Kick Ass Part 30

OK, "brave" is overstating it. But they did do something-proposed raising fire-rescue fees, garbage fees and the millage rate, with a novel goal of balancing the budget.

A big question is whether the commissioners are serious or faking it. As Miami spirals toward insolvency, they've done little but bicker, posture and stall. They are decisive only on the issue of when to meet again, for further bickering, posturing and stalling.

Another question is whether the proposed fee changes add up. Experts will be double-checking the city's accounting methods, which are often highly creative.

In July, the governor's Financial Oversight Board got another five-year recovery plan from the city, and found it so defective as to be insulting.

For example, Miami had included among projected revenues $3.2 million in federal grants that hadn't been approved by Congress. Another whimsical entry was $1 million from a lease that hadn't even been signed.

Members of the oversight board couldn't contain their frustration. Still, the commission's three biggest wimps-w.i.l.l.y Gort, J. L Plummer and Tomas Regalado-continued to grandstand as champions of regular folks who can't afford to pay more for trash pickup.

What they really can't afford is more bad theater at City Hall.

Last week's vote was a result more of intimidation than courage. After a year of bewilderment, inept.i.tude and cowardice, the commissioners knew time was running out.

Gov. Lawton Chiles appears ready to stop the carnival, and is empowered to suspend the whole bunch. Monday is the deadline given for a new plan.

Faced with losing their jobs, commissioners reluctantly recommended doing what a.n.a.lysts have long advised-raise fees to enhance cash flow (cash being somewhat necessary to pay police, sanitation workers and other munic.i.p.al employees).

The city says the higher rates would cost the average Miami homeowner an extra $92 in fiscal 1999, rising to about $181 by 2003. It won't be popular with residents, who already pay hefty taxes for mostly crummy service. But the alternative is worse-chaos and decay, if the city goes broke.

It's possible that Miami's budget has been a hoax for so long that n.o.body at City Hall remembers how to put together a real one. When Cesar Odio was city manager, he and his crooked budget chief, Manohar Surana, would fill gaping holes in the ledgers with silly made-up numbers.

And it worked for a while, because commissioners could be relied upon not to ask many questions. It took a corruption scandal to reveal the extent of deficit scamming.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether the city fictionalized its finances on three bond offerings. The SEC is wondering how Miami "balanced" its 1995 books by listing a $9 million lump sum of U.S. crime-fighting funds-money that in fact would be distributed incrementally over several years.

Other unusual projected revenues included $3 million from the sale of fill for which n.o.body had offered a penny.

Today the game's over, and Miami's slag-heap bond rating elicits giggles on Wall Street. Investigators might be encouraged by talk of raising munic.i.p.al fees, but remember that Friday's vote was preliminary. Commissioners have plenty of time to chicken out.

In which case Gov. Chiles should act swiftly to rescue Miami's long-suffering residents by decommissioning the commission and putting the city in responsible hands.

Stormy Weather

Tis the season some builders get generous December 16, 1987 Once again it's that merry season of the year when contractors all around Dade County are racking their brains and wondering: What do I give the building inspector this Christmas?

Good news! Cash is "in" again, and it's perfectly safe-judging by the courthouse results of that big Metro police undercover sting.

Posing as a county inspector, detective Alex Ramirez collected almost $6,000 from builders in just four months. Driving from site to site in West Dade, Ramirez seldom got through a day without somebody slipping him wads of money, food, fine wine or a bottle of booze.

Typical was this exchange between the undercover cop and a building foreman, recorded by a hidden microphone: Ramirez: "You know, you don't have to give me anything."

Foreman: "No, I don't have to give you anything, but in life, don't I leave a tip when I eat in a cafe or a bar?"

Twenty-five people were ultimately indicted in the sting, and 15 of those pleaded guilty or no contest. All received small fines and probation, and all but one had the incident wiped from their permanent records. n.o.body went to jail.

In dis.h.i.+ng out such punishment, the Dade judicial system sent a message loud and strong: Payoffs are no big deal. Don't sweat it.

A welcome sentiment-and just in time for the holidays!

