Transcript of #BecauseMiami: Cover Up Cowboys New

Hey, Roy. Yes? I'm wondering, would you ever run for office? No. I'm glad you took a moment to think about it. Too many skeletons in the closet for that one. Is that right? Is it? We just learned a little bit too much about you. Did you have to take that moment to think, okay, what's the worst thing someone could say about me or know about me? Did you do that exercise in your head that quickly? Yep. I don't believe that. I feel like you've thought of running for like, you know, I don't know, a class president. No, I was— I ran for class president my senior year. I did. I won by about, I think, 75% of the vote I think I obtained. Yeah, it was really, really worth it. The thing that they don't tell you about that is that like 10 years later you're like responsible for the class reunions. So it's like a lifetime job. Oh, I'm getting those messages right now. Yeah, as the president of the senior class. And I really I think they can impeach me at this point because I'm— it's sheer dereliction of duty. But I thought maybe you'd run for prime minister of Miramar or whatever they call it.

I don't know what the position is. I haven't read the city charter in Miramar. No, but no, you never thought of running? You never been so pissed with like just, I don't know, your trash pickup, painting lines on the street, just something that just got your goat where you're like, you know what, I should run and I should stop complaining and I should start doing something about it? No, I'll just leave that up to Luther Campbell. That's right, Luke is right. Have we had him on since he started? No, we had him on when he was thinking about running like 2 years ago, but we haven't had him on since he actually— well, we had him on a couple months ago, right? But not about— but that was before he officially dove in and had his candidacy up there. And yeah, so I'm always curious about this, why people decide to run for office, particularly when they're young, they're young parents, It's no holiday. Happy Purim. Richard LaMondin is an environmental entrepreneur. He is also a candidate for Florida State Senate in District 38. He is running against Republican incumbent Alexis Kolotioud, a name that may mean something to people who listen to some of the podcasts on this network.

Richard, no relation to Tony Kolotioud, right?

I believe there is relation.

Is there? What is that relation?

I've been informed recently that they are siblings.

Oh, no kidding.

How about that?

Yeah, how about that?

Did you know that, Roy? Yes. Richard, let's get into it. Why are you, why are you doing this? You're a young guy, as I said earlier. I think you have a relatively young kid. Like, now seems like a really bad time in your life and your child's life and your marriage to do this. So why?

Yeah, you have to be a little bit psychopathic.

I gotta tell you, for the record, I live in this district, so I'm gonna be voting in this race. I haven't made any decision yet, but I will say I appreciate that honesty. Yeah, about your own psychological frailty in entering this race.

The number one question I've gotten since I first informed my friends and people who know me about running has been like, seriously, why would you want to do that? That's honestly what's part of what's messed up with our system.

Right, is that people think there has to be something wrong with you in order to make this decision. Yeah, is there something wrong with you?

Not that I'm aware of, but you'll have to bring my wife on for that.

Absolutely. No, I'd love that.

Um, but no, really, I would.

That's what we should start doing. Forget the candidates, we start interviewing the wives. I can't wait to get Gabella's wife on here. Gabella's Gone Wild. Holy moly. So tell me, what was the threshold here for you?

Uh, well, I'm born and raised here in Miami. Uh, for the last 13 years, I've built a company called EcoFi that fights the climate crisis by upgrading old buildings to save energy and water. Uh, I did that because 13 years ago I felt that we weren't doing enough to make our environment more sustainable. I saw that businesses were not getting into it, and I did something really sexy. I learned how to change a toilet to save water bills, because 20% of all toilets are leaking. So Billy, just like how politics is not sexy, I promise you neither is going in your bathroom and swapping out your toilet.

But that's interesting though. We have a lot of old buildings down here, a lot of old infrastructure. Is that a problem? Like leaky pipes? Like, you know, obviously older buildings had different kind of showerheads that were a little more aggressive. So is there a lot of water waste in older buildings that are—

we waste as a country, waste a trillion gallons of water every year just on water waste, not including leaks. I talk about 20% of all toilets leak here in, in South Florida. We obviously have the aquifer right beneath us and we're dealing with saltwater intrusion. We're dealing with cooling canals out at Turkey Point that they never quite lined properly. So there's always salt in our drinking water. Uh, we have a huge amount of problems, but we built the company from my brother and I going door to door to nationwide. across the country. So we, we operate in pretty much all markets across the US. They all have different problems, but yeah.

