MIAMI NO PLACE TO FIND CAMPAIGN CASH CITY'S AIRPORT HOTBED OF CORRUPTION, ALWAYS ENGULFED IN INVESTIGATIONS.

Byline: Sharon Woodson-Bryant Local View

MIAMI International Airport has been described as a bed of corruption, where contracts are awarded based upon whom you know, not what you can do, nor how long you have been in business.

So why would any politician under the bright lights of an election in Los Angeles take a campaign contribution from a lawless frontier populated by political scoundrels and contract rustlers? Mayoral candidate Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa has caught some fire for receiving $47,000 in those very contributions, though he said he will give the money back.

Bribery. Kickbacks. Cover-up. Miami is always engulfed in a series of high-profile investigations of public corruption so pervasive that it is often mentioned in the same breath as New York in the days of Tammany Hall. And no department in county government has faced as much scrutiny these days as the Miami airport.

FBI agents and Miami-Dade detectives continue to comb through contracts; every week new rumors circulate about a different commissioner on the verge of being indicted. Over the last several years, The Miami Herald has had a team of reporters camped out at the airport for months at a time trying to prove claims of graft and corruption.

Headlines like ``Scoundrels allegedly gorged themselves on millions stolen from MIA, and now a prominent politician is implicated in the conspiracy,'' liven up the news on a regular basis. These major investigations never end with each one more bizarre than the last.

It was reported last July that 11 people have been arrested in a racketeering and corruption investigation at Miami International Airport that includes accusations of fuel theft, fake repairs and contract fraud. In all, 19 people and four companies were named in arrest warrants for contractors, mechanics, technicians and an airport official accused in schemes dating back to April 1999 that totaled about $5.3 million, mostly gleaned from the theft of 2.7 million gallons of fuel. Now the investigation is continuing into the crooks' relationship with Miami elected officials.

The company hired to transform Miami International Airport's drab food and beverage concessions into a first-rate, brand-name operation secretly paid political insiders $1.7 million to maintain its hold on its lucrative contract. The insiders, who were minority partners, had ties to the then Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penela and were supposed to run eight restaurants as part of a program to help disadvantaged businesses. But behind the scenes, Host Marriott Services Corp. agreed to pay them $33,225 a month so the company could keep all of the concessions - while the minority partners operated none.

Nice pay for no work.

A controversial telecommunications contractor in 2001 at Miami International Airport was under investigation by a joint federal-county public corruption squad on allegations that he overbilled the airport. The contractor, Williams Communications Solutions, a company commonly known by its former name, WILTEL, had supplied the airport with a broad range of telecommunications equipment - including telephones, fiber-optic cable and the switches for the phone system - since 1982.

The county paid more than $330,000 to lease a talking-elevator system. Despite the large sum, the county still wasn't getting its money's worth. WILTEL failed to install all the sensors for the chatty elevators but billed the county $48,375 for the equipment anyway.

A couple of years earlier, the assistant aviation director and his wife were sentenced to federal prison for their public corruption scheme involving Miami International Airport contractors. Ricardo Mendez was sentenced to 48 months' imprisonment, followed by two years' supervised release, fined $75,000, and ordered to pay over $1 million in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service and Miami-Dade County for his 34 counts of conviction on mail fraud, bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds, money laundering, tax evasion and filing false tax returns.

His wife was sentenced to five months' imprisonment, followed by two years of supervised release, that includes five additional months of home confinement with electronic monitoring, fined $30,000, and ordered to pay over $1 million in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service and Miami-Dade County, for her conviction for conspiracy to commit bribery.

``What we found in this case was greed. Just greedy people wanting more money,'' Miami-Dade Police Director Carlos Alvarez said. ``Corruption is a very personal thing. You're either a thief or you're not.''

In 1996, while I was living in Miami, the airport budget was passed in 45 seconds. Here's a multimillion-dollar operation, the single most important operation in the county, and the county commissioners pass the budget without discussion. Does that lend itself to a lot of hanky-panky?

You bet.

Miami is filled with opportunities for public corruption. There are 13 county commissioners and five city commissioners. Their part-time status and low pay seem to invite candidates who are looking for side benefits, many officials and political experts say. My former boss, a suspended Miami commissioner, was charged in a public corruption case for accepting kickbacks and faces sentencing this month.

With political campaigns getting more and more expensive over the last decade, the candidates are increasingly beholden to the special interests and political machines that helped get them elected.