Miami Herald reports that a Miami-Dade County ethics board has recommended sanctioning a private lobbyist for the county for failing to disclose a “potential conflict” surrounding a proposed transportation bill. The bill, which county commission staff helped to draft, included “the framework of a plan . . . to generate $1.5 billion for Miami-Dade for transit projects.” When the lobbyist, Fausto Gomez, submitted the bill’s draft to the legislature, it had been changed to give the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority (MDX) — another Gomez client — control of the transit funds. [Link deleted.] Gomez denies wrongdoing. The newspaper adds that the incident “offers a rare look into the behind-the-scenes efforts by Miami-Dade and MDX to push their interests in Tallahassee, as well as a raw account of local officials engaged in a bitter exchange of finger-pointing over the failed transit-funds bill.”
