In the years between 2012 and 2015, Raquel Regalado's net worth dropped from $52,300 to $7,500. You can verify that claim by going HERE and looking at the annual Financial Reports she was required to file with the Florida Ethics Commission.

During that same period of time she also, accoring to the recent Miami Herald story by Doug Hanks, quit practicing law, lost her home to foreclosure after a lengthly court battle with her ex-husband and the bank, and to top it off, she engaged in a clear case of Homestead Exemption Fraud.  

It wasn't until I obtained a copy of the letter that the Property Appraiser's office sent to Regalado last week informing her that she owed $3981.78 as a result of her Homestead Exemption Fraud that some in the news media started realizing that not only do I do my reseach, but that I've broken more stories over the last 6 years that the whole newsroom of the Miami Herald.

It doesn't take the knowledge of a rocket scientist to do what I do on a regular basis, it just takes a little elbow grease and a willingness to start out the assumption that unless and until proven otherwisem just about all the actions of politicians in Miami-Dade County have to be consodered either self-serving or corrupt.  If you follow those simple precepts, you'll be surprised by how many times you'll find that you've hit the bullseye.

In that vein,the simplest thing that have crossed the minds of some some of these so-called reporters would have been to wonder how someone running for a job that involves managing a $7.1 BILLION dollar budget could have suffered such a steep and uncontrolled decline in their personal net worth - especially during what are considered prime income earning years - and then ponder whether that pointed to larger issues about money management, or worse, whether Raquel Regalado was running for public office out of a spirit of public service, or out of a desperate effort to get a high paying job to stave off a complete financial collapse.

Raquel Regalado it seems is either incapable or unwilling to go out into the marketplace to earn a living as a lawyer, which raises another question as to just how competent, or incompetent, she is as a lawyer, because she's managed to bounce around through too many law firms in too few years before quitting the practice of law altogther.  

Good lawyers, and even mildly incompetent ones don't seem to have a problem finding steady work, and for the daughter of the Mayor of a major  American city who can't get, or keep a job at a law firm - even if she's parked in some firm as a favor to her father - raises troubling questions.

But that's another question for another day, because today story is about ethics, or the lack thereof..

I WANT TO BE JUST LIKE MY DADDY

In November of 2011, I wrote a story about Tomas Regalado claiming that he was the poorest politician in Miami, if not in the entire country.

The reason that Regalado made that claim year after year was that he had consistently refused to list his house as an asset.  After I wrote my story I followed up with an ethics complaint against him because I thought his efforts to downplay his personal net worth was not only an act of political pandering to poor Cuban exiles who he wanted to convince that he was as poor as they were, but also because it represented an example of how little respect Regalado has shown over the years for following the rules and laws that govern being a public official.

If reporters had bothered to look at Raquelita's financial reports after I posted them as part of my original story about her committing homestead exemption fraud, they would have come across the front page of her 2015 Financal Report.

Possibly, one or two reporters might havepaid attention to the section I've highlighted with the RED ARROW, and maybe it might have caused them to go and do a quick search on the Property Appraiser's website to see whether Raquel Regalado owned any property.

Had they done so - and it takes less than a minute to do this - they would have discovered that in February of 2015, Tomas Regalado Quit Claimed the deed to his house to his son Jose (90%) and his daughter Raquel (10%).

Raquel's 10% was certainly worth more than $1000, and therefore, an enterprising reporter would have discovered that Raquelita, just like her father had done for years, had failed to list the house at 2424 SW 20th Street as an asset.

In her father's case, as I said, I filed an ethics complaint against him for his refusal to list his house as an asset, and the Ethics Commisison agreed, finding him guilty and fining him $1000.

I believe it's only fair and equitable therefore that I treat Raquelita the same way I treated her father, and therefore I'm filing an ethics complaint against her with the Florida Ethics Commission for the failure to list her 10% ownership of the house her father gave her.

I'm doing this because the issue of refusing to honestly comply with the various requirements - whether it be the annual Financial Report or the Quarterly Gift Reports - that public official are required to file goes to a larger issue about the arrogance and insolence that a depressingly large number of public officials in Miami-Dade County have towards the public's right to know.

These elected officials don't believe that they're required to follow any of these rules, unless, or until they are challenged, and then they're all too willing to spend taxpayer money and waste everyone's time in trying to argue why they should not be punished for their bad behavior.

This also goes to my original premise that I articulated in my first story about Raquel Regalado, that politicians who don't sweat the small stuff are also more likely to to try and pull the wool over the eyes of the taxpayers on the big stuff as well.

It's Miami. Bitches!