White Hot Sleeper
If Manny Diaz Gets Cowboy Boots from Dallas,
I Hope He Uses One on His City Manager

“I’ve never heard of a city manager holding a campaign party for a commissioner. How brazen can anybody get?” — Nancy Liebman, UEL president

By Rebecca Wakefield

Last week I took a break from writing this column and I appreciate the slightly irked e-mails that trickled in from the growing constituency of the disillusioned.

Afraid I was running out of ideas, one correspondent asked me this poignant question: “Why is it that no one is outraged that Money Diaz and his sidekick lied about the asshole's departure date?”

I could not have put it better myself. But what with the heat, the Heat, hurricanes and the World Cup, who has time for sweaty bouts of virtuous pique?

The conventional political wisdom is that Miami Mayor Manny Diaz (who shares with Heat coach Pat Riley both an affinity for hair gel and a propensity for prematurely reuniting staffers with their families) needs to keep City Manager Joe Arriola now that the third member of the brain trust is occupied with trying to negotiate his drunken cop-hitting felonies into drunken cop-petting misdemeanors.

Fortunately for Heat fans, Riley is generally a better judge of assets and liabilities than Diaz has proved to be. In game two, when the Mavericks’ younger, faster and all-around better team began knocking the knees out of the Heat defense in the second and third quarters, Riley wisely benched Shaq and Dwyane Wade for much of the rest of the game. He realized early that the flow of that game was not going to go his way. He wanted to preserve his big guns for the do-or-die matches ahead.

I could have sworn I saw a Dallas shoemaker fitting Diaz for his complimentary cowboy boots while he was thinking up cute things to say at the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Meanwhile, Diaz still won’t acknowledge he’s losing his own series by holding on to a lame player.

I understood to a point why Diaz kept Arriola around after the fire fee mess. Most of the electorate, down deep, doesn’t care about it that much — or at least won’t by the time Diaz needs votes. The time-honored tradition in Miami politics of riding out the storm until the issue sinks off the Miami Herald’s editorial page is time-honored for a reason. Kicking the guy out at that point would have been a tacit acknowledgment that the pesky rock-throwers were right.

That teapot tempest over Diaz, Arriola and Commissioner Johnny Winton buying a home together like eager newlyweds (plus the orchestration of a $53,000 surprise pay raise for Diaz) had to sting a bit, though. Then Arriola went on one of his goodwill tours, virulently bashing individual members of the media, plus city employees, at a chamber of commerce meeting at which he was the featured speaker.

You’ll have to forgive me, as I’m just bitter that he didn’t knock me too. I had hopes when I heard he’d called one reporter a “makeup-wearing drunk,” but it turns out he was just attempting to gay-bash a male reporter. Classy and smart, Joe. I wonder how Manny Diaz’s younger brother Jorge, who is gay, would feel about being lumped in with drunken journalists and other such scum of the earth?

Soon after, Diaz issued a press release indicating Arriola would be leaving his post by June 1. He then hid behind his boyish press secretary rather than explain his reasoning, which would have been of interest to many. About a month later, Diaz said (again, through a press release) Arriola wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. “They've got the best city manager in the world,” Arriola quipped to the Herald. “Why should they want to change?”

Predictably, Arriola went on to show us exactly how a city manager earns the title of world’s best. Last week, according to the Herald, he threw a fundraiser at his house for Commissioner Angel “My Record is Expunged” Gonzalez. This is usually not done by top-ranking bureaucrats because of the extreme danger of turning professional managers into hapless political shills. Arguably, this has already happened.

Because Arriola and Gonzalez refused to return calls, city spokeswoman Kelly Penton was forced to explain that it was actually Arriola’s son, J. Ricky Arriola, who threw the party for the commissioner at Joe’s house. By the way, Gonzalez isn’t up for election until 2007. Why is he collecting money so early? Could it be a hedge against the perpetual fascination he holds for certain members of the legal community?

The funny part of this story is that the issue came to light because Nancy Liebman, president of the Urban Environment League of Greater Miami, came across an e-mail invitation for the party that made it clear both Arriolas were doing the inviting. She responded with a mass e-mail calling the elder Arriola’s hosting duties “an outrageous ethics violation” that county and state ethics commissions should look into.

Ricky Arriola responded with his own mass e-mail: “Nancy — quit your crying. I had the fundraiser for Angel. I had it at my father’s house, just like I have a Super Bowl party at his house. It is not an ethics violation.”

I called up the junior Arriola but did not get a response by my deadline. Liebman, who was also recently kicked out of a planning meeting by Joe Arriola, was more than happy to talk about the incident. “I’ve never heard of a city manager holding a campaign party for a commissioner,” the former Miami Beach commissioner says. “How brazen can anybody get? I got back this crybaby message from Ricky Arriola defending his daddy and berating me [for bringing up the issue at all] because I’m on several boards with [Ricky]. That logic didn’t carry with me at all. I told Ricky it had nothing to do with him. He insulted me and told me I should move to another city and go and bore somebody else with my tactics.”

Liebman, never lost for words, responded: “I told him I had been in this community and everything I’ve accomplished will endure long after Joe Arriola is out of public office, which I hope is soon.”

She adds: “I’ve gotten tangled up in this and I regret it. I’m not usually in these situations. It was a saga not to be believed.”

For my money, I don’t care which Arriola had the fundraiser. The fact that it was at the city manager’s house once again drives home the point that the guy has no sense of his role. He sees himself as bigger than his job and that job is crumbling underneath his weight.

Arriola is a walking disaster. I look at this and it doesn’t make sense that he is still the city manager unless he is the nexus for some very bad things upon which the hacks, drunks and gluttons of the press corps will one day feast.

When, eventually, Joe Arriola does go, perhaps the mayor should look to a more noble professional for a replacement.

Allow me to suggest Pat Riley.

Go Heat!

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com.