“Few love to hear the sins they love to act.” Shakespeare wrote that sentence 400 years ago yet it fits like a glove to several Coral Gables officials. Some shamelessly deny their misdeeds and then commit them again. Their superiors, by ignoring transgressions, become complicit in fostering an ambience of disregard for all types of wrongdoing, including mendacity. The culprits will probably refrain from reading this column.

By general consensus, things are getting worse in the city. Not so much financially as City Manager Patrick Salerno is slowly tightening the tourniquet of the prolonged, unfettered fiscal hemorrhage perpetrated by his disgraced predecessor, David Brown, and sanctioned by the city commission.

Our principal problem, worse than economic, is ethical and legal. It’s worse because it destroys the city’s moral fiber, corrodes the rule of law and undermines the residents’ confidence in the electoral system. And the greatest irony of all is that the problem centers in the office of the city attorney. That office should be above reproach, and by law and custom it should serve residents, defending them from bureaucratic abuses and injustices.    

Brown’s unsavory furor still hovers around City Hall. Several numbers of his preternaturally unprofessional clique still continue there, awaiting, one hopes, their well-deserved bureaucratic ax. As most people remember, Brown willfully and knowingly falsified city documents. He spent thousands of taxpayers’ dollars for meals and liquor, and charged the city for useless, undocumented and very expensive trips around the country. He also pocketed a large sum for his supposedly extra hours at work; and although he “toiled” only briefly during the 2008-2009 Fiscal Year, he paid himself another $25,000 for the entire year’s vacation and sick days. He was, in effect, fired but was never officially chastised.

Brown might be physically gone, but his kindred spirit and for years the other half of City Hall’s high-spending and overreaching duo, embattled City Attorney Elizabeth Hernandez, remains. Like Brown, Hernandez has been wasting the taxpayers’ funds in an unrestrained fashion. She doesn’t do much, and when she works, she doesn’t do much either. Several weeks ago, she illegally sent a personal message (about “cute puppies”) through the city’s email system. Her grammar is suspect; her language is anything but elegant or highbrow. Her recent email is a legal classic: “yep-good to go. needs all the necessary witnesses, notaries yadda yadda.” 

One of the mysteries of Coral Gables governance is why the city commission, which can sanction Hernandez with three votes, keeps her around even though she openly speaks in disparaging terms about Vice Mayor Bill Kerdyk. So goes the commission’s collegiality!

Worse, without blinking an eye the city attorney lied to the commission - and by implication to 45,000 city residents – but the commissioners did not regard themselves offended, they merely turned the other cheek.

Assistant City Manager María Jimenez has produced her emails to Hernandez which confirmed that the city attorney prevaricated when she told the commission unequivocally – without adding the usual legalese caveat “to the best of my recollection” - that she had nothing to do with, or participated in the March 3 meeting with her labor assistant James Crosland and Jimenez concerning Brown’s change of benefit payment regulations late last year.

Hernandez’ own email, recently obtained by the Gazette under the Public Records Law, also proved her prevarication. Sent at 10:02 a.m. on March 3 to Jimenez and Crosland, the email reads: “I need to meet with both of you today at 3 if possible as I need to make sure that I am on firm legal ground in sending out a labor connected issue.”

Indeed, as Jimenez’s detailed schedule showed, the three of them met on the same day at 3 p.m. At the meeting Crosland deemed Brown’s action to be illegal.

On Sept. 22, Hernandez told the commission that, according to Crosland’s second legal opinion, Brown was authorized to make the benefit payment change, and  that nothing could be done about it. (Brown’s action cost taxpayers more than $125,000.) Inexplicably, the commission did not ask Hernandez for details of Crosland’s second opinion.

Several weeks later, when the city attorney was forced to provide the Gazette Crosland’s letter with his Brown ruling, it turned out that Crosland based his opinion on what he called “a Resolution of the city,” but did not mention its number, date or text. Hernandez accepted Crosland’s opinion without questioning its legal rationale, something that not even a first year law school student would do. My request for the “Resolution’s” particulars, made earlier this month,  has been unheeded.

In her Sept. 17 email, Hernandez wrote - in capital letters which she underlined - that she “has never issued a directive to department heads that public records must be addressed through this office.” Subsequently, this column debunked that statement with several explicit city documents. Florida law unequivocally states that all “custodians” of public records must produce them at the request of any person who does not need to identify herself or himself. Yet one employee of Hernandez’ office, Susan Franqui, continues to coordinate requests for public records, a function that does not exist in Florida Statute 119 and thus violates its transparency intent. In cooperation with another Coral Gables wasteful city department, Information Technology, Hernandez   makes the state-mandated, simplified process of producing Coral Gables’ public records for inspection lengthy, exceedingly cumbersome and costly.

The sudden retirement of Sharon Greaux, CLA, who for over two decades has been in effect the chief operating officer of the city attorney’s office, still reverberates throughout City Hall. It is now accepted as a given that Greaux – an ever-smiling first class professional who is admired and respected by all in the city administration –  is leaving the city because of her disagreement with Hernandez. Greaux opted to retire on October 30 rather than a few months later when she would become a 25-year employee and thus receive much higher pension because, as one colleague put it, she could no longer stand Hernandez’ unprofessionalism, irrationality and humbugging.

More than two months ago, the Gazette requested a copy of an invoice for $1,500, the sum that, over the signature of Hernandez, Coral Gables paid an attorney who works for one of over 20 outside law firms she employs in city cases. The attorney in question represented Hernandez before the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics in a private matter. Virtually all legal invoices presented to the city by outside law firms refer to the cases they are working on, and invariably detail expenses. Not so the one for $1,500 which, as I have been told by Greaux, isn’t work specific. Having been denied access to the invoice, one must assume that the city had paid for her Hernandez’ private legal fees,  and that, therefore, she owns Coral Gables $1,500, plus interest.   

Before the end of this month, the County Ethics Commission is scheduled to consider a complaint by Coral Gables Procurement  Supervisor Danilo Benedit. Benedit provided the commission a Miami-Dade County police-authorized  surveillance recording on which Hernandez is heard advising him to hire one particular lawyer and stating that she had recommended the same attorney to former director of the building and zoning department, Margaret Pass, who intended to sue the city. According to Coral Gables regulations and the Ethics Commission’s ruling, city employees cannot recommend professionals – be they electricians, carpenters or lawyers - for any work.

The above is but a sample of Hernandez’ questionable actions. City Hall insiders affirm that all commissioners know much more about Hernandez than what has come to light and has been reported, certainly more than enough to call her on the carpet. But will they do it and when?