by Carl Hiaasen
Call it Carlos' One-Stop Roofing—the guy who lays your shingles also inspects the job. For customers in a hurry, it was a nifty arrangement:
Valdes: I'm all done with your roof, Mrs. Smith.
Customer: Fantastic, Carlos … oh, but now I'll have to wait weeks for those chowderheads at the building department to come out for an inspection.
Valdes: No, you won't, Mrs. Smith. See, I'm also a building inspector! Let me climb up there right now and check it out.
Customer (elated): Oh, Carlos, you think of everything!
Imagine the relief of home builders and owners, who no longer had to fret about their roofs passing muster. Suddenly it was a done deal.
If Valdes didn't personally do the inspecting, his co-workers did. According to county records, fellow inspectors once flunked a Valdes roof—then Valdes himself signed off on the final papers, saying the problem was fixed.
Quick and efficient. Isn't that what we all want from local government?
Unfortunately, there's some silly rule against Dade building inspectors part-timing as builders. Valdes has been suspended with pay while an investigation is conducted. That's the price of being an innovator.
Anyone who's tried to get a house built or repaired in South Florida since the big hurricane knows how exasperating it can be. Often there are long delays between inspections, because building departments are so short-staffed and overworked.
The Valdes approach was a marvel of simplicity: We build it, we approve it.
It's the sort of idea that would appeal to some Metro-Dade commissioners, who seem primed to cave in to industry pressure and roll back post-Andrew reforms.
Heck, go for broke. Why not deputize all contractors as county building inspectors?
You'd save lots of time and paperwork. You'd save wear-and-tear on county vehicles. And you'd save a fortune on ladders, because builders usually provide their own.
Last, but not least, you'd eliminate the corruption problem. Under the Valdes system, there'd be little reason for unseemly cash payoffs.
Honest builders would do honest inspections. As for the crooked builders, whom would they bribe—themselves? That seems unlikely, even in Miami.
To be sure, a one-stop permit-and-inspection program would have drawbacks. A careless contractor probably isn't the best qualified to say whether his construction methods are sturdy or not.
But look on the flip side. After the next hurricane hits, we'll know precisely who's competent and who isn't. Builders won't be able to blame inspectors, and inspectors won't be able to blame builders … because they'll be one and the same.
It'll be so darn simple that maybe, just maybe, the state attorney might be able to indict some of them.
Cyberfraud simplifies corruption
August 9, 1997
No anniversary of Hurricane Andrew would be complete without a scandal in Dade County's building department. This time it's cyber-corruption.
Somebody logged onto the master computer and typed in phony inspection approvals for hundreds of construction projects. Many homes and buildings might need to be reinspected and repaired.
In some cases, roofs that flunked repeated on-site inspections were mysteriously approved later, by computer. Most entries were traced through a password to a former building department clerk, Pablo Prieto, who denies any wrongdoing.
Whoever the phantom hacker was, the implications of his scheme are far-reaching for development in South Florida. If computerized corruption is perfected, it will revolutionize bribery as we know it in municipal building departments.
The customary method is an all-too-familiar charade. A crooked inspector gets into a county truck, drives out to a construction job, maybe even climbs up on the actual roof for a minute or so, if it's not too hot.
Afterward, resting in the air-conditioned comfort of the truck, the inspector might find a $100 bill tucked under the visor, or tickets to a Dolphins game on the seat. That's when he writes up his report, approving the roof as sturdy and up to code.
As graft goes, it's fairly uncomplicated. However, it's also time-consuming, wasteful and increasingly risky.
Computers could streamline the whole corruption process from start to finish, paradoxically benefiting taxpayers as well as dishonest builders.
If a bad roof can be "fixed" with a few surreptitious strokes on a keyboard, there's no point in sending a shady inspector to a site. Think of the money the county would save in one year on gasoline, tolls and wear-and-tear on its vehicles. Think of what it would save on stepladders.