So accustomed to dealing with shit all day, uh, in the tour. And, and so that perhaps suits you for politics, particularly in the state of Florida. Why this race?

So I have a 4-year-old son now. As you mentioned, I am a father. And the one thing that caused me to get into politics is the fact that when I had him, I started thinking about what's the world going to be like when he gets older. and fact, it's going to suck.

Spoiler alert. Sorry, it's going to suck.

I'm an optimist at heart. I think it doesn't have to suck, but it's trending towards sucking. And, and I've looked around. I've, I've seen the kind of dysfunction that's happened from local government all the way up to D.C. And I've tried to get Democrats getting their ass kicked in elections because they can't connect with voters in the way to win.

Good at it, though, Richard.

Yes.

So good at losing the Democrats.

It's, it's been a deep frustration of mine for a long time. And after Trump won the 2024 election, I kind of felt the call, and I thought that if not now, then when. Uh, initially I was running for the US Congress against Maria Salazar, and I switched over a few months ago to run for the state Senate simply because there's just absolutely absurd amounts of corruption happening there, whether it's giving away Miami Dade College land for the Trump Hotel and Casino, whether it's over almost a billion dollars to put Alligator Alcatraz out in the Everglades, naming the Palm Beach Airport after the president. When he gets to profit off the trademark, and on and on and on. And so the fact of the matter is we don't have people solving the issues up there, and I got sick and tired of it.

And this will give you opportunity to spend less time with your family, so there's that. I'm reminded when Urban Meyer left the University of Florida, he said to spend more time with his family, and then like almost immediately got that job with Ohio State. I presume he was gonna make a statement, so now I can spend less time with my family. I don't know, I wouldn't want to miss my 4-year-old kid's life spending any amount of time in Tallahassee. Not that lawmakers spend a lot of time in Tallahassee, to be fair. It's not like Congress, which is It's a kind of in session. It's right. It's very much a part-time job. But to that end, Republicans have a super majority. The Democrats have been a nonentity in the state of Florida. We've had single-party rule since the turn of the century. 1999, Jeb Bush is elected. I've been calling the Democrats for the last— I mean, more than a quarter century— the Washington Generals of politics. They are effectively controlled opposition that have to go up to Tallahassee, either get nothing done or wheel and deal with some of the worst people and politicians in the state who are literally You can't really tell us we have no money to do anything for schools or for the elderly or for children or for the infirm or the sick, but we have $1 billion to light on fire to build a concentration camp in the Everglades or give away a $300+ million piece of property to a billionaire real estate developer like the president.

So a lot of disingenuousness. So why would you want to be a Democrat, assuming you win? Why would you want to be a Democrat in the state Senate in Tallahassee?

Well, the important thing to know is that this seat actually breaks that supermajority you talked about. Matters is unfortunately in the minority, your first job is to make bad bills better, right? It's not very sexy, right? But there's so many insane bills, whether if it's— or actions that they are taking, whether if it's the fact that they demolish that crosswalk in Miami Beach, or whether the fact that, you know, there's crazy stuff like recently Tallahassee—

you mean the colorful rainbow crosswalk?

Yes, the colorful rainbow crosswalks are making us gay. The crosswalks are making us—

I never thought we'd get to call back to that card. I'm really happy. I'm really happy you brought that up, Richard. I, I appreciate it. Yeah, you could, you could shout out your government in Tallahassee to Tallahassee for making that one possible. Right.

But the fact of the matter is, is that right now, if we don't have people stepping up to deal with this issue, then we just get smacked with it. And having a 4-year-old son, most of our education policy and what happens with our kids happens out of Tallahassee. One of the most messed up things to me is the fact that here in the state, you can't really send your kid to preschool without spending a rent. So roughly, for those of you who haven't had kids yet, take your time, but it'll take you about, cost you about $1,500 to $2,500 a month to send your child to preschool before they hit public school age. That's totally out of reach, and that means that a lot of kids are not getting the kind of instruction they need to be successful here, and I think that that's honestly completely messed up.

So what is it that, for Florida Senate District 38's current Senator Alexis Galatiud, what is it that she has or hasn't been doing that you think you can improve on?

