After 40 years, Joe Carollo, Miami’s biggest bully, is finally held accountable | Opinion
Commissioner Joe Carollo’s antics have finally caught up with him after 40 years in Miami politics. And it came with a big price tag: A jury ordered him to pay $63.5 million to two Little Havana businessmen who accused him of retaliation in federal court.
Thursday, the six-member Broward County jury found that Carollo is liable for violating the First Amendment rights of William Fuller and Martin Pinilla by relentlessly trying to hurt their business interests after they supported his election opponent in 2017.
This verdict is an overdue reckoning for a commissioner who has acted as if he’s beholden to no one — least of all Miami residents — and above any norms of decorum. Carollo’s demeanor and vindictiveness have for too long hijacked the smooth running of Miami’s City Commission, making some other elected officials, civil servants and everyday residents who come to speak at commission meetings afraid to cross him.
Now that the legal system has held him accountable, who will do the same in Miami’s toxic political world? This is a city that wants to be a hub of tech innovation, but whose politics are still run by a good ol’ boys club.
Will other commissioners have the courage to stop Carollo from belittling citizens or monopolizing city business as he did when he orchestrated the firing of Police Chief Art Acevedo in a series of meetings that included video displaying Acevedo’s crotch area in a tight Elvis costume?
A lot will depend on how Carollo takes this loss — and he’s all but sure to appeal the verdict. Will he learn a lesson or continue to act as if the lawsuit was a grand conspiracy against him as he declared in court? Likely the latter.
The city has picked up the tab for his legal fees, which amounted to nearly $2 million before his trial even started in April, the Herald reported. The Herald Editorial Board asked the city on Thursday whether taxpayers would also be responsible for paying for the damages the jury ordered. We didn’t get an answer to the question. Instead, a spokeswoman said in an email that there were issues during the trial and that the city “anticipates that Commissioner Carollo will be exercising (and should exercise) full appellate rights, as provided for and protected under the American judicial system.”
Carollo has dismissed criticism and negative stories for most of his career. If accountability doesn’t hit his own pocket, will he ever truly be held accountable? That’s a question the other four Miami commissioners — tasked with safeguarding taxpayer dollars — should be asking.
Abuse of power
Carollo and the city of Miami have long been intertwined. He first made a political splash in 1979 as a young Miami commissioner. Ever since, Carollo has been a powerful, and mercurial, politician. In 2001, then-Mayor Carollo was arrested, accused of throwing a cardboard tea box at his then-wife during an argument. The charges were eventually dropped.
He’s been in and out of politics, losing another run for mayor before he was reelected to the Miami Commission in 2017, which planted the seeds for the federal civil case against him.
Fuller and Pinilla’s lawsuit argued Carollo weaponized the city’s code enforcement against them after they exercised their right to free speech by supporting his election opponent, Alfie Leon. Lawyers representing the businessmen painted a damning picture of a slighted politician so vindictive and fixated on ruining their livelihoods he went to great lengths to shut down their businesses and those of their associates.
Carollo’s lawyers tried to convince jurors that Fuller and Pinilla wanted to operate their businesses with disregard for the rules and zeroed in on work performed at their properties without proper permits. They argued that Carollo was simply doing his job by protecting Little Havana residents, and the plaintiffs were trying to intimidate him by filing the lawsuit. Jurors didn’t buy it, and they were right to be skeptical.
Evidence and testimony from witnesses showed Carollo was relentless in his vendetta. Many, among them former Miami police chiefs, testified they were pressured to target Fuller and Pinilla’s business interests and properties. One of them said he was asked to measure the distance from the front door of one of the properties to a neighboring church in hopes the city could pull the club’s liquor license. A valet service operator testified Carollo told him, “I am the law.” His business, too, suffered — the target of 36 inspections in one month — because it was attached to Fuller’s Calle Ocho nightclub Ball & Chain, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyer.
You don’t want Carollo as an enemy, is what many of those who deal with him say. It took an out-of-town jury, protected by the law, to point out what we have known for years: Carollo’s political style damages Miami, its residents and its administration. It’s time for more people, in and outside City Hall, to call him on it — publicly.
