On June 9, 2011, I wrote a story about Larry Spring, who had been the City of Miami's Chief Financial officer, stating that he was an irrepressible scalawag that had made an art form out of using restricted funds to balance the city’s books, along with other hocus pocus financial tricks that so delighted the Mayor and City Commissioners when it was in support of one of their schemes.

He was the CFO when the city falsified its comprehensive annual financial reports in 2007 and 2008, and sold 53 million of municipal bonds to investors.  During his years as CFO, the city fraudulently transferred millions of dollars from restricted capital project funds into the general operating fund to conceal declining fund balance that resulted in what became known as the SEC case that cost taxpayers millions in penalties and attorneys fees.  

Spring's tenure as the City's Chief Financial Officer also included the attempt in early 2011 to bribe then embattled Chief of Police Miguel Exposito to resign.

Larry Spring acted as the conduit between Mayor Tomas Regalado, his then City Manager Tony Crapp Jr and Exposito, and he was captured on the FBI/FDLE wire that Exposito wore discussing various ways - and the amounts of money required - to get Exposito, who had become a giant thorn in Regalado's side as a result of his continued raids seizing illegal maquinita gambling machines, to resign.

Among the conversations that Spring had with Exposito that were captured on the wire, was this one:  You can hear a portion of the actual audio tape and read how it all went down HERE.

The scheming involved was better than an episode of The Wire, and eventually Spring called to tell Exposito that he had a 00,000 check waiting for him.

Exposito balked, because in order to get Regalado and company on a bribery charge he needed - or so he and the agents working with him at the time believed  - to be paid in cash.  The cash would provide the prima facie evidence that would have established that the money was a bribe.

What none of them knew or understood at the time, was that the check that Spring told Esposito he had, had been illegally obtained from the City Attorney's Settlement Account, which coming from that account would have allowed Exposito to avoid paying taxes, thereby meeting his requirement of not wanting to pay taxes.

The claim that the 00,000 check was illegal was based on the requirement in the City Charter (Sec.18-232), that any check over the amount of 5,000 being issued from that account had to be approved by the City Commission.  It was a hot check, issued illegally and had Expositio and the FBI/FDLE agents known and understood that at the time, there was a real possibility that a whole bunch of people might have gotten arrested, if not gone to prison..

Here is a copy of that check with Larry Spring's initials and instruction for "Pick-Up.".

Instead, the failure to understand the source of the check ended the conversations between Exposito and Spring, and killed the case.

Long before all of that happened though, and in fact just a few months after Springs efforts to bribe Exposito fell through, he decided that perhaps it was time for him to leave the employ of the city, and he made sure that on his way out the door, he nickel and dimed the city for every dollar he could get, leaving with a Golden Parachute worth 25,734.56.

You can read all about it here.

In the years since, Spring bounced around and eventually ended up as the City Manager of North Miami, another community with a long and unsavory history of municipal malfeasance.

Why, you ask would these stories from yesteryear be important now?  

Simple, Larry Spring on April 12th of this year, was appointed to the Off-Street Parking Board.  The big question is, who is the rocket scientist who came up with the idea to put Larry Spring on this Board.

Larry Spring is not the only ringer with questionable morals, and even more questionable behavior who has made a miraculous return to the City of Miami since Francis Suarez has become mayor.

The notion however, that Larry Spring, after his involvement in the antics that led to the SEC filing fraud charges against the City of Miami along with the Exposito affair would ever be appointed to any City of Miami board, and especially the Off-Street Parking Board is a slap in the face to the residents of the city, and underscores the reality that a vote by any 4 of the 5 City Commissioners to ratify this decision at Thursday's meeting is evidence that they're morally unfit to make decisions on behalf of the long suffering citizens who are continually subjected to this bullshit!.

It's Miami, Bitches!

Don King, Larry Spring, and former City Manager Tony Crapp, Jr.