Well, first of all, there's, uh, because there's been a supermajority rule for a long time What I have noticed is there is a lot of fear. There's a lot of fear of pissing off the supermajority. There's a lot of fear, honestly, in Democratic electeds that they can't mess up the powers that be up in Tallahassee. But there's also a complicity of silence, which comes from the fact of when you're building concentration camps in the Everglades, when you're stripping land away from Miami Dade College students and resources, when you're letting the president profit off of things, when you're not dealing with the fact that We pay teachers 50th in the country, we spend 40th per capita on students, and we're 2nd or 3rd in business bankruptcies. When you're not doing that stuff and you're silent about it, there's a complicity to the issue that I've seen a lot. And my opponent is one of those people who has definitely— she's come up through the Republican ranks, basically been in politics her whole life, has never had to make a payroll, has never had to put a child through school, has never had to deal with the downstream impacts of this administration.

Has she ever even had a job outside of politics?

I don't think so. Yeah, you have to fact-check me on that.

But yeah, well, I think this is part of the problem, is that there's a lot of people— the Republicans are very good at this, I'll give them credit— of sort of like bringing people up almost in a test tube to take on these positions. And then there's just a presumption amongst the rest of us that this is just the ruling class, and these are just the people who go from interning at some state senator or some, you know, congressperson's office, and then they just sort of like get elected themselves. And there's never really any question about their competence, their experience, their capabilities for this position. And we just all take it for granted, as opposed to someone— you are a small business owner, an entrepreneur, you've created, grown a business, you've— I presume you've had a payroll and hired people and had employees.

Yeah, and I've given paid parental leave and I've given paid time off, even hourly workers, and I've made sure that when parents— that when you get sick, that you, you're able to be taken care of. We have emergency medical leave. I've done things that a lot of Democrats have talked about as things that we need fundamentally in our system for a foundation. I've given healthcare. To my staff and talked about how messed up that system was. This is all possible.

So, so clearly, other than trying to ride a blue wave that presumably, based on the fact that the president is not on the ballot himself, that he is wildly unpopular, that the state of the economy is wildly unpopular, that despite what's happening this week with Cuba, it's very possible that voters even in the South Florida district, in a Miami district, will be interested perhaps in voting for a Democrat for a change. You're still running against an incumbent who has her own record. So how would you distinguish yourself amongst not just Democrats, whose votes you'll presumably get, but NPA's, who will probably decide this election in your district? How do you distinguish yourself from Senator Kalotti?

I think it comes down to, are you happy with what's coming out of Tallahassee? A wise man once told me that the supermajority's got us in a chokehold. and the only way to break that chokehold is to flip seats. That wise man was you, Billy, by the way.

I think I said it a bit more poetically, less artful than that. Smarmy, I think.

But so let's, let's talk about that. So we have, we have this supermajority in Tallahassee that's more concerned with fighting each other, that's more concerned with making sure that their donors get a million giveaways that they get every single year in the budget. This is an opportunity, one, to send a very clear message that we're unhappy, 2, to send people, problem solvers that are actually dealing with the issues that we talk about, to fight for us. And 3, to make sure that we are bringing more parity and breaking a supermajority that is actively hurting people here, whether it's the corruption that we talked about, or whether it's the fact that right now there's no clear way for our schools are getting funded. They don't break out, for example, where private school voucher money goes versus public school money, and it causes a lot of distrust in the system. They don't talk about what kind of climate resiliency action they have, or the fact that right now we have only $200 million in our emergency disaster fund on the eve of hurricane season because they yanked it all out to pay for the concentration camp in the Everglades.

These are active things that unless senators are dealing with this, that we pay the price.

So you're going with the classic, are you better off now than you were 2 years ago, 4 years ago, 6 years ago, 8 years ago? And there was only one party to blame because only one party has controlled the state of Florida since 1999.

Exactly, I think Titanic came out that year, I forget.

Yes, it was, '99, do you remember 1999, Roy? Yeah, I tried to party like it. And, uh, just like it, Roy.

I would like to party with you in '99, but I was 12, I think.

So was I. No, no, no, you weren't 20. I was 21. Did I turn 21? Uh, in 1999?

I'm 38. So how old are you?

70. I was born in '78. 15. I was 15. I was born in '84. I was 73 years old in 1990. I didn't know there was gonna be math on the program. —today. No, I was 21 years old.

Roy and I are of the same class of going out.