Believe it or not, the custom of secretly purchasing the cooperation of public servants is still regarded as controversial. In some parts of the country it is referred to as "bribery"-and judges actually put people in jail for it.

Fortunately, many of the indicted Dade contractors were able to convince our courts that the cash wasn't a bribe in the naughty sense-but rather a "tip," or lunch money, or just an innocuous gesture of friends.h.i.+p. Some opted for the business-as-usual defense, with uncanny results.

An attorney for Hector Brito Jr., who had paid $50 to detective Ramirez, insisted that it wasn't really a bribe because Brito didn't specifically ask for something in return.

"It was more of a thank-you, which is very common in the business," the lawyer explained. (Circuit Judge David Gersten threw out the case.) Similarly, a jury acquitted carpenter Jorge Gonzalez of bribery after he admitted giving Ramirez $20 "for lunch" on three occasions. Gonzalez's attorney said his client was not seeking special favors, but gave the cash merely because Ramirez "arrived promptly and had been a gentleman."

Untouched by the police sting were those few inspectors who make a practice of shaking down Dade builders and contractors. Since these greedy little suckers are still on the loose, they'll probably be expecting stocking-stuffers for the Yule season.

A word of caution: If you're giving cash, don't go over $100 per bribe. In fact, the less you give, the more innocent it looks.

Whenever possible, avoid cramming the money directly into the inspector's palms. Instead, place it in an unmarked envelope and leave it in a clever place where he's sure to find it-taped to the hood ornament of his El Dorado, for example.

When paying off an inspector, don't ever demand something in return. Even though both of you know perfectly well what the money is for, don't come right out and say it. Not only is it rude, it's risky.

You never can tell when some run-amok jury might misconstrue the meaning of: "Hey, Mac, here's the 50 smackers for the plumbing inspection."

Should you have the misfortune of bribing an undercover cop, don't panic. Just tell the judge you thought the guy was collecting for United Way. Tell him the cash had nothing to do with the fact that the guy inspected your entire 6oo-unit apartment building without ever leaving his car.

The court will understand. Some old scrooges might call it corruption, but down here we call it the spirit of giving.

Shhhhhh! Let the inspector get his sleep June 4, 1990 When investigators tailed Dade building inspectors on daily rounds, they saw: a roofing inspector who never climbed a ladder the whole time; an electrical inspector who goofed off at a bowling alley; an elevator inspector who spent county time napping at the library.

Construction was certified on some projects using the convenient drive-by method, so the inspector never had to leave the comfort of his car. Other work was approved, site unseen.

The Dade grand jury says the Building and Zoning Department is often more devoted to helping the construction industry than protecting the public from sleazy contractors. It's virtually the same conclusion that another grand jury reached in 1976.

Nothing ever changes. Only four years ago, an undercover cop posing as a building inspector collected thousands of dollars in "gifts" from local contractors. Detectives said it was business as usual.

Efforts to weed out the crooks and deadbeats have been stymied. Just last week, prosecutors mysteriously declined to provide the names of those few inspectors whose antics were exposed in the most recent probe. This means they're still on the job-or at least pretending to be.

If only they kept a journal ...

8 A.M. Drove out to Old Cutler Shady-Lakes-On-the-Bay Estates for a thorough inspection. The cement is still slightly mushy, but what can you expect after only six weeks? When I got back to the car, I discovered someone had dropped an envelope with $500 on the front seat. Must be my lucky day!

8:07 A.M. Drove out to New Cutler Meadows-Near-the-Bay to check on complaints of substandard work. Everything looked jim-dandy to me. I leaned my golf bag against several walls, and not one fell down. While I was checking the place over, someone put two first-cla.s.s plane tickets to Bermuda on the winds.h.i.+eld of my car. Some sort of sweepstakes, I guess. Talk about luck!

9-10 A.M. Stopped by library to check the stocks in the Wall Street Journal. Blue chips look strong, but I'm thinking about dumping IBM while it's riding high. Also, I wonder if I went too heavy into tax-free munis.

