Miami Herald columnist Fabiola Santiago has waved her magic wand.  Lo and behold, all of North Miami’s MOCA problems are now solved.  She is most definitely a Good Witch!

In a miraculous stroke of wizardry, Glinda Fabiola came up with the perfect solution … MOCA, North Miami must find a way to work together for the sake of the art community.

Because no one’s EVER thought of that before!

Fabiola wrapped up her enlightened Why-Can’t-We-All-Get-Along? Moment with her closing sentence, “For the good North Miamians, art lovers everywhere, and the region’s reputation as an art destination, the city and the board should find a way to work together.”  What’s best for the “bad North Miamians” she didn’t say.

Let them eat cake?

The columnist laments “the ugly war raging over the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami” as “a lose-lose situation for both entities.”  She suggests that the glaringly obvious solution is to simply have a sit down to talk it out.

Perhaps a spot of tea to go with that cake?

Fabiola Santiago has got to be the ditziest reporter ever to be rewarded with her own a column by a major newspaper in the history of the printing press.

After “being promoted to managing editor by the man with whom she was having affair” at El Nuevo Herald, and then “transferred to the English language side of news operations,” she earned the dubious honor of becoming the subject of a Random Pixels regular feature called “Fabi Watch” beginning last summer.  In Fabiola Santiago just may be the Miami Herald’s most fraudulent columnist, RP wrote, “Perhaps the best evidence of that is the time she used her column to launch a personal attack on Miami filmmaker Billy Corben after it was alleged that he used social media while he was on jury duty. Never mind that Corben sent out tweets in the courthouse before he was picked to sit on a jury. Those are facts and facts somehow never make it into Santiago’s columns.”

Random Pixels also quoted the Miami New Times’ Karl Munzenrieder, who criticized Fabi by writing:

“Reading between the lines, one also gets the feeling that the columnist doesn’t really understand the Internet. She writes with a shocked tone, “Every time he posted, his followers and friends commented.” Yes! Welcome to Social Media 101, Fabiola!”

In her recent column, however, Fabiola surprisingly did make a legitimate point about the North Miami/MOCA issue.  She agreed that voters made the right decision in 2012 when they said “NO” to a bond proposal to pay for the museum’s $15 million expansion.  But when Mayor Lucie Tondreau said that the MOCA board serves “at the pleasure of the North Miami council,” Santiago insisted that “Tondreau is wrong … The museum is a nonprofit; it’s not city-owned.”

The MOCA board now claims that the voters’ rejection of the bond is the reason the “not city-owned” museum is leaving North Miami.  On the one hand, the board wants autonomy from the city in its operation of the museum, yet they expected North Miami residents to pay for the privilege of keeping it there.  As Santiago stated, the “powerful board of philanthropists could have raised that kind of money,” but they chose to demand that taxpayers dip into their wallets instead.

In the case of nonprofits, it’s customary for such organizations to solicit VOLUNTARY donations.  “Fundraising” in the form of issuing a municipal bond amounts to nothing more than a MANDATORY tax.

The MOCA trustees are so upset that North Miami voters chose not to tax themselves to support a venture that is “not city-owned,” they’re threatening to take their ball and go home.

Or, rather, to a new home – at the Bass Museum in Miami Beach.

Santiago is unfairly placing most of the blame for this situation on the North Miami City Council, claiming that if they “insist on imposing on MOCA its own appointed board members and on having the power to remove existing trustees…they’ll be doing themselves and residents who count on the museum’s high-quality programming a tremendous disservice.”

Even as the Miami Herald columnist sympathizes with the North Miami citizens for not approving the bond because this isn’t “the kind of economy in which taxpayers should be asked to carry such burdens,” she doesn’t chastise the MOCA board for holding the city’s residents hostage for voting it down.

Fabiola contradicts herself so many times throughout her article, it’s difficult – no, make that impossible – to understand exactly what sort of solution she’s offering.  Although she casts the almost all of the blame for the mess on “the bullying attitude of the City Council and mayor,” Santiago still believes “it’s not too late for mediation and negotiation to save the museum.”

If all else fails, there’s always Fabi’s magic wand.

And maybe a pair of ruby slippers for good measure.

Stephanie Kienzle
“Spreading the Wealth”