My first drink, I started drinking when I was 21 years old. Good for you. Yeah, not earlier than that, huh? No, I didn't, believe it or not. You're not trying to incriminate yourself? No, no. It's— well, what's funny though too is that, like, why say that? Does it make me sound cool that I didn't start drinking until I was 21 years old? And I tried pot the first time in 2017. Does that make me sound cooler? You picked the wrong drug. That I've never done cocaine?

You sound like a Gen Z.

It's a little peculiar, I'm not gonna lie. All right, so Richard, make your case, because it's not just making it You don't just want to say, you know, the incumbent sucks, the world is shitty, vote for change. By the way, good argument. But also, you're trying to convince people that you are going to do better than she has done. You're going to do better than the Republicans have done. How do you intend to do that if you are in a minority? Yes, you might break the supermajority, but you'll still be in the minority party in Tallahassee, where everybody, as you said, is scared to piss off the majority.

So I think, I think one of the big issues Democrats have had is that we've always been anti instead of for. The way I talk about what I want to accomplish there is in terms of freedom, because as you mentioned, first of all, this is a swing district with a lot of NPA and Republican voters that are unhappy. So I talk about things like the freedom to raise a family. I have a 4-year-old. How, if we can't have access to quality healthcare— by the way, they have not expanded Medicaid in the state, leaving over a million people underinsured— you can't provide health—

Maybe they shouldn't get sick then, Richard. Have you ever thought about that?

Yeah, it's personal responsibility there.

Think solution, be solution-oriented.

There you go, yeah, yeah, don't get sick. Just follow RFK and everything he does. Goddamn right. The brain worm knows all, Billy. So the first of them is the freedom to raise a family. And the fact is you can't do it if you're always worried about whether you're gonna find healthcare for your child, where you're gonna put your child in school, are they going to a quality school? Are you as a parent earning enough to be able to take care of your family? Second one is the freedom to afford a home. Anyone who is, is buying or renting or dealing with this market right now knows that it's getting hard to make it. And the fact, and the fact is that people are actually leaving Miami right now because it's so hard to make it and to afford to live here. One of the ways you can do that is to make sure that we can build more workforce and affordable housing versus those big, beautiful luxury towers. I know that you enjoy, Billy, so much. Love them.

Can't wait for the Trump Hotel Casino and maybe a library.

Yeah, they'll have, they'll have like a big golden statue for you to worship.

I'm going to be there on day one playing blackjack. I don't know what anybody's upset about. I'm, I'm very excited about it. I think it's a great amenity here to the downtown area for sure.

The last was freedom from corruption, because I think the fact of the matter is, is that there's— even though we have Sunshine Laws, this is a shady-ass state, as you know. And the fact of the matter is, unless you get us to go in and call out these things, like the no-bid contracts they used to bid it, like the many shenanigans that DeSantis and his predecessors have been up to, then we're going to keep being in the same spot. Because like, as you said, they said they have no money money for improving our schools, for access to preschool, for expanding Medicaid, for so many issues that we care about. But they have money to spend a billion on that. They have money for DeSantis to get a nice security detail after he's done in office, but they don't have money for the people who actually need it. So that's why I'm fighting.

Richard LaMondin, find him at richard.vote. Thanks for being here. Good luck.

Absolutely. One more thing I want to say too is we're doing a big kickoff Bill, you're invited. May 26th, Key Biscayne Wet Lab. Come by, 6:30 to 1. I doubt it. Yeah, it's like the last affordable place on the water you can get a beer. RIP to Shuckers. On Virginia Key, right? On Virginia Key, yeah. Come out, it's open to the public. Watch me cook, and we'll all learn more about what's happening there.

You're cooking?

For real? I mean, giving my speeches, Billy.

Oh, okay, yeah, like watch him cook kind of cooking.

Exactly, you gotta get up with the lingo, man.

No, I was hoping there was gonna be food. There is gonna be food as well. Is there punch and pie?

Yeah, well, there's a— there's no paella for you, Billy. I'm sorry.

Maybe next time. Roy, has Richard inspired you to join the race? You'll be running against Uncle Luke and Elijah Manley in the primary up there? No.

Maybe next cycle.

