Mary Conway

Powerful Witness

In January, it was largely the sworn testimony of Mary Conway, Miami’s former chief of operations, that backed up a controversial memo that Commissioner Marc Sarnoff wrote to himself accusing fellow Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones of accepting bribes and extorting developers.

Although Spence-Jones continues to deny that she attempted to force The Related Group to hire two of her close friends in exchange for her vote on the Mercy Hospital condo project, the memo came down to a he-said, she-said situation between the commissioners. However, Conway’s testimony that she also heard the allegations when they were made lended credibility to Sarnoff’s memo.

Conway came back into the spotlight early this month when a traffic circle that Sarnoff wanted in his district was inexplicably pushed through City Hall, while traffic circles in other Miami neighborhoods have remained stalled for years.

Conway’s close relationship with Sarnoff reportedly prompted her to set the traffic circle construction in motion just before she departed the city by adding funding to an unrelated street-closure project under way in the area.

She responded in an open letter to the Miami Herald, published April 10.

“Readers would never know that Miami-Dade County — rather than the city of Miami — has jurisdiction over all traffic-control devices, including traffic circles, signals and stop signs. None can be built without county approval,” she wrote. “Readers also are left without knowledge that at least 40 circles have been installed already in the Roads, Coral Gate, Silver Bluff and Shenandoah neighborhoods in which other commissioners live, as compared to fewer than 10 in Shorecrest and Coconut Grove. That hardly seems like preferential treatment.”

Armando Aguilar	Lin Arison	Ricky Arriola	Adrienne Arsht	Marleine Bastien	Peter Bober	Matti Herrera Bower	Norman Braman
George M. Burgess	Charles W. Burkett	Donald Carlin	Charlie Cinnamon	Mary Conway	David Custin	Alex Daoud	Brett David
Jim DeFede	Frank Del Vecchio	Edward DeValle II	Lucia Dougherty & Carter McDowell	Peter Ehrlich	Gary Farmer	Jorge Fernandez & Julie O. Bru	Matthew B. Gorson
Andi Greenwald	Julie Greiner	Alan Lieberman	Keith London	Martin Z. Margulies	Keith Menin	Dana Nottingham	Tommy Pooch & Alan Roth
Gerald Posner	Manuel Prieguez Jr.	Louis Puig	Terry Riley	Luiz Rodrigues	Blanka A. Rosenstiel	Hiram Ruiz	Joe Sanchez
Don Slesnick	Nicola Siervo	Javier Souto	Ike Starkman	Michael Stern	David Sugarman	Michael Tilson Thomas	Gillian Thomas
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