North Bay Village in the Sunshine

Poor Eddie Lim, so sad, so misunderstood. He simply took some candy from a stranger and now he's being accused of being a bad boy. I assume you've read the article in the Miami Herald  where Eddie Lim and Jorge Gonzalez whine that they had no way of knowing that accepting gifts from somebody seeking to do business with the city was a violation of anything at all. After all, it was Gonzalez's friend who offered.

Can you imagine that fun conversation? 

Gonzalez calls Lim: “Yo, Lim, want to go to a Heats game? I can hook us up with suites.”  Lim: “No, I'm so broke. I can't do that.” Gonzalez: “Lim, chill. It's free. My buddy Cheng is setting us up with sweet suites. And he really wants to meet you because you seem like such a fun guy and all and it has nothing to do with the business he seeks in our fair village.”  Lim: “Oh well that sounds perfectly legitimate and within the bounds of the law and I'm sure we don't have to report it. Let us go but let us be very careful not to discuss anything that might ever come before the commission. Yay, Heat.”

And those highly paid, resourceful investigators at the Commission on Ethics. 

Investigator: “Excuse me, Mr. Centerino, do you know the value of a suite at the Heats game.”  Centerino: “One pass on an ethics investigation per seat sounds about right. What game am I going to?” Investigator: “No, I misspoke. I meant I need to know for an investigation into North Bay Village commissioners.”
Centerino: “Hell if I know. North Bay Village? Check with Murawski.” 

 So much better than, I don't know, asking Pedro Cheng how much the seats cost.

And then finally they put it all together in a sterling piece of investigative journalism by a Miami Herald typist. As opposed to a journalist who might have looked up the seat prices and noted that the Commission on Ethics keeps changing its story about what happened.

It's just raining positivity in North Bay Village.

Kevin Vericker

August 26, 2013