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It is a target-rich environment. And we need all the help we can get. The money metastasizes, the fuckery metastasizes, and it's hard to keep up with all of it. I'm in the thick of it. I go to city commission meetings, but you got the county with a— Miami-Dade has a $13 billion a year budget. You've got 34 municipalities with their own budgets and unions, and many of them have their own police departments and their own mayors and their own city councils or commissions. Jurisdictions, and Miami, the city of Miami, is the biggest of them with nearly half a million population. And that's why I spend a lot of my time there. And it's the largest municipality, so it affects all of our lives. It's the namesake municipality. The county stole the name actually from the city of Miami back in like '95, '96. Was originally Dade County or Metro-Dade County, and then they decided to rebrand. And also all of us who drive through this county, we tend to have a lot of business or at least fly over the city of Miami. So it's hugely consequential to our lives. Miami is so big and so, I would argue, ungovernable because there's so many people and there's so many neighborhoods.

And the oldest and most— I would argue most famous or arguably important of those neighborhoods is Coconut Grove. It's an extraordinary, magical place that's always wanted to exist as its own city or municipality or village, but has unfortunately been swallowed up by the mammoth that is the city of Miami. And it Currently home, not for long, to Miami City Hall in the legendary historic Pan Am Building at Dinner Key Marina. Lot of history. Coconut Grove, the West Grove, is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the county. It's actually older than the incorporation of the city of Miami itself. It's where the Bahamian community that literally built the city with their bare hands settled. And now generations later, some of those folks still live there. And David Villano, has been a journalist in Miami since 1986 when he started at the Miami News. Since then, you've seen his byline through the decades in Miami New Times, Florida Trend, Mother Jones, the Miami Herald, the Sun Sentinel. He is now the editor of the Coconut Grove Spotlight for the last 2 years. It is a nonprofit, independent local news organization with a full-time volunteer leadership team, David among them.

While they pay their journalists, David does a lot of the writing himself and a lot of the editing himself. And gets paid nothing because he is a Grovite, as they call them. So this is a real labor of love for you. And let's start there because you do some of my favorite kind of journalism there, David. You do public records journalism, you do accountability journalism, and you talk about where a lot of the nearly $3 billion budget of the city Miami is going or not going. So why this project for you? Why Coconut Grove Spotlight at this stage in your, in your long career? Yeah.

So, you know, Coconut Grove has always had this independent streak. That's no— that's not news. We've also had this culture of grievance that has gone back, what, 101 years now. You mentioned that we've always wanted to be our own independent municipality. We actually were prior to 1925 when the city of Miami annexed us. We wrote about that a year ago if you're interested in looking that up. But we've always had this sort of counterculture community that has sort of marched to their own drummer, so to speak. And we felt that when there was an opportunity to create a newspaper that would shine light on some of the issues that we care about, we would see if we could do that. So we put together a group of volunteers like myself to see if we could put together a project. And we were successful in raising some funds and dragging some people in who otherwise might be retired. And so we're really pleased where we are right now. And what I will say, it's not— even though Coconut Grove is in the name, we do more than just focus on Coconut Grove. We say we cover the Grove, but also the city of Miami.

So that's why you'll see a lot of our reporting transcends really our village boundaries. And we look at things, as you mentioned, Billy, you know, the city budgets, the spending, the salaries, that sort of thing. And why do we do it? I guess the answer is because really no one else is. The Herald once was in a position to do that kind of reporting. I mean, they're budget-strapped right now, and they're not able to provide those kinds of deep dives into the kinds of small municipal issues that used to drive local journalism. So, here we are. We're doing it on a shoestring budget. And we're just pleased that we have some readers who are happy to pick up, you know, a device and look at us a couple times a week.

And so, I think this is interesting for people all over the country, because you don't really think about this where you probably live. District 2— there's 5 districts in Miami, inexplicably, but each about 100,000 population. And if you're wondering how the commissioners represent those folks, the answer is they don't. It's actually impossible to do that. But District 2 is— correct me if I'm wrong, David— the sole donor district of the 5 in the city. Upwards of 70-plus percent of the revenue generated by the city of Miami comes through District 2, of which Coconut Grove is kind centerpiece of, but features a lot of very famous neighborhoods that everybody all over the country will, will know. Brickell, downtown Miami, Edgewater. It goes right up the coast. So it's a lot of very, you know, wealthy people, a lot of very rich real estate, and obviously beautiful scenery as well. So Coconut Grove is hugely consequential. It's also growing at, I would argue, an alarming rate in terms of population, in terms of density, in terms of construction. And a lot of people coming, moving from other places like New York are looking first and foremost in Coconut Grove when they're looking in the city of Miami.

