This past March 4, the Miami-Dade County Inspector General's Office announced it had nailed a county vendor falsifying his insurance paperwork in order to get a county contract. Thanks to the inspector general's investigation, the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office was able to charge Eddy Joe Allen Sr. with eight counts of forgery.
According to Inspector General Chris Mazzella's memo to Mayor Carlos Alvarez and the thirteen county commissioners, Allen forged insurance certificates for his company After Hours Cleaning Services so that it could obtain janitorial contracts from the county. Mazzella's investigators found that Allen did not have the required insurance to get the contract and that the information on his insurance documents from last year, 2007 and 2006 were fake. Allen's company had received over $400,000 from the county since 1999.
Now, I really admire and respect the work Mazzella and his crew of sleuths do for Miami-Dade taxpayers. But it's been a while since the former G-man took down one of the big fish in the cesspool that is county government. You have to go back to 2002 when the inspector general's office took out then County Commissioner Miriam Alonso. She was arrested on felony charges for looting her campaign accounts in 1998 and 1999 and then trying to cover up her crimes. She plead guilty in 2006.
Since then, Mazzella has not found a single piece of dirt on any county commissioner or the mayor even though he's sent a lot of their friends to jail. Makes me wonder if the county's top watchdog is taking a hands-off approach with Miami-Dade's elected officials. After all, Mayor Carlos Alvarez and the 13 county commissioners control Mazzella's budget. And those who control the purse strings control what gets investigated.
