertising during campaign season. People don't talk about that. An ad that I would have paid a $1,000 two weeks ago, now I'm paying $2,000. These are things that are not known because the media doesn't put it out" - Raul Martinez

Raul Martinez dominates a room, and it's not just because of his height. "El Grande" as he is known, has a low, powerful voice, an easygoing manner, and a Clintonesque talent for weaving policy and personal narrative, minus some of the polish. That was my impression when I saw the former Hialeah mayor speak to a group of students at Barry University on Friday night, and I had the chance to catch him afterwards for an interview. Our readers know about his past, his achievements and the scandals, so I tried to direct the questions to a few topics that have been the focus of this blog - development, the financial crisis and environmental protection. Martinez's opponent, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, has a standing invitation to address some of these questions as well, but for now, here is the Martinez interview.

EyeonMiami: What have you done for the Everglades, and what would you do if elected?

Raul Martinez: As mayor of the city you don't have much to do with the Everglades, because that's handled by the state, but I have tried every which way to make sure that we protect the environment in the city. We have replanted trees. We had a problem in the city with Cuban-Americans where if the trees did not bear fruit, they would cut them down. So we had to replant the city, and if I tell you that I probably planted over 50, 60 thousand trees while I was mayor, I probably am running short. You know, we tried to do as much as we could, but you got to remember that the city of Hialeah was a poor city and we could not do as much as people would have wanted us to do. Twenty eight years ago, when I first became mayor the only thing that I could do was to get the recycling program, and we continue to have the recycling program. As of today, the city of Hialeah is the leading city in recycling. Even though it costs the city a lot of money to recycle, we're doing it.

EonM: Your mentioned that the Everglades is more of a state and federal issue - what state and federal regulations do you support to protect wetlands from development?

RM: I think we need to develop a line that people understand and know, “this is the line, we're not going to cross it,” and I'll give you an example. In the city of Hialeah, when I was mayor, we annexed land, and that land was what they called a C&D, a construction debris dump. We needed to move the line to the west so we could clean that land, clean the whole C&D, and eventually build warehouses. There was not going to be any people in there but we needed to create jobs.

We need to make sure that we take care of the environment, but at the same time, we need to make sure we are creating jobs by cleaning the environment. We need to start looking for cleaner fuels. We need to work with FAU to see if we can use the gulf current to create electricity. We need to work with car manufactures, even if we have to subsidize them for awhile, to make cars that burn cleaner fuels.

EonM: By "line," you mean the Urban Development Boundary. Do you support it?

RM: I support the urban development boundary, but in this particular case, the boundary was not a straight boundary, this area had been left out, and I felt that this area could be included and it would not be hurting the environment, on the contrary, what were going to do was clean the whole place, and eventually, within 5, 10 years, all of that debris that was buried there, would be taken out.

I'm sure that your readers, your bloggers, have been bombarded with advertising that has been very negative of me. First of all, I want to tell you that none of that is true, and if they go into channel 10's website, and they go into the fact check on the advertising, they will see that none of what is being said is true. What they've done is run the sleaziest, dirtiest campaign against me, because the person that is holding that seat is afraid that we exposed him for what he is and it's unfortunate, that he being an attorney, would put together those kind of negative ads against my person.

EonM: What responsibility do you think developers and builders have for the current financial/real estate crisis?

RM: They have a lot. Especially the bankers, because the bankers had so much greed, and they didn't care what and how, they just wanted to make that they would lend the money to do as many units as they could, they didn't care what these people were doing and how they were doing it.

We have an amendment in Florida right now that says waterfront properties should stay taxed based on their use. So you take the case of the Miami River. A lot of those owners are having to sell their properties and not keep it as a restaurant or boatyard because developers are making the cost of the land so expensive that when they do the market comparison the property taxes are huge.

But definitely, the bankers and the builders [bear responsibility] because of the greed, the only word you can use to describe what has happen with this economy is greed.

EonM: What regulations do you think need to be in place to prevent a crisis like this from happening again?

I think we need to start putting regulations back on the books. Prohibiting those leverage buyouts, all the leveraging that has been done. We have gone through this before. We went through it with the banking crisis and they created the RTC and 20 some odd years later, we're at the same thing... we shouldn't be having to do this. We need to make sure that we have enough regulations on the books to prohibit people from gouging, making more interest than they should, and hopefully make development more responsible.

EonM: In the last 10 years, what do you think has gone wrong as far as development, and real estate development in South Florida?

RM: It's not all about the developers - I think there is a myriad of other problems that we have had. Government has been lax on regulation. The state government has been lax. Too much influential is given to people that contribute to campaigns. And basically, campaigns have become so expensive that you have no choice but to do it, otherwise you'll be off the air. We need to also ask the TV stations not to double the price of advertising during campaign season. People don't talk about that. An ad that I would have paid a $1,000 two weeks ago, now I'm paying $2,000. These are things that are not known because the media doesn't put it out.

EonM: Those are valuable points, but again, what has gone wrong with the actual land development in Florida in the last 10 years?

RM: Well, one of things is that we have developed, but we have not created the infrastructure, the transportation infrastructure that needed to be created. We now have development in areas that don't have the public transportation that we needed. We started with the Metrorail and we never finished it, we never made a commitment to finish the Metrorail and we're struggling now to do the lines that need to be done. And then people need to say, look, you can't continue with the NIMBY, you can't continue the "Not in my backyard." If we need to bring a rapid transit line or if we need to bring bus lines, people are going to have to accept it.