In fact, if the chore of falsifying building records can be handled more efficiently by cybersavvy clerks, it renders crooked inspections obsolete. Why even bother?
For an unscrupulous builder, computers would take the guesswork and seedy melodrama out of bribery. Never again would you be made to wait around all day in the blazing sun for a roof inspector, in the hopes he was one of those who would take a payoff. Most won't.
Imagine a day in the not-so-distant future when all you do is call the building department and speak to your friendly hacker-on-the-payroll. He pulls up your company's file, taps a few words on the screen and, presto!—all your roofs are instantly inspected and approved.
Before the lid blew off at Dade's building department, cybercorruption was spreading rapidly. Investigators are examining 3,000 cases for clues of electronic tampering, and there are plenty.
For instance, the county's computer lists 18 air-conditioning jobs inspected on a Saturday. The only problem is, air-conditioning inspectors don't work on Saturdays.
If the hackers weren't especially careful, they probably knew they didn't need to be. Officials who uncovered the fraud waited more than a year before notifying the police.
With that kind of ragged oversight, and some clever software, it's conceivable that an entire subdivision could be cleared, built, sold and occupied without a single legitimate inspector setting foot on the property.
The people who bought homes there would never find out the truth, unless a hurricane came and blew off their roofs and knocked down their walls.
In which event, Dade building officials better pray the storm is big enough to knock out the computer's memory, too. That's the one thing that could byte them where it counts.
Storms ahead if construction bill is passed
April 27, 1997
With only five weeks to hurricane season, the Legislature has taken the first step toward weakening some important post-Andrew construction reforms.
The House has given preliminary approval to a mind-boggling law that would prohibit local governments from imposing some building rules stricter than those required by the state.
They ought to call it the Roofers-from-Hell Relief Act.
It's aimed largely at Dade County, which had (for obvious reasons) imposed tougher regulations for overseeing construction.
Dade had taken the radical position that people who put houses together should know what they're doing, or have a supervisor who does. For instance, the county now requires one licensed journeyman for every three unlicensed workers on a job.
Builders didn't like the rule, so they enlisted two friendly politicians to shoot it down—Sen. Fred Dudley of Fort Myers and Rep. Carlos Lacasa of Miami.
Remember those names the next time you open your homeowner's insurance and wonder why the premium is so high.
Perhaps Lacasa and Dudley didn't read the Dade grand jury's report on Hurricane Andrew, but you can bet State Farm did. Among the panel's recommendations were stiffer qualifications for construction workers, to help weed out incompetents.
Lacasa says Dade's journeyman rule is burdensome and unnecessary, because plumbers and electricians—the trades most affected by it—weren't responsible for buildings blown apart during Hurricane Andrew.
He's right, but those who were responsible should be equally tickled by Lacasa and Dudley's legislation. If it passes, local communities will find it hard, if not impossible, to indepen
dently crack down on unqualified roofers, masons and carpenters.
That's because the proposed law would block Dade and other counties from adopting any "professional qualification requirements relating to contractors or their work force … "
Parroting industry lobbyists, Lacasa blames a flawed code—not crummy construction—for Andrew's devastation. This guy should be a poster boy for short-term memory loss syndrome.
Does the name Country Walk ring a bell? Among the rubble of that development was ample evidence of slipshod and reckless work—trusses without braces, braces without nails, and more.
In fact, serious construction mistakes were documented at virtually every subdivision that had been leveled by the storm. While the building code wasn't perfect, at least it called for roofs to be strapped securely to houses—an inconvenience, apparently, for a few builders.
So widespread was the problem of bungled workmanship that hundreds of Dade homeowners sued, and some of the area's largest developers agreed to settle out of court.
None of this escaped the notice of insurance companies, which had taken a $16 billion hit from the 1992 hurricane. Some firms pulled out of Florida, and those that stayed raised their property rates astronomically.
