It is going before the commission next week on St. Patrick's Day: A Transit Settlement Agreement has to be voted on. Apparently Miami Dade County LIED to the Feds to get transit money and got caught by a whistleblower (who was fired). She is getting $2 Million Dollars. The fine is $10 Million Dollar total. So Miami Dade County has to pay $10 Million Dollars they don't have. We all know the Transit Department is flush with money -- Where are they going to get it? It better not be from the Bond. The county says they are going to get it from "Operational Savings". Are they out of their minds? They also say Insurance? Can you get insurance as protection for committing a crime? Yes submitting false papers is a crime. Who is going to jail? Well, it is a SELF insurance fund so I guess anything goes. The County is a blood sucking, stinking monster. All the insiders working there for years and the nepotism that abounds, well it is costing us. People that are unqualified are hired but because they know someone -- that counts. Maybe they have a little larceny in their veins, but they are a cousin so they get the job.
First page from County Agenda, Outlining the Issue.
excerpt - charges.
excerpt
23 comments:
The execution and oversite of this order will be by Ysella Llyort, the person most responsible for this to begin with. She has her job because she is a relative to a commissioner, I believe Sosa. She should have been fired.
The Port paid a $5million settlement recently year to a stevedore company that won a federal lawsuit for the Port's crime of giving operating licenses to insiders, a practice Juan Kuryla perfected over the years. So he got promoted to director.
Is ridership down because they cut routes over the years? They save lots of cash by putting off maintenance items. I'd imagine some people in the maintenance division got fired.
Gas prices are down. Ridership will go up when gas prices go back up.
Ysella Lort should fired over this. Doesn't the Mayor have any backbone?
We could buy a few dozen limousines with that money and bus people around. The hell with buses.
Abort Lort. The man at the top is to blame. Fed rid of the dead wood.
We pay for this. The insurance and the rest, it all comes back to the taxpayer.
How do I find out all of these settlements for each fiscal year? That's an insane hemorraging of tax dollars due to incompetence and malfeasance.
And Miami Dade transit wants to charge a fare for the metro mover, please give me a break. They have operating surplus and bus drivers are getting run over by their own buses due to faulty equipment
As long as every Miami-Dade Transit employee continues to ride the county transit system for free, I know they have too much of my money. I just paid $110 for a monthly pass.
When Miami had a budget shortage about eight years ago they diped into the Park Impact Fee Fund thinking no one would notice...It made headlines.......
I imagine the County must have at least ten million in their Impact Fee Fund so I hope someone is watching.... Steve Hagen
I know this is a blog and not real journalism but can we write it a bit better? I don't believe Sosa and Llort are related. Not all Cubans are related. Llort became interim director of transit in late-2011. This mess occurred between '04 and '10. No one can take the fall for something that came before them. But I guess if one don't rant about something, retirement seems more and more like a big waste of time.
There are consequences. With climate change reducing carbon emissions should be a priority. This means getting people to use fewer cars and more transit. But transit has to be accessible, modern and clean, safe and frequent and cheap or free. Corruption like this means we have less money to improve And expand the system. Consequently, we lose the climate change lottery. Goodbye Miami.
Comments are a free for all.... THEY ARE NOT THE BLOG...journalism be damned
Breakdown of Payment:
Mazza -
$1,393,561.90
$1,664,106.05 ($650,000 backpay)
($750,000future pay)
($264,106.05 wrongful
termination)
$2,250,000.00 Attorney Fees
$5,307,667.95 Total to Mazza
FTA:
$4,645,206.00 Fine
Grand Total: $9,952,873.95
There are hundreds of these types of settlements every year. Some for back pay or other benefits. Most do not go to BCC as amount paid does not require BCC approval. Total dollar value over last 10 years is not to be believed. Also someone should look at the General Liabilty funds for police, fire and general employees...millions and millions spent with no disclosure to public.
The above comment by "Christopher Pike" reveals his ignorance. Ysela Llort has been in charge of the Miami-Dade Transit department since early 2007.
Her appointment to the Director position in 2011 was a demotion. From 2007 to 2011, Llort was the Assistant County Manager (at an annual salary of over $260k) overseeing all county transportation issues, including federal grants to MDT. Llort provided direct supervision to Harpal Kapoor for his entire tenure as MDT Director, and she was responsible for writing his job evaluations.
In short, Ysela Llort should absolutely be held accountable for this corruption which occurred on her watch. She should have been fired along with her subordinate Kapoor in 2011 instead of receiving another noncompetitive executive position.
Llort was appointed to both her ACM and Department Director positions without a job posting or the inconvenience of a competitive job interview. I thought Gimenez would clean house of all the corrupt cronies left over by Alvarez and Burgess. Instead, folks like Ysela Llort just became Gimenez cronies, and Gimenez retained them all. What a shame and a missed opportunity.
Don't believe their phoney cries for more cash. MDT budgeted for $4 gas. They saved millions when the price dropped dramatically.
Gimenez bizarrely protects directors and never tested for competence. He is easily fed a lie, believes it, and then spouts it to the media. I'm surprised that so few new directors have been hired after he's looked foolish again and again on many departmental issues.
Gimenez protects directors while never bothering to test for competence. He is easily fed a lie, believes it, and regurgitates it to the media. I'm surprised that so few new directors have been hired after he's looked foolish again and again on many departmental issues.
"Why are we airing dirty linen in front of others?"
- Assistant County Manager Ysela Llort in an October 29, 2010 email to whistleblower Marjan Mazza.
Mazza was fired less than one month later on November 23, 2010.
I ride the Metro and bus to work everyday even though I have a car because the traffic is literally killing me. I've been noticing a distinct decline in service over the last two years much of it clearly due to inadequate fleet maintenance and replacement. How on earth is it going to improve? I've seen two op-eds from Com. Suarez lately calling MDX to task for failure to take care of paying passengers and a complete lack of understanding about transit planning. Why is this director not replaced immediately? Why would this critical position not be a competitive national search?
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