Miami-Dade County incubates political corruption in Florida. For that reason if one is politically attuned, one must pay attention. Attention starts with business. Charity begins at home.
Munilla Construction Management is a privately held company and boasts of being one of the top ten privately held Hispanic businesses in the U.S.
Munilla family members give generously to local political campaigns.
Munilla maneuvering at Miami International Airport blew up at the county commission last week and smacks of influence peddling at high levels of Miami-Dade government, including Mayor Carlos Gimenez.
Based on the recent agenda item involving "miscellaneous construction contracts" involving MCM, it looks like the bad old days are back at Miami International Airport.
Just a generation ago -- an epoch in political time -- careers were laundered through a cadre of top lobbyists congealed around Dade Aviation Consultants. That was then. As mismanagement of the airport careened out of control, finally order was reestablished and "the problem" eventually melted away into other avenues of economic opportunity, like banking and the housing boom in the suburbs.
Although times change, the impulse to make money -- tons of it -- the old fashioned way never disappears. Instead of getting at the root of the problem -- political meddling in contract management involving hundreds of millions of dollars -- the most recent blowup manifested through minority African Americans crying "foul!".
The county commission explosion last week involved the question of whether the minority contractor guarantee has been ignored by both county contract administration at the airport and by its favored partner, MCM.
We've noted in the past -- and so has the state attorney's office through criminal indictments-- how the injection of politics in county contract awards at the airport enforces a race-based pecking order that creates is own class of privileged insiders within the African American business community.
Thus arises a form of cronyism that deeply penalizes the entire community.
According to its enthusiastically followed Facebook page, MCM has a division in Texas and Panama.
Take notice, the company seems to be bragging, about who snagged the latest version of the gold ring in Miami-Dade County politics. Pride goeth before the fall sometimes.
10 comments:
The Munillas also gave VERY generously to South Miami Mayor Stoddard's re-election campaign.
MCM employed the son of Gimenez, and there are actual blood ties between the Munilla and Gimenez families...not surprising in Miami. (The wife of Gimenez is also related former commissioner Natacha Seijas.)
The psuedo-righteous attacks on the Brazilian competition at MIA, Odebrecht, were hyped solely to give this brotherhood of Cubans the edge at the airport.
We like to think Miami is a global metropolitan city, but when you get right down to it, this place has all the panache of some rural village in Cuba. The small town mentality is alive and well in Gimenezville.
Wait, is this the same MCM, Inc that is also a client of Rep Eric Fresen?
"Client" in the loosest term of the word.
Bruno Barreiro all over it. Might as well be a Munillla family member.
Shortly after reading this story, an Article in the Miami Herald dated December 20th 2014, had Munilla in a sitdown with juan Zapata who just happens to chair the committee on capitol improvements. After this meeting he sponsored legislation that severely restricts exactly who is qualified to submit a bid. I was told that this legislation requires a bidder must have 3 prior public private partnership projects and they have a minimum budget requirement of $250,000,000.00 Dollars. If Donald Trump wanted to submit a bid if he had no previous public private partnership projects, he would be rejected.
Yes,pride does go before the fall! The fall of the pedestrian bridge at FIU. They've obviously been given more work than they can handle... how many more of their buildings are sub standard. Cubans only hire Cubans in miami. It's a strange racism that is unique to miami.
Yes,pride does go before the fall! The fall of the pedestrian bridge at FIU. They've obviously been given more work than they can handle,while other non Cuban construction companies starve. How many more of their buildings are sub standard. Cubans only hire Cubans in miami. It's a strange racism that is unique only to miami.
Yes very big GOP donors! This looks like Avery corrupt company.
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