Dade's building reforms came after lengthy public hearings with plenty of expert testimony. Even the politicians seemed to understand that a stronger, better enforced code not only would save lives and property, it could lead to lower insurance rates.
Don't get your hopes up now. Lobbyists for the home-building industry are pushing Metro to roll back some of the post-Andrew changes, and to weaken the code enforcement office.
Similar forces are behind the foolish Lacasa-Dudley bill. How dare Dade try to protect people from construction rip-offs! That's a job for the Legislature.
Which clearly needs some firsthand experience with hurricanes. On the eve of a new season, we can only hope.
Tax Dollars at Work
Dade taking furniture flap sitting down
January 27, 1986
A true news item: In only five months, Dade County Manager Merrett Stierheim and his successor, Sergio Pereira, spent $63,674 furnishing the same office twice.
Harry Hassock, Dade County's newly appointed Curator of Fine Furniture, was steamed.
"Why do you people keep picking on us?" he screeched, waving the newspaper.
I could barely see the man over his teakwood desk, which was nine feet high and tastefully trimmed with polished emeralds.
"Mr. Hassock, we're not picking on anyone," I shouted up to him. "It's just that the taxpayers are getting upset. They see Mr. Pereira running all over town preaching for a sales tax hike and warning that Metro is going broke. It's hard to take him too seriously after he spends $9,000 on a sofa."
"The man needs a place to nap!" Harry said, peremptorily.
"But for that kind of money you could feed and house a homeless child for a year."
Harry Hassock winced. "Please, we're talking leather here. The finest leather from the finest cows in Argentina. And get your notebook off of there—that's a $9,999 coffee table!"
In exasperation I said, "One more time, explain to me why Sergio needed to buy an expensive round desk instead of keeping Merrett's expensive rectangular one."
"Because there was chewing gum stuck under all the drawers," Harry said. "Besides, Sergio is a round thinker. You can't put a round thinker at a rectangular desk—it would be disaster. Hey, what's that crud in my ashtray?"
"Looks like ashes," I said.
"Ashes! Who'd dump ashes in a beveled diamond ashtray? Have you any idea what that ashtray cost?"
"Probably $9,999."
Harry Hassock eyed me suspiciously. "How did you know?"
"Wild guess," I replied. "Sergio's desk set cost nine grand. So did his credenza. All this stuff seems to run about nine grand. Why is that?"
"Because," Harry said, dropping his voice to a sly whisper, "if it cost any more, the Metro Commission would have to vote on it. In public, for God's sake—can you imagine?"
"Talk about problems."
"You bet your burlwood bookcase," Harry said. "To dodge that silly $10,000 rule, I advise county bigwigs to buy their fine furniture in $9,000 pieces. In fact, we have a little saying around here: Nine is fine, ten is trouble."
"Seems pretty sneaky," I said.
Harry Hassock rolled his eyes. "Next thing, you'll be asking why Sergio doesn't pay for this stuff out of his own pocket."
"Why not? He makes $99,500 a year."
Harry sighed impatiently. "What the public fails to understand is that in order for government to function smoothly, it must function in comfort. Comfort requires fine furniture."
Harry climbed off his desk, descended a rosewood stepladder and sat next to me on a $9,999 ottoman. "The more comfortable your government is, the more efficient it will be," he said earnestly. "Simply stated: Government needs a soft place to put its tush."
Somewhere on his colossal desk a magnesium telephone began to ring. Harry scrambled up and answered it.
"Curator of Fine Furniture," he said. "Yes—oh hello, Mr. Manager. Thanks, I knew you'd like it. What! Who said that? Well, it's not Day-Glo marble and you tell 'em that's not the least bit funny."
As Harry spoke, he expertly squirted a can of Lemon Pledge at a thumb smudge on his mink-lined credenza.