A lot of them also live outside the city in Pinecrest, which is another municipality, Miami Beach, which is another municipality. But David, the budget stuff, which is important citywide, is uniquely important to your area because you guys pay a lot. 70 cents of every dollar comes from your district, which includes Coconut Grove. And one of the big issues right now is the so-called $450 million public safety bond initiative that the mayor, the new mayor Eileen Higgins, surprised us with. This is something she did not mention once on the campaign trail last year, did not run on public safety bonds, but now wants to put the city in debt to the tune of upwards of $1 billion once the debt service is calculated over the 30-year lifespan of these. So this is a billion-dollar bond boondoggle is what I've talked about. She's leapfrogged all of her other campaign promises, Eileen Higgins, including fiscal responsibility, transparency, cutting the budget. And you have revealed that all of the opposite of that is happening. There's a bigger budget. She's increased her own office's budget by nearly 30% in salaries. They're asking for tens of millions of dollars more in the budget this year.

And having not provided any accounting whatsoever on the billion-plus dollars in bond debt that the city still carries, wants to do this thing. Talk to me a little bit about where the money in the city budget goes. How much of it already goes to public safety and where does the community stand and feel about this effort?

You know, you mentioned D2 as being sort of the economic powerhouse of Miami, and it is. But I don't think our readers in the Coconut Grove Spotlight really see it that way. They see it as this is public money. So whether you live in Overtown or Shenandoah or Coconut Grove, it doesn't really matter. And from our point of view, it's— there's a big pot of money and we'd like to find out where it's going, where it comes from and where it's going. And that's really, really been the real real challenge for us is that we're just trying to do the kinds of things that we thought our elected officials were planning to do once they got into office. So specifically, let me refer to our D2 Commissioner Damian Pardo and our Mayor Eileen Higgins, you mentioned. Both— for both of them, the word transparency was very important in their campaigns. And so I actually maybe naively felt that these would be partners with the Coconut Grove Spotlight and other media outlets to try to to bring some sort of general understanding, an overview of how the city operates, how the decisions are made. You know, I guess our approach at The Spotlight is that an informed citizenry can help make better decisions.

But to my surprise— again, maybe I'm naive, but we really have not had those willing partners. So, the kinds of things that we've been reporting on, the spending the salaries, the portions of the budget to go— which part of— sliced in which part of the pie. That's all been stuff that's required a significant amount of digging, and mostly through public records requests, which, in my view, is really sort of like the last resort for public information. It's where it's like— there is an actual state statute that says the city must provide this information, and if they don't, you're in violation They are in violation of state law. They could work with us a little bit and say, hey, you know what, we're going to help you get this. We're going to work through this problem with you, access information. We're going to explain it to you. But no, it's really forcing us to try to, you know, essentially use this legal challenge to get them to release information, which I must say— But I will say, most of the time on these sticky issues, they don't do it. And we've reported some of that. So, again, I don't know if I answered your question, but I just say that—

No, this is more interesting than my question. And public records is something I'm uniquely passionate about because I can't do what I do without access to those materials and that information. They are called public records for a reason. But the government seems to treat them like this is their private proprietary information. This is being produced on our time, on our dime. These are our records, not their records. And they really do get very uncooperative and possessive about these. And I want to ask, you were struggling, it seemed. So you had gotten— also, to be fair, like you said, it's last resort because you could just talk to the comms person, the PIO, the spokesperson, and just ask them questions and they can answer them for you. But they don't want to do that. They won't answer your questions. They'll ignore you. So you'll have to go on this chase for the actual raw data to be able to process it and answer the questions for yourself. I know you finally got a hold of some of the salaries, but you were looking to find out not just the salaries but the actual money that was going out the door at the city.

Because people have salaries, but there's also overtime, there's bonuses, there's allowances. So you were like, that's all well and good that these people are contracted to make this amount of money, but how much money is the city actually spending? And you were having some trouble last night, checked, getting a hold of what should be some pretty simple, straightforward QuickBooks or accounting information.

Yeah, we submitted those public records requests and we were told that such records don't exist. So they don't know how much money they're spending.

They have no record of how much money is going out the door. Is that what they're saying?

They say that they only under Florida law are only required to provide a record if requested, if the record actually exists. So they're not— they're— what they're saying is they're not required to create the record. So does it— records— I can't tell you if, if they're being— well, that's, that's fine.

