Opa-locka residents will finally have the chance to clean house on November 6, 2018.  But will it end the city’s documented history of corruption?  Probably not.

Thanks to term limits, which voters passed by referendum in 2014, Mayor Myra Taylor‘s more than 20-year reign of terror over residents and businesses will finally end.

During her controversial tenure, she has been under federal criminal investigation, she diverted tens of thousands of dollars to her private charter school, her son pleaded guilty to shaking down local business owners, and she helped caused  Opa-locka to default on loans due to flagrant fiscal mismanagement and her out of control spending sprees, and forced the County to take over its water department.  Under her watch, the Governor had to to appoint an oversight board in an attempt to fix the city’s financial woes, which she fought tooth and nail, especially when the board tried to take away her city issued car.

Opa-locka’s “Veteran” Commissioner Timothy Holmes will also be finally vacating the seat he’s held since November 1994.

In 1999, Holmes was the subject of an investigation by the Florida Ethics Commission, which case was forwarded to the Division of Administrative Hearings (DOAH) after the Commission entered an Order Finding Probable Cause that he spent public money for his personal benefit.

On November 9, 2001, DOAH issued its Recommended Order that Holmes “pay a civil penalty of $1,000, restitution of $1,353, and suffer a public censure and reprimand.”  In its January 24, 2002 Final Order and Public Report, the Ethics Commission recommended, “In consideration of the foregoing and pursuant to Sections 112.317 and 112.324, Florida Statutes, the Commission recommends that the Governor impose a civil penalty upon Respondent Timothy Holmes in the amount of $1,000, that he be ordered to pay restitution of $1,353, and that he receive a public censure and reprimand.”

After Timothy Holmes won his seat back in 2014 during the same election term limits were initiated, a residents group, “Citizens on a Mission for Change,” filed a lawsuit to remove him from office since he had “already served eight consecutive years,” as reported by the Miami Herald.  Homes had adamantly opposed instituting term limits from the start by arguing, “You think the citizens of Opa-locka they don’t know what they’re doing when they go to the polls and vote for us?  The people of Opa-locka is our term limits.”

Commissioner John B. Riley is also leaving a vacancy that needs to be filled.  The one-time Mayor filed to run for a Commission seat in 2016, was ousted from the race when his $316.00 qualifying check bounced, but was reinstated a week later.

The Miami Herald reported:

He was initially disqualified early in September after bouncing his qualifying check but was reinstated on the ballot about a week later thanks to a state Supreme Court ruling in the Miami Gardens mayoral election that changed the state statute and gave him another chance to pay the qualifying fee. By then, however, the printing of ballots for the Nov. 8 general election was under way, and a special election had to be called.

Riley served as Opa-locka’s mayor in the mid-1980s. He eventually lost his position when a police informant said he saw Riley accept a $5,000 bribe to sway his vote on the city’s flea market.

Riley denied the allegations and was not charged. Despite this, his efforts to resume his political career were unsuccessful for the next three decades as he lost several races for the City Commission.

Because he’s termed out as a Commissioner, John B. Riley is now running for Mayor.

Again.

Also running for Mayor is current Commissioner Matthew Piggat, who was elected in 2016 as a “young reformer,” according to the Miami Herald.  He will be stepping down as a Commissioner to run for the head seat at the table.  We’ll see how that goes.

The possibility of a complete turnover in the leadership of Opa-locka should also result in the desperately needed purging of the offices of the City Manager and City Attorney.

The city’s most recent Manager, David Chiverton, is currently doing three years in the hoosegow for taking bribes.

In late June 2016, then-acting city manager Yvette Harrell was caught illegally tapping into a “bond reserve set aside to pay investors in case Opa-locka failed to make its payments on the City Hall purchase.”  When she was confronted by two city employees, Finance Director Charmaine Parchment and Budget Director Keith Carswell, Harrell fired Carswell and opened the city up to a lawsuit for unlawful termination.

For now, Interim City Manager Newell J. Daughtrey is keeping the seat warm.

Again.

Daughtrey was the Opa-locka City Manager from 1979 to 1982, was fired, brought back in 1995, fired again, and rehired again in April of this year as the interim.

A brand new Mayor and Commission will hopefully stop recycling the same trash and hire a top notch City Manager.

The biggest public official problem in Opa-locka, however, is City Attorney Vincent T. Brown.

The most egregious act of the ethically challenged, and fiscally irresponsible conduct by City Attorney Vincent T. Brown, who earns nearly $300,000.00 a year, is his bad habit of farming out city legal work to the high-priced, international law firm of Holland & Knight with absolutely no regard for the fact that Opa-locka is dead broke.

In the case of Universal Waste Service of Florida vs. City of Opa-locka, et. al.,  Holland & Knight has billed the city a total of $143,919.88 from March 6, 2017 through May 7, 2018.  The city has still not released the firm’s legal bills for June, July or August, 2018, which will easily add another $50,000.00 to the already outrageous bill.

