Monday, December 03, 2012

When public officials blog ... by gimleteye

Mayor Philip Stoddard, in South Miami, is durable. There are not many university science professors who give of their time and energy to participate in public service. I can't think of any others.

Mayor Stoddard has earned our respect, too. Before being elected, he had taken on Florida Power and Light's turkey of a planned nuclear expansion. As mayor, he leads the fight again FPL's efforts to put new high capacity lines near people's homes.

And I've just noticed Mayor Stoddard has taken to blogging.

Interesting, because Mayor Stoddard blogs about venomous local in-fighting (particularly the questionable behavior of the police chief toward him) directly to the public. It might not be necessary for Mayor Stoddard, if there were a newspaper or other form of independent media to pick up these stories.

Mayor Stoddard rattles the folks in South Miami who treat government as their personal Christmas tree, stockings stuffers filled with patronage jobs, relatives of relatives of relatives, and so forth. No one believed an outsider could take a broom to the cobwebs. But when there is possible retaliation by law enforcement against some elected officials, like the mayor, that is certainly a cause for heightened attention.

Anyone can blog, and anyone does blog.

Back in the crack cocaine days of the housing boom of the mid-2000's, former county commissioner Joe Martinez, Pepe Diaz, and Dennis Moss slammed civic activists from the dais, for daring to reach out to the public with a Spanish language flier, deployed in coffee shops around the county opposing the movement of the Urban Development Boundary. They were outraged! And decided to appropriate money to fund their own news organ; a domestic, local version of Pravda.

The current case in south Miami is disturbing. This would seem a place for the state attorney or FBI to get involved; the fact that Mayor Stoddard is taking his case directly to people, through his blog, is evidence that law enforcement in Miami-Dade is not working. Surprised?

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is the bottom line: Law enforcement is too cozy with those who corrupt government; whether it be through outright payoffs, bad business deals that scream kickback, loans to public officials or giving great deals on used cars to spouses of public officials, there has been little or no action or interest shown by those in Miami Dade who are supposed to protect the public pocketbook.

Anonymous said...

South Miami Mayor Stoddard and the Commission are just as corrupt as the Manager and Police Chief. They are not without fault, a Law maker must do their due diligence when voting on Ordinances and Resolutions and as for the SM charter and the Miami Dade County Citizen Bill of Rights all people have a right to be heard but the Special Meetings after Special meetings prohibits this from happening unless a law maker calls for a vote to allow all interested parties to be heard.
The South Miami Commission votes based on how much in kickbacks (legal kickbacks of course) are given to South Miami or if they are trying to gain the favor of a developer, private corporation, and peers neighbors in their neighborhood where they reside.

Anonymous said...

Do not believe the SM Commission has ever read all the Ordinances, the Charter or even the Land Development code,this goes for Staff including the Manager and the Attorney.

Anonymous said...

Ethics laws must have teeth and severe penalties and need to extend to the spouse, children, siblings and business associates of an elected official. Holding elected office should be considered a great honor but there must be a trade off in terms of giving up the right, directly and indirectly, to profit from public action.

Anonymous said...

and speaking of feeding at the public trough, what other officials are going on the vacation, er, I mean trade mission to Bogata with Gov Bug Eyes ?

Anonymous said...

I haven't been following the South Miami saga and am a supporter of Stoddard. Nothing going on there now or in in the past has persuaded me otherwise. He's done great work for his City and the entire South Dade Community if not the entire county. This is not even going in to his University work.

My best wishes to him and his blog though I would hope others pick up to writing on it as it could put the Mayor in a untenable position at some point.

I well remember the propaganda paper from County Hall. I also remember when we had Redland Country News too, which went away about the same time the "Prada" version of county hall came out. I believe it MAY (and I really have no inside information here) have been pressure on the Miller's to get rid of the bad press from the community residents.

Anonymous said...

Meant "Pravda" (not Prada shoes in my closet)!

Geniusofdespair said...

I have insider information on the Redland newspaper. The Wades moved out of the area.

Anonymous said...

"As an observer of city hall for some twenty-plus years, and as one who is not intimated by corrupt officials, I will emphatically note that this current elected city commission is the most dysfunctional body I have witnessed and in some cases, dysfunctional individuals as well." FROM WHERE I STAND - Commentary by John Edward Smith Date posted: November 21, 2012 http://www.communitynewspapers.com/?p=49977

The Straw Buyer said...

There is some guy with a blog that has been on top of the mess in South Miami, in fact the ethics complaints that are the genesis of the current troubles for the police chief and his cronies came from that same blog.

Geniusofdespair said...

Isn't that you?

The Straw Buyer said...

Yup.

Pat Wade said...

Yes, the Wades moved from the area but that is not the reason for the demise of the Redland Country News. Miller Publishing pulled the plug at least a year before the Wades moved. We were led to believe it was an economic move by the company. The Millers never censored anything we wrote and encouraged us to be independent. If there was behind the scenes pressure (I know County government was not a fan of the Redland Country News) we were not made aware. For the most part, the readers loved the tough reporting.

Anonymous said...

As long as Katherine Fernandez Rundle keeps getting re-elected nothing will change.