They don't have to do the spreadsheet for you, but they have to give you the raw data, which presumably exists. There's bank accounts, there's money leaving those, those accounts.

Somehow I was assuming— you're correct— that there would be an obligation on their end. If, if not, under state state law than under the city's own media policies, which would require them to provide the information that we would be requesting. So, when they told me the records don't exist, we asked them, OK, so help us find access to— the access to information. How do we go about requesting, or how do we— who can we speak to to answer these questions? To our surprise, the Office of Communications was told to no longer engage with us on that line of questioning by the city attorney's office. And when we continued to press the issue, we asked the city attorney, George Wysong, if he could look into it. He promised he would, but then we didn't hear anything again. Our efforts to reengage the city in our efforts to get what we're calling actual compensation or total compensation have been met with with this legal response that they've been told not to engage with us.

To be clear, this isn't about litigation. This isn't any protected or exempted record. You just want to know how much the city is spending. Is that correct? Yeah.

And you asked, do the records exist? All I do know is that in previous years as a journalist, my colleagues and I have all seen reports that have been printed in one fashion or another that show actual spending and not It's not to be— it's no surprise. There are, you know, those with union contracts that allow this sort of thing are typically the high earners. So you're going to see firefighters, police officers, occasionally managers. But those are the folks that typically can increase their salaries dramatically. And why it's an important policy issue for our readers and, of course, the residents of Miami and beyond should understand is because because all of this impacts our pension spending. And we touched on that a little bit. There was a pension issue on the commission agenda last week that passed with no discussion that is— can— will likely increase our pension payout to firefighters. There was no cost analysis prior to the vote. But that's the sort of thing that we feel that if we could get it on the agenda through some of our reporting, there might be some more informed decisions. Some more informed comments from the residents before these kind of commission meetings.

To be clear, a lot of people's ears glaze over when they hear talk— talking about pensions and unions, but this is how cities go broke. This is how states go broke. This is how governments go broke. We spend so much money every year paying people not to do their jobs anymore. I'm not suggesting they're not entitled to them, but I'm suggesting transparency. We need to understand how— I mean, Carlos Giménez is a congressman. By my count, he's got at least 3 public pensions. He gets paid by the city of Miami where he was a firefighter, a pension. He gets paid by the county where he was mayor and a county commissioner, that's a pension. And he's paid now as congressional pension. I mean, it's, it's just, we need to know where this money is going, and especially when the city is negotiating with all 4 of its city worker unions right now in contracts that could break the city. We're running out of time, David, but I do want to ask before you go, you mentioned Mayor Eileen Higgins, you mentioned Commissioner Damian Pardo, who represents District 2. They very much ran on transparency, accountability.

Damian Pardo thanked and praised the activists who demand accountability and transparency, who show up to meetings. They seem to have forsaken all of that and their constituencies. Have Damian Pardo and Eileen Higgins been trying to help you with the city, with the city manager, with the city attorney to get these public records?

Well, my understanding is that Commissioner Pardo has a policy within the office that his staff will not engage with the Coconut Grove Spotlight. So we routinely seek comment or information, and it's— there's no response. We had a reporter working on a story last week on a very mundane subject, e-bikes. Well, it's not mundane if you've been hit by one. But he reported contacting the office 14 times with no success. Eileen Higgins, her office, the same. We routinely ask them for information. Including in advance of and following the meeting last week about the budget. I'm sorry, the, uh, the bond proposal. Uh, no, no response, not even, uh, we'll get back to you. So I have to say that we're a little surprised at that response.

I'm not surprised, but I am disappointed. And the thing about this, Roy, this bond thing, this is a $1 billion trust fund and we don't trust Eileen Higgins yet, or her new administration. They haven't earned that trust yet, and they certainly haven't engendered it when they misbehave this way and deny legitimate journalists public records on how much money they're spending and what they're doing with our money. Always I say about, about Miami and Florida is that it rarely shocks me but regularly disappoints me. David Villano, CoconutGroveSpotlight.com. There's really fun work going on here. Even if you're— you don't live in Miami, I think this is a real model for other journalists about the kind of stories you should be covering and the kind of public records you should be seeking, uh, because, you know, accountability and public records journalism is more important now more than ever. So thanks, Dave, and thanks to everybody at coconutgrovespotlight.com. Good luck getting this stuff. Thank you, Bailey. And that'll do it for this edition of Because Miami. Roy, Roy! Cocaine! Cocaine!