10:15 A.M. Drove out to Green Cutler Gardens Somewhat-Near-the-Bay to check on reports of inferior drywall. Another false alarm: Every wall I inspected was dry as a bone. When I got back to the car, I found a new gold Rolex Submariner on the front seat. Too bad I've already got one.

10:30-Noon. Stopped at the bowling alley to see how the ceiling struts were holding up after 23 years. Just by coincidence, the All-Dade Hooters Waitress League was having a tournament, so I stayed to watch-just to make sure they weren't injured by any falling beams.

12:15 P.M. Ran into the new guy, Mario, on a site for that new nursing home. Get this-he was actually up on a ladder, checking out some piddly leak in the roof. A ladder! I nearly busted a gut laughing. Told him he should've been a fireman.

12:30 P.M. Tried to inspect the New World Old Cutler Financial Plaza-In-the-Bay but traffic was lousy and it started to drizzle. Just so happened I could see the structure perfectly from Hooters, where I'd stopped for a late lunch. So I used my binoculars to count the floors: forty-two, right on the b.u.t.ton! As I was phoning in my inspection, somebody broke into my car and left a deed to a three-bedroom condo in Cozumel. Not only that, they were considerate enough to put it in a third-party offsh.o.r.e trust!

1:55 P.M. Went out to Rolling Cutler Hills Nowhere-Near-the-Bay Estates for a final inspection, and all 1,344 units checked out fine-at least they looked pretty darn nice from the car. As I drove past, someone lobbed a tooled-leather valise in the front seat. Just a guess, but it looks like it might contain $25,000 in nonsequential unmarked bills. What a day I'm having!

2:11 P.M. Holy cow, where did the time go? The wife is probably worried sick. Still, I ought to swing by the bowling alley once more to double check those struts.

Now, perhaps, we'll develop with more care August 27, 1992 OK, G.o.d, you got our attention.

Heck, you've eighty-sixed an entire U.S. Air Force base. Who wouldn't be impressed?

And about that South Florida Building Code-well, maybe it's not as tough as they promised us. Or maybe it's not being enforced with what you'd call unflagging diligence. Sure seems peculiar that so many older homes survived your Hurricane Andrew with little or no damage, while newer subdivisions exploded into match sticks.

G.o.d, was this hurricane a pop quiz on survival?

Because if you were testing courage and compa.s.sion, you won't find more of it anywhere. Heroes walk every street, or what's left of the streets. The valor on display in South Dade makes Desert Storm look like a Tupperware party.

But, G.o.d, if you were testing us on how wisely we've cared for this astonis.h.i.+ngly fragile peninsula, then we failed. We've done some dumb things, starting with reckless planning and manic overdevelopment.

In our l.u.s.t to carve up this place and hawk it as a waterfront paradise, we crammed four million people along a flat and vulnerable coast. It's complete lunacy, of course. We haven't been able to employ them all, protect them from crime, properly educate their children or even guarantee the most basic of human needs-drinking water.

And, as we've seen this week, we certainly haven't provided safe housing. Thousands and thousands of families are homeless and heartbroken this morning. The rest of us, blessed by capricious luck, finally have time to reflect.

We thought we were ready. Honest, we knew the drill. Who hadn't seen the harrowing footage from Donna, Camille and Hugo? By the time the TV weather people told us to worry, we were worried. We collected our D-cell batteries and our Sterno, our duct tape and our plywood, and then we watched Andrew march due west. We waited hopefully for the Big Swerve, but it never came.

Six hundred thousand souls who had never been through one of your hurricanes actually evacuated when they were told to do so. Elsewhere that might be routine behavior, G.o.d, but down here it's close to a miracle. Moses himself would have a hard time rousting the roller-bladers from South Beach.

All that valiant preparation-and still the community lies devastated. What did we expect? Aim a hurricane's fury at four million people and the only possible outcome is a horror.

We had been warned, again and again. The people who should've been listening were too busy counting their campaign contributions from big developers. Now, as always, the suffering is heaped on the most helpless-those whose only sin was buying into the Florida dream.

The only good to come from Andrew would be a resolve not to let it happen again. We can't change the course of hurricanes, but we can d.a.m.n sure build houses with walls that don't disintegrate and roofs that don't peel like rotted bananas.