On top of that, City Attorney Vincent T. Brown and former City Manager Yvette Harrell hired the high-priced Florida firm of Berger Singerman to defend them personally in this lawsuit.  So far, this firm has billed the city a total of $73,217.27.

This lawsuit has been in the court system for twenty months now, and there is no end in sight.  So far, all of the city’s motions to dismiss have been denied, and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars have been wasted.

It’s no secret that Opa-locka is one hot mess.

Perilously close to bankruptcy, the city is still under the supervision of the Governor’s financial oversight board, it’s defending dozens of lawsuits for millions of dollars by banks, business owners, and former employees.  Taxes are being raised, while services are being cut, and there seems to be no light at the end of this tunnel.

Meanwhile, City Attorney Vincent T. Brown and his cronies at high-priced law firms are getting rich while the residents of Opa-locka continue to suffer.

If the Mayor and Commission had done their homework back in 2014, they probably wouldn’t have hired Brown in the first place.  He has quite an interesting history.

In November of 2004, Mr. Brown was “diverted to The Florida Bar’s Professionalism Enhancement Program” as a result of a complaint filed against him by a former client.  One of the conditions of his diversion was to pay restitution to his former client in the amount of $625.00 and court costs in the amount of $876.70 by December 21, 2004.   On December 23, 2004, Brown was notified by the Florida Bar that the court costs were not paid, to which he didn’t bother to respond until March 25, 2005 in a letter stating that “the check he wrote for that purpose was inadvertently misfiled  in a closed file.”

That same year, Mr. Brown failed to notify the Florida Bar that he completed the Continuing Legal Education Requirement (CLER) by December 31 of that year.  On February 25, 2005, the Florida Bar notified him of his delinquency and ordered him to stop practicing law until the matter was resolved.  Five months later, he petitioned the Bar to remove the delinquency, admitting that “he engaged in the practice of law” while in delinquency, and claiming that “he had intended to comply with the CLER delinquency notification letter mailed to him in February of 2005; however, the letter was misfiled  and therefore it “escaped him.”

Vincent Tyrone Brown was not reinstated to the Florida Bar until December 6, 2005; however, he had been practicing law without a license for nearly a year.

Because of these violations, the Florida Supreme Court recommended to the Florida Bar’s Board of Governors that he be “found guilty of misconduct justifying disciplinary measures,” including a public reprimand, a review by the Law Office Management Assistance Program, and payment of Florida Bar costs in the amount of $1,476.65.

This is the same City Attorney Vincent Tyrone Brown who assisted the FBI in coordinating “grand jury subpoenas for 20 current and former Opa-locka government employees,” and then emailed “a confidential witness list to every government employee — more than 180,” according to the Miami Herald.

Although he claimed this was done accidentally,  two employees filed complaints against the City Attorney with the Florida Bar and the Florida Ethics Commission for his misconduct.

Furthermore, the Herald reported:

In the complaints filed last week, both employees assert that Brown’s disclosure of the confidential grand jury list was “intentional” and placed them and other witnesses in “danger” — at “risk” of “retaliation and intimidation” by targets of the FBI investigation focusing on suspected contract kickbacks and extortion schemes.

Moreover, they say Brown has “conflicts of interest” as the city attorney, claiming he is advising grand jury witnesses who began testifying this month as well as several senior Opa-locka officials who are expected to be defendants in the looming indictment.

The two employees also claim Brown advised them and other grand jury witnesses that they have “immunity,” which they have learned is “erroneous.”

On May 18, 2017, the Miami Herald also revealed that City Attorney Vincent T. Brown was retained by Yvette Harrell, his former Deputy City Attorney, to represent her in a personal lawsuit days after she was hired as the City Manager in August of 2016.  Neither of them publicly disclosed their agreement, which was a potential conflict of interest.  The Herald raised “a fundamental question: Does an ethical issue arise when the city attorney represents the city manager in a personal lawsuit?”

Brown’s own attorney, of course, claimed there was no “conflict of interest” since Harrell’s lawsuit was unrelated to city business.  He did, however, refuse to say if Harrell paid Brown for his legal services.

Seems legit, no?

Then again, this is a city lawyer who also has a bad habit of “misfiling”  documents and “accidentally”  sending email blasts to the wrong people, so it’s quite possible he “forgot”  to send her a bill.

November’s election should provide some much needed relief, if only to finally be rid of Myra Taylor.

Unfortunately, unless one or more quality individuals step up and file to run for office by noon tomorrow, August 17, 2018, it’s highly likely that Opa-locka voters will merely be recycling the same roster of corruptocrats to represent them at City Hall.

Weary and battle-scarred Opa-locka residents deserve so much better.

Stephanie