"But, Sergio, what's wrong with the desk chair you've got? Hmmmm. I see." Harry cupped a hand over the phone and asked me to step out of the office. "Just for a second," he whispered, "and try not to drag your shoes on the Burmese carpet."
Harry Hassock went back to his phone call. "A throne?" I heard him say. "What kind of throne are we talking about, Sergio?"
Metromover's new legs would be very shaky
July 2, 1986
The same wizards who gave us Metrorail now want to spend $240 million to expand the peoplemover to both ends of downtown Miami.
They foresee a day when the cute little tram is packed to the gills with commuters and shoppers. They foresee a time in the next century when future Dade Countians will look back and marvel at what visionaries we were.
More probably, they will look back and wonder: What kind of mushrooms were those folks eating?
The logic of taking an underutilized rail system and making it bigger is baffling, to put it kindly. Since the collective memory of the political establishment seems so short, let's re-examine Dade's sterling record of mass transit (using the term loosely).
Born of the best intentions, Metrorail is a proven Megaturkey. "The laughingstock of the nation," says Harvard transportation expert Jose Gomez-Ibanez. Building it cost $250 million more than promised; operating it now threatens to break the county budget. The ridership, though improving, remains a pitiful one-seventh of projections.
It's a clean, fast system but—for a variety of reasons—commuters avoid it in droves. This year taxpayers spent $32 million running a train for a measly 14,000 daily two-way riders.
If Metrorail were a horse, it would be shot.
Enter the Metromover, inaugurated to run a loop through downtown Miami and boost (we were promised) Metrorail's popularity. It's an adorable toy, except for one problem: Only 4,500 of 60,000 downtown workers are riding the darn thing.
You'd think we'd learn our lesson. Think again. Rep. William Lehman (normally a rational man), the Metro commission and downtown property owners (surprise!) love the idea of extending the Metromover south to Brickell Avenue and north to the Omni Mall.
What we now have is a government fully mobilized to turn disaster into catastrophe.
If you were a merchant and somebody offered to run a spiffy tram to your doorstep, wouldn't you say yes? Of course you would, especially if the state, the city and the feds were sucking up 90 percent of the tab. What's another $240 million when we've already spent four times that much on Metrorail?
Forget the fact that our buses are falling to pieces. Forget the fact that routes from needy neighborhoods have
been cut back, thanks partly to Metrorail's huge deficits.
The trouble with the Metromover is that it benefits the downtown lunch crowd more than the people who truly need mass transit. It will make it convenient for some of us to hop a tram from the office to the Tofutti parlor, but meanwhile thousands need reliable transportation from their neighborhoods to their jobs.
In a strategic move to derail the Metromover expansion, the head of the U.S. Urban Mass Transit Administration, Ralph Stanley, said last week he would be willing to let Dade County spend its Metromover funds on buses.
It's an unprecedented offer, and a smart one. Buses are the first crucial link of any urban transit system; almost seven times as many people ride them as ride Metrorail. The $102 million already set aside for the Metro-mover extension is enough for 728 buses, a whole new fleet. This would be a radical step in the county's transportation saga—spending money on something people would actually use.
In defense of the dream, Metromover's proponents say the new downtown legs are necessary to meet the needs of future growth. Planners predict 25,000 peoplemover riders by the year 2000.
Only two things are certain about such predictions: If it's the cost, they underestimate. If it's the ridership, they overestimate.
They've never been right. They've never even been close.
But let's say this time they are. Twenty-five thousand riders for $240 million—this is a bargain? Maybe so, if you own a bank on Brickell Avenue; maybe not, if you're standing on a hot street corner, hoping for a bus, any bus, that runs on time.
Paint Rosario nattily naive, fiscally fickle
February 2, 1987
This week's Most Frighteningly Dumb True Quote conies from Miami City Commissioner Rosario Kennedy, when informed that it had cost $111,549.71 to renovate her office at City Hall:
"Nobody told me anything about a budget. I was not involved in it at all. I was involved in the colors."
