MIAMI – Anyone who thinks local government meetings are boring hasn’t been to one at City Hall in Miami. The latest spectacle of the dysfunction at a commission meeting was the ousting of Miami City Attorney Victoria Méndez.
Commissioners Miguel Angel Gabela, Damian Pardo, Manolo Reyes, and Christine King voted to oust Méndez and placed her in an advisory role ending June 11.
“I was doing my job; that’s why you’re upset at me,” Méndez told Gabela during the meeting.
Gabela said he didn’t trust her. Commissioner Joe Carollo was the only dissenting vote. This had just followed Miami City Manager Art Noriega’s furniture scandal.
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Filmmaker Billy Corben met with local journalists to discuss the madness during This Week In South Florida’s Roundtable on Sunday. He compared the city government to a mafia, a dictatorship, and a third-world banana republic.
“It runs on fear and intimidation, and I would say extortion,” Corben said.
The Miami Herald’s Sarah Blaskey, an investigative reporter, and Joe Flechas, an associate editor, joined the conversation on TWISF with Joshua Ceballos, the local government accountability reporter for WLRN.
Blaskey described Méndez’s role as someone who has a hand in “a lot of pots” and went beyond her role as a city attorney to comment on a case that resulted in a $63.5 million legal judgment against Carollo.
“She has been sort of proactive in that case,” Blaskey said adding she had defended Carollo.
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Flechas said the attorney is tasked with interpreting the city’s code and charter. Instead, Méndez went on the record several times defending Carollo’s actions against the businessmen who won the judgment.
“She attacked these Little Havana businessmen and besmirched their reputations often as a means of justifying the taxpayers paying for the legal defense,” Flechas said referring to Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla.
Ceballos said Méndez was allegedly “the go-between” Carollo and Emilio Gonzalez, the former city manager. Corben said Méndez was tasked with spending taxpayers’ money to defend corruption, as Carrollo “weaponized” government.
“She has had a blank check to enable this corrupt behavior,” Corben said.
The furniture choices and the city’s legal costs were not the only scandals mentioned. Blaskey said Méndez’s husband had a company that flipped homes.
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“The allegation is that through her work at the city, she had information that helped, you know, guide her husband’s business towards homes that, you know, could be flipped for a profit,” Blaskey said. “Often these were homes through the guardianship program.”
Blaskey said the program’s homes mostly belong to the elderly and people with disabilities.
“There is a lawsuit that Victoria Méndez and her husband are facing right now about this house flipping business. There’s also a bar complaint into how she has engaged with that business as the city attorney,” Blaskey said.
Corben said the city attorney also failed to intervene on the redistricting maps that prompted a federal racial gerrymandering suit. U.S. District Court Judge K. Michael Moore found the city unconstitutionally drew district lines.
“This perversion of the redistricting is far more corrupt than even the judge decided,” Corben said.
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Blaskey said that to notice the incumbent’s attempt to disqualify Gabela from running last November an observer has to “zoom in on this tiny, tiny little carveout around the part where” one home is.
There was speculation about the impact of the federal judge’s ruling, how this reflects on Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, and how it affects other local governments.
“I think whatever happens in the city of Miami government is something that will influence the way other government officials act in their governments as well,” Blaskey said. “And so I think, that’s how it becomes relevant to everyone else.”
Watch more on TWISF: Debra Hixon talks about Broward schools
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A white Florida woman who fatally shot a Black neighbor through her front door during an ongoing dispute over the neighbor’s boisterous children was sentenced Monday to 25 years in prison for her manslaughter conviction.
Susan Lorincz, 60, was convicted in August of killing 35-year-old Ajike “A.J.” Owens by firing a single shot from her .380-caliber handgun in June 2023.
The shooting was the culmination of a long-running argument between the two neighbors over Owens’ children playing in a grassy area near both of their houses in Ocala, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest of Orlando.
Prosecutors said Owens had come to Lorincz’s home after her children complained that she had thrown roller skates and an umbrella at them, which Lorincz denied. Trial testimony showed Owens, a mother of four young children, was pounding on Lorincz’s door and yelling, leading Lorincz to claim self-defense in shooting her neighbor.
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Lorincz told detectives in a videotaped interview that she feared for her life. She also said she had been harassed for most of the three years she lived in the neighborhood.
“I thought I was in imminent danger,” she said.
Jurors did not agree with her self-defense claim.
Owens’ family pushed for the maximum prison sentence after Lorincz was convicted by an all-white jury.
“While the pain of losing Ajike, we are hopeful that justice will prevail and that the court will give Susan Lorincz the maximum penalty for her actions,” said Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, in an email statement before Monday’s sentencing. “Ajike’s legacy will live on through her children, and we will continue to fight for justice.”
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Lorincz’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Amanda Sizemore, sought a more lenient sentence, an unspecified term below the 11.5 years in prison that is the lowest for her crime under state guidelines. Sizemore said in court documents that there are several reasons to justify a downward departure, including a mental disorder and claims that Owens was the aggressor and under “extreme duress” during the confrontation.
There were protests in the Black community in Ocala when prosecutors took weeks to charge Lorincz with manslaughter, a lesser count than second-degree murder, which carries a potential life prison sentence. Marion County, which includes Ocala, has a Black population of about 12%, according to census figures.
It’s been a good couple weeks for Florida Gators head coach Billy Napier. He’s picked up two long-awaited SEC wins. One is his first win over LSU and another is his first top-10 win since the Gators beat No. 7 Utah in his first game as their head coach.
ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg made sure to give him some love in their college football Week 13 takeaways.
He considers Napier, along with Oklahoma’s Brent Venables and Auburn’s Hugh Freeze to have further redeemed themselves with big wins on Saturday.
“But Napier, Venables and Freeze all strengthened their profiles and elevated hope for the future by leading their teams to signature wins in Week 13.”
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Rittenberg was impressed by Florida’s continuing to bend but not break on defense and the performance of true freshman quarterback DJ Lagway. This all culminated in what could have spoiled Ole Miss’ playoff ambitions.
“Napier, whose Florida team had outclassed LSU the week before in The Swamp, likely eliminated Ole Miss from CFP contention with an excellent second half. A Gators defense that struggled early allowed only three points in the final 39 minutes and intercepted Jaxson Dart twice in the closing minutes, and Florida got impressive play from its own young quarterback, DJ Lagway.”
Napier was also given credit for having shown “real signs of promise before Week 13.”
Florida took No. 8 Tennessee to overtime, losing 23-17. But more impressively took Georgia down to the wire despite Lagway being carted off with a hamstring injury. While the final score was 34-20, those who watched know that it was a one-score game until about four minutes to go. That gave Florida props, but now he’s beaten ranked opponents.
Now, Florida has a shot to finish with its first winning record since 2020 and win its first bowl game since 2019.
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Rittenberg concluded his takes by saying Napier, along with Vernables and Freeze, has given “tangible evidence to cite that better days might be ahead.”
Western Carolina Catamounts (2-2) at Florida State Seminoles (6-1)
Tallahassee, Florida; Tuesday, 7 p.m. EST
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BOTTOM LINE: Western Carolina plays Florida State after Cord Stansberry scored 20 points in Western Carolina’s 82-69 loss to the Wake Forest Demon Deacons.
The Seminoles are 3-1 on their home court. Florida State is 5-1 when it wins the turnover battle and averages 12.4 turnovers per game.
Western Carolina finished 11-8 in SoCon action and 10-6 on the road a season ago. The Catamounts averaged 11.3 assists per game on 28.2 made field goals last season.
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The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
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