A Miami-Dade jury last month found former Homestead Mayor Steve Bateman guilty on two felony counts of illegal compensation, plus two misdemeanor counts. The case focused on the mayor’s $125-an-hour consulting gig for a healthcare company building a clinic in the city’s downtown.
However, The Miami Herald combed through hundreds of pages of newly released investigative files and found the illegal compensation was much broader. The newspaper found that Bateman and his wife reaped more than $200,000 in payments from companies with issues before the city.
Here are just a few of irregularities that the Herald found:
* Three different city staffers testified that they were pressured by Bateman to give Dade Medical College what it wanted — roughly the same time that Dade Medical gave Bateman’s wife about $100,000 in payments.
* Bateman repeatedly voted “yes†on zoning items that developer Wayne Rosen — and then hit him up for financial support.
* Bateman traveled around in support of companies that were secretly paying him or his wife — while pretending he was just performing his official duties as mayor.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/homestead/article3334942.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here.