Whoa, indeed. Stierheim, who took the job on an interim basis after the arrest and resignation of former manager Cesar Odio, had stumbled onto a scandal that would make any city shudder: a $68 million case of cooked books, not-so-petty graft and bonehead fiscal management that has the Feds investigating, the state of Florida intervening and the taxpayers talking about dissolving the city forever.
Though no one thinks Odio or other officials stole the whole $68 million, the graft didn’t help–and both the scandals and the city’s financial mess are being blamed on his administration. Odio has been charged with theft in connection with an alleged shakedown of one of the city’s insurance carriers. (He denies the charges.) Miller Dawkins, the only black on the five-member city commission, pleaded guilty to extorting a bribe on a computer contract and could get 15 years in prison. And finance director Manohar Surana has agreed to plead guilty in the same shakedown scheme that led to Odio’s arrest.
All this emerged from an FBI investigation dubbed Operation Greenpalm. According to the Feds, Odio was taped complaining that his $116,000-a-year salary wasn’t keeping up with the cost of living. He then proposed to collect a $5,000-a-month kickback from a lobbyist for Connecticut General Insurance Co. But Surana was cooperating with the FBI after being caught in a kickback scheme between Dawkins and the Unisys Corp. Unisys, which called in the FBI, was trying to sell the city $200 million worth of computers and data-processing services, and Dawkins allegedly tried to get a $200,000 piece of the action. In January, the company paid $25,000 to Surana and Dawkins, who sent the money to India by wire transfer. “Let them trace that,” Dawkins said to Surana, who was wearing a wire.
The FBI investigation is reportedly branching out to Dade County’s Metro government, and the results of that probe could churn up a new round of damning headlines in South Florida. But the city still must wrestle with a monster deficit, a bloated payroll and budgetary practices straight out of Hollywood. Remember “Miami Vice”? Miami cops don’t actually drive Ferraris, but they have long been permitted to take their cruisers home after work, a practice that approximately doubles the number of police cars the city needs. “Over the years we’d float a bond issue whenever we ran out of money,” one city official explained. “The hope was that downtown development would kick in and the tax base would start growing again.” It didn’t–and in the angry aftermath, some political activists have launched a petition drive to merge the city with Metro Dade. The vote could come as early as March, and no one knows what will happen to the name “Miami.” But who’d watch a TV show called “Dade County Vice”–or hum along to “Moon Over Metro”?
