Who is ‘City Hall’s’ Spy?
Police Interrogate Procurement Supervisor, Seize Computer

None of the questions pertained to Building and Zoning — everything pertained to the blog.

by Cynthia Archbold

On a recent Wednesday morning, Procurement Supervisor Danny Benedit thought he had an informal meeting with Police Lt. Ed Hudak, who heads Coral Gables’ Internal Affairs Unit.

Instead he went through a two-hour interrogation, during which Benedit says he was threatened with firing unless he revealed the identity of “City Hall’s Spy,” an anonymous blogger criticizing the mayor and the city manager in the aftermath of an investigation into the city’s Building and Zoning Department.

Benedit said Hudak phoned him that day, Oct. 11, to stop by his office. Benedit assumed it might be to ask him for information about the Building and Zoning Department, which Internal Affairs is investigating for corruption.

But when Benedit arrived, Hudak and another detective closed the door. They didn’t ask anything about Building and Zoning, Benedit claimed. Instead they demanded to know the identity of City Hall’s Spy.

“They just wanted to know who City Hall’s Spy is. I told them I assumed who it could be, just because of some of the information posted on the blog,” Benedit said. “But I told them I wasn’t 100 percent sure of who it was, so I couldn’t give them that information.”

Benedit said the investigators treated him like a criminal. He asked for a lawyer, but Hudak told him the questioning was an administrative investigation rather than a criminal one.

After two hours the detectives escorted Benedit back to his office, seized his computer and removed it, keeping it for a week. Benedit, meanwhile, went back to doing his job of running the Procurement Department, minus his computer.

Coral Gables City Attorney Elizabeth Hernandez said Benedit was well within his rights to post on the City Hall Confidential blog and that police are not entitled to threaten employees with termination for airing their views online on their own time, with their own computers.

“Public employees enjoy First Amendment rights — they don’t give up rights of private citizenship,” she said.

This is the latest development in a scandal that began Sept. 8, when Administrative Assistant Jorge Reyes was arrested for allegedly running a fake time-sheet scam in the Building and Zoning Department. Margaret Pass, the department director for 18 years, was placed on administrative leave while police and county and state investigators conduct a full-blown investigation of possible widespread corruption.

Seemingly overnight, a controversial thread mushroomed on the Web site Miamipost.org. Called “City Hall Confidential,” it boiled over with accusations, criticism, rumors and objections to the way things have been run at the City Beautiful for years. Bloggers post their comments using identities such as “The Voyeur,” “George Merrick” and “City Hall’s Spy,” one of the city of Coral Gables’ harshest critics.

Benedit began participating on the blog Tuesday, Oct. 10, from his home on his personal computer as “Procurement Dan,” because some bloggers were questioning the way things are run in his department, accusations he said were inaccurate. “I think we run a tight ship in our office,” he said during an interview in a pizza parlor near his office on Wednesday, Oct. 18, one week after police confiscated his computer.

The procurement supervisor said he blogged online to clear up some misconceptions that appeared on City Hall Confidential. “I went on to give them some of the daily processes, how we operate in our city in our department. All of the information I provided is also public information,” Benedit said. “I invited people to ask me questions, as long as it doesn’t involve Building and Zoning or the character of staff. … I invited anyone who had questions to visit our office and I would give them a tour and a more detailed explanation on how we work in our office.”

But bloggers also asked Benedit to give them the scoop about developments in the Building and Zoning Department investigation. They further asked him the identity of City Hall’s Spy. Benedit declined to answer any such questions. But the next day Lt. Hudak called Benedit for a meeting, and the interrogation ensued.

“None of the questions pertained to Building and Zoning — everything pertained to the blog,” Benedit said. “They just wanted to know who City Hall’s Spy is.”

Benedit told police he didn’t know for sure. “They changed their question from ‘Who is it?’ to ‘Who could it be?’ And I still wouldn’t reveal that information,” he said. “Since I wasn’t 100 percent sure, I didn’t want to incriminate somebody. Everybody has the right to express the way we feel about the places we work.”

But Hudak persisted. “He threatened my job.” Benedit said Hudak told him if he ever posted on the City Hall Confidential blog again he would be fired, and that in any case, he was recommending to City Manager David Brown that Benedit be suspended.

After Hudak seized his computer, he told Benedit to meet with him and Brown the next morning. “I thought that was it for me,” said Benedit.

However, during the meeting Brown told Benedit that he could be helpful in the Building and Zoning investigation and asked if he could be trusted. Benedit said yes, and vowed to help in any way he could. Hudak repeated the question of who is City Hall’s Spy? And Benedit reiterated that he didn’t know.

Benedit said the meeting with police was “a misuse of powers for a personal agenda. All they were really interested in is who’s blogging on the blog.”

Benedit’s computer was returned to his office Oct. 18, one week after being confiscated.

Meanwhile, Benedit has contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, the Miami-Dade Police Corruption unit and the State Attorney’s Office to complain that he was “mistreated by Lt. Hudak.”

“I did nothing wrong. I did it on my own time, in my own house, on my own computer and I was not involved in any way in the Building and Zoning investigation, so I didn’t think I was going to get treated the way I was,” Benedit said.

City Attorney Hernandez said government employees have the right to say anything they want about their work place online, and even complain about it — as long as it’s on their own time and their own computer. However, she said they do not have the right to discuss investigations or divulge citizens’ private information, such as their home addresses, phone numbers, etc.

City Manager David Brown declined to comment about the Benedit incident for this article. Telephone calls to Lt. Hudak were not returned by deadline.

But since Benedit’s computer was seized Oct. 11, the City Hall Confidential blog went from being a 24-hour information network to virtual silence, and City Hall’s Spy disappeared into cyberspace and has not been heard from since.

Comments? E-mail letters@miamisunpost.com .