MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

HOW TO SAY YES TO FREE TICKETS

By David Arthur Walters THE MIAMI MIRROR South BeachOctober 21, 2011. According to an October 20 Miami Herald report filed by Miami Beach beat reporter David Smiley, the Florida State Attorneys office will not bring criminal charges against Miami Beach City Manager Jorge Gonzalez and his right-hand assistant Hilda Fernandez for demanding 26 tickets to every New World Center event plus $10,000 in tickets to the symphonys gala fundraising event in return for making a $15 million reimbursement grant. The demand was reportedly made by Mr. Fernandez upon Neisen Kasdin, the New World Symphonys chairman, who subsequently initiated the complaint. He declined to discuss the closing of the investigation with the Herald, stating that the issue had been worked out with the city. The Herald reported that Chief Assistant State Attorney Jose J. Arrojos memo states that a law prohibiting officials from soliciting or demanding any gift may have been violated, but he declined to prosecute the case because proof of criminal intent would be improbable given the fact that a longstanding city policy of obtaining tickets for distribution had been condoned in 1992 by the Florida Commission on Ethics, and that the City of Miami Beach had resolved a year later than such tickets were for distribution to the needy. Apparently, the rulings of ethics commissions and resolutions by city commissions trump criminal laws in the State of Florida. Whatever the laws are, they might not be enforced for one reason or the other. We know that violation of some laws is virtually traditional in Miami Beach; ordinances are even passed to please people knowing they will never be enforced. And what is legal may not be moral. The complicated laws and ethical regulations are all too often designed to condone and advance the behavior of the power elite; whether or not what is done is moral is another matter. It appears that the moral of this story would be that it would be a good thing for the city to get tickets from organizations it does business with in order to distribute those tickets to the needy. Of course it would be immoral for city officials to distribute them for personal benefit; as favors to friends and relatives, to the electorate to get votes, etc. Anyone with interested in reading Mr. Smileys informative report would wonder how Mr. Kasdin and Mr. Fernandez had worked out the free ticket issue and why Mr. Kasdin did not want to discuss it. At least the reader would want to know if any tickets had been received by the city and to whom those tickets were distributed. The report states that, In return for the citys help, the symphony
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MIAMI MIRROR TRUE REFLECTIONS

committed to providing a public benefit, such as discounts for city residents And, Miami Beach released the $15 million grant to the symphony in March without receiving any promise of tickets. All right: there was no promise of free tickets although discounted tickets were promised. The amount of the discounts or who would receive the discounts was not reported. Most importantly, whether promised or not, were any free tickets actually obtained, and handed out? I asked Mr. Smiley for clarification, noting that I recalled previous reports, perhaps by the SunPost, about free tickets being handed out; he responded: The portions of the story you pulled out speak for themselves. In retrospect, I think Mr. Smiley was being coy, i.e. artfully demure. He might have better said that he simply did not know, and had reported only on what he knew. On the other hand, Jorge Gonzalez answer to our question was quite clear: No tickets were received as public benefits from the NWS and therefore no tickets were ever distributed to anyone by my office. Mr. Smileys curt reply seemed to dovetail with my opinion that his reporting on Miami Beach often favors the citys authorities; without those sources, his reports would be of less value to residents interested in the conduct of the powers-that-be. However, it would be unfair to apply that opinion in this matter. I have discovered his March 16 exhaustive expose of ticket handling in the archives, entitled, Miami Beach officials net thousands of free tickets. Many thousands of dollars worth of free tickets are coming in for all sorts of events. The free-ticket situation as reported by Mr. Smiley, who looked into the city records and interviewed officials, is outrageous. But let us cut to the chase: Whether or not the tickets indeed reach the public isnt documented. Assistant City Manager Hilda Fernandez tracks only the tickets that come in, what theyre worth and who signs for them. Whether they are used, and by whom, isnt normally included in the citys records. Fernandez, who also receives tickets and writes memos when she returns them, said its up to commissioners whether the practice should continue. Getting back to the moral of the story, it is a good thing to get free tickets and give them to needy people. I myself need a free ticket to something nice but was dissuaded by an insider from asking for one with, Fat chance that you will never get a free ticket to anything out of the City Manager. We should know who the needy people are, or at least know the name of the organization. All other tickets might be randomly distributed to residents who put their names in the box for the periodic drawings. Then we can say Yes to free tickets. # #

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