Last week Mayor Alex Penelas gave his favorite county manager a hearty pat on the back. “This is a good, tangible example of what I’ve been saying for a long time — that the manager’s doing a good job,” Penelas told the Herald. “I don’t think Steve is getting the…
By its very nature, the county’s Emergency Operations Center is a tense place. Activated in times of crisis, the EOC becomes the nerve center of local government, the fulcrum of decision-making for the state’s most populous county. And so as Hurricane Michelle moved north toward Cuba and possibly South Florida,…
A few weeks ago a county hall insider mentioned to me that he had heard about an interesting memo written by Tom David, executive assistant county manager. David is new to Miami-Dade government, brought in by County Manager Steve Shiver seven months ago to be his right-hand man. Since his…
Investigators on the trail of Miami-Dade County Commissioner Miriam Alonso have uncovered a dizzying array of front groups and secret bank accounts apparently used by Alonso to generate and then hide a private slush fund. Prosecutors and police discovered the existence of these bank accounts while researching Alonso’s connection to…
Close to HomeThey met at Victory Hospital back in August 1962. My mother had just given birth to me, but owing to problems during the delivery, she needed to be hospitalized for more than a week after I was born. One of her roommates was Rita Grady, who was expecting…
The condominium was ideal. Located on the twelfth floor, overlooking the ocean, it was in the heart of Miami Beach at 5701 Collins Ave. Two bedrooms and two baths, a cozy 825 square feet of space in a building that came with its own restaurant, fitness center, and beauty parlor…
Miriam Alonso, the Miami-Dade County Commissioner whose politics are as shrill as her voice, is under criminal investigation for allegedly misusing campaign contributions collected during her successful 1998 run for re-election. The investigation is being conducted by the public-corruption unit of the Miami-Dade Police Department. Sources close to the inquiry…
This past July County Manager Steve Shiver rejected the nearly unanimous recommendation of a special review committee and decided that an $8.8 million computer software contract should go to a company whose lobbyist is a long-time supporter of Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas. The lobbyist, Rodney Barreto, also contributed to Shiver’s…
Maybe Sen. Bill Nelson spent too much time in space. After all, scientists believe that prolonged exposure to zero gravity can disturb a person’s cognitive abilities. That’s pretty much the only explanation I can find for Nelson’s comments last month regarding Florida’s governor’s race. Holding court in his office, the…
Knight Ridder was formed in 1974, when Knight Newspapers joined with Ridder Publications. The Knight company had been founded in 1903, when Charles Landon Knight, an attorney, bought the Akron Beacon Journal and made himself editor of the paper. When he died in 1933, he left the paper to his…
No one is more surprised by Tom Fiedler’s appointment as the new executive editor of the Miami Herald than Tom Fiedler. The paper’s publisher, Alberto Ibargüen, first approached him in June, as Fiedler was preparing for a trip to South America. Ibargüen told Fiedler the Herald’s executive editor, Martin Baron,…
While he was still mayor of Homestead, Steve Shiver used the city’s Tallahassee lobbyist to help one of his friends with a petition for executive clemency that was pending before the governor and the Florida cabinet. Shiver’s pal, William Chaney, had been convicted in the mid-Eighties for conspiring to import…
As a member of the Homestead City Council, and then later as mayor, Steve Shiver accepted three all-expense-paid trips from the Community Bank of Florida. Despite the apparent conflict created by the fact that Community Bank regularly does business with the city, Shiver last week defended the excursions. “I took…
Robert Nachlinger is angry. “I’ve invested sixteen years in this community,” he tells me. “I have a reputation that I built up, and Steve Shiver is trying to destroy it. I’ve worked too damn long to have Steve Shiver decide he is going to pick me as his scapegoat to…
Last week Katy Sorenson waited patiently for her item on the commission agenda to be called: a report from County Manager Steve Shiver on the future of Homestead Air Force Base. A commissioner for the past seven years, Sorenson is the board’s leading critic of Miami-Dade’s effort to put a…
Nobody was happier to hear that Janet Reno was considering a run for governor than Will Ferrell, the Saturday Night Live cast member who parodies Reno on the show. “My first reaction was that this couldn’t be greater news,” he told me last week. “The Dance Party will live now.”…
After spending eight years in Washington as U.S. Attorney General, Janet Reno was telling everyone who would listen that her only plans were to kayak Florida’s waterways and travel around the nation in her pickup truck. And then, two months ago, her friend Hugh A. Westbrook called and invited her…
For more than two months, Miami-Dade County Manager Steve Shiver has assured commissioners that suing the federal government over its refusal to permit Homestead Air Force Base to be developed as a commercial airport would not adversely affect the county’s chances of taking title to the airport even if the…
Nobody knows better than Homestead Mayor Roscoe Warren how badly Steve Shiver has bungled his first two months as county manager. During a March 8 county commission meeting, Shiver sought to undermine the Homestead City Council by informing commissioners they should disregard a city resolution regarding Homestead Air Force Base…
Steve Shiver grew up in a family where he was made to feel he could do no wrong. He was his mother’s pride and joy, and the one chosen not only to carry his father’s name but also to follow in his political footsteps. Roy Stephen Shiver — known to…
Mayco Villafaña is a decent man who has been communications director for Miami-Dade County for the past two and a half years. “Mayco always personified integrity and honesty when he worked for me,” says former County Manager Merrett Stierheim, who also worked with Villafaña for years at the Greater Miami…
As the new county manager, Steve Shiver already has two strikes against him. Strike one: The 34-year-old former mayor of Homestead has neither the qualifications nor the experience to manage a four-billion-dollar enterprise as diverse and complicated as Miami-Dade County. Only his arrogance deludes him into believing he’s worthy of…
