Don't complain about your tax dollars. Complain about the mismanagement of those dollars. The county is too big and bloated to watch what is going on.
This one cost us at least $215,584.70. You would have to audit everything to get a true accounting of the waste. Every audit turns up mismanagement that costs us plenty of money.
Final Report.
11 comments:
Which county commissioners get free comped rooms at the airport hotel and for what purposes?
The Inspector seriously needs to investigate PortMiami for shady dealings with port vendors and tenants. The 2014 Port budget includes a $5 million item for payment in a legal judgment against the County for a judges ruling that the Port of Miami has a way of doling certain business permits illegally protecting incumbents -- ``creating a handful of entrenched privileged companies". The judge said evidence showed other ``established, qualified, competent and trustworthy, companies were denied permits even as some incumbents who didn't use their permits received automatic renewals". Port Director Kuryla works the backchannels and selection process, where privileged insiders are awarded business while those who are not tied into the system of lobbyists, commissioner aides and certain County staff are denied. The IG should also look into Port administration credit card spending fro wining and dining family and friends on foreign junkets, like the June 2014 trip the Port organized to Spain and France for insiders paid by taxpayers.
Sure there is some waste and corruption as in any large organization but let's not focus on that, the real problem is the employees' 5% pay. I know it's true, I heard the mayor on the radio saying so.
The MIA Hotel is treated just like any other CBO or in this case non-profit. NO CHECKS AND/OR BALANCES.
The report says so. How many millions of dollars are unaccounted for this very same way?
This why I say we go back to professionalism reather than politics. We need a professional manager again.
Not that it matters, but it wasn't tax dollars. The airport is funded entirely from revenues generated at the airport from airlines, ticket-holders, shoppers, hotel patrons, etc.
Waste is waste, but still... not tax dollars.
@ anonymous #3 - yep, and the Mayor's lap dog repeated the theme last night in Homestead. Gotta start a witch hunt against the little people to deflect any examination of corruption at the top, right? What a bunch of idiots in the audience, clapping loudly everytime Bell threw them some meat. Disgusting.
It's county owned revenue. The added expenses were supposed to be approved by the county and they weren't. There were never any inventories done. There were no three bids for an item. Read the report, this was a scam run by a few people getting a paycheck from a company who was paid a management fee annually by the county.
Doubling the prices of chairs, wallpaper, towel racks and hair dryers while husbands who owned the exclusive bids were rewarded just for being married to a secretary.
Where is the Miami Herald? What has happened to that paper?
This should be front page, above the fold news and Gimenez needs to own it along with Alvarez, this went on for years. The Airport Directors need to be held accountable but alas they will retire with their big vacation and sick pay packages because nobody ever calls in sick when you have comp time.
OIG needs to look into comp time. In the private sector comp time disappears under management being exempt from overtime, not in Miami Dade County, spend two minutes thinking about work on the weekend and get a week of comp time. Who is going to check it out?
Time to abandon ship. Will the unused fireboats rescue us?
Why is Miami-Dade County involved in the business of running any hotel at all???!!!!
"What a bunch of idiots in the audience, clapping loudly everytime Bell threw them some meat. Disgusting."
Yes, but think about it, the orange shirts are most likely paid performers, not volunteers. She said she was three minutes from home. She was the City Mayor for a term and the County Commissioner for four years and the audience wasn't completely full of her supporters. Other than a sick amount of war chest she'll plow through, she's really going to lose.
It's not just Alvarez and Gimenez who must be blamed for the corruption at the airport. Look a little further back during the time of Alex Penelas. There was an investigation into minority owned businesses at the airport and low and behold, ¡t was Sergio Pino in the middle of the Host Marriott scandal where it was suspected that certain persons, possibly politicians, were being greased from some of the proceeds. What does a plumbing supply company owner and residential homes developer know about food concessions? Nothing, he just knew how to move money and hide dirty payments through shell companies.
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