It's been about 30 years since South Florida got nailed by a big storm. You probably figured we needed a reminder. Next time, don't wait so long. Send us a modest, midsize hurricane every couple of years, and soon Florida will have some of the world's st.u.r.diest and most sensible housing developments.

Thirty years was plenty of time for us to screw up. We got lax, we got greedy. We quintupled the population and idiotically called it progress. Now it's a disaster area.

G.o.d, please don't say you told us so. We got the message.

And thanks for not making it worse.

Bl.u.s.tery talk about Andrew is all hot air October 18, 1992 Don't buy the breathless hype that Hurricane Andrew was "The Big One." It wasn't, not by a long shot.

The Big One won't strike the most thinly populated stretch of South Florida, the way Andrew did. The Big One scores a dead hit on downtown Miami, Hialeah or Fort Lauderdale.

Unlike Andrew, the Big One won't blow through in a few frantic hours. It parks on top of us for two or three horrifying days, dumping enough rain to flood most neighborhoods to ruin.

And the Big One won't be a tightly packed storm, the way Andrew was. It'll be huge and rambling, like Camille, and its path of total destruction will breach three counties.

Not that Andrew was a p.u.s.s.y cat; it was a swift, powerful hurricane. Those who've had their lives shattered cannot imagine anything worse, and there isn't.

But to propagate the melodramatic notion that Andrew was a once-in-a-century catastrophe is not only scientifically wrong, it's morally reckless.

Understand that certain folks-politicians, developers and the building lobby-have a vested interest in promoting the myth of the Big One.

They want you to believe that Andrew was a freak storm with satanic powers, and that nothing could have prevented the ma.s.s destruction.

Rubbish. The only freakish thing about Andrew was that it hit us, for a change. It did what all Category Four storms do-tore the h.e.l.l out of everything in its way. Another one equally fierce could hit next week, next month or next year.

The other day, the Latin Builders a.s.sociation took out a full-page ad to whine about all the bad press that the construction industry is getting. The LBA implied that shoddy workmans.h.i.+p wasn't widespread, that Andrew's supernatural gusts were humanly unstoppable.

Especially if your contractor didn't bother to fasten your roof to your house.

Lennar, Arvida and other developers also are pitching the myth of the Big One: Hey, we sell st.u.r.dy homes. Nothing could have survived Andrew. (Except the low-cost houses built by Habitat for Humanity.) While the companies try to cover their b.u.t.ts, homeowners are filing richly deserved lawsuits. A grand jury is convening (yes, again). Even the State Attorney's Office is on the prowl for indictments. More shocking revelations are sure to come.

Andrew exposed, at a terrible human cost, what happens when a system meant to protect citizens is poisoned by greed, politics, corruption and inept.i.tude.

Failure occurred at every step. The vaunted South Florida Building Code deliberately was weakened to allow faster, cheaper work. Staples instead of nails? Great idea! Wafer board instead of plywood? Hey, give it a try. What next-Lego blocks?

What were these idiots thinking? Clearly no one-from the builders to the inspectors to the buyers-had ever experienced a major hurricane. Responsible tradesmen warned of disaster, but n.o.body listened. Politicians such as Mayor Steve Clark sat zombielike while the regulations were neutered. Why bite the hand that bankrolls your re-election?

County Manager Joaquin Avino was in charge of building and zoning when some of the crummiest developments were approved. When an NBC reporter recently asked about those projects, Avino experienced a bout of prime-time amnesia. It was truly pathetic.

Andrew revealed the system for the incestuous charade that it is, and now the guilty parties are scrambling for cover. It's not our fault, they cry, it's Nature! Two hundred mile-per-hour winds! The Big One!

The Big Lie is what it is. So much preventable damage, so much unnecessary misery-it's not the storm of the century, it's the crime of the century.

Happy ending slow to come at country walk May 6, 1993

Hi-ho, hi-ho.

It's off your roof did go.

We don't care if your house ain't there.

Hi-ho, hi-ho.

Once upon a time, there were 70 or 80 dwarfs who built a place called the Village Homes of Country Walk.