Harbor Operator’s Expenses Trigger an Investigation

The Port of Miami is having a hard time explaining what lingerie, trips to Disney World and other expenses have to do with running the world’s busiest cruise ship harbor.

Dade Mayor Alex Penelas has asked the federal government to investigate the port’s finances to see if any laws were broken in light of the recently disclosed expenses.

“The findings . . . are troubling and of serious concern to Dade County taxpayers,” Penelas said. “These reports have raised public concern as to the overall financial health of the Port of Miami.”

The Port of Miami is a county department, but it has a 20-year-old contract with a company called Fiscal Operations to run its facilities.

Under the agreement, Fiscal Operations collects nearly $8 million in fees every year from ships that use the port, then takes expenses and its $150,000-a-year fee off the top before passing the remainder on to the county.

Thus, any items listed as expenses reduce the amount of money that goes into the public coffers.

The busy seaport has been losing money the last five years and now has a deficit of at least $22 million. Over the last few years, the county has collected only about $1 million annually.

Officials are studying records, obtained after a court battle, that reveal claimed expenses such as:

* More than $100,000 run up on corporate credit cards for items such as lingerie from Victoria’s Secret, bar tabs at Don Shula’s All Star Cafe, and trips to Disney World and the Florida Keys.

* Hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on Super Bowl tickets, luxury car rentals and political contributions.

* “Marketing and public relations” and “legal fees” that have roughly doubled since 1993 to nearly $400,000 last year.

“We as elected officials were as in the dark as you the taxpayers,” county Commissioner Miriam Alonso said last month. “We had no way of knowing this was happening.”

The furor has already claimed the county port agency’s longtime director, Carmen Lunetta, who was credited with building the port from a strip of reclaimed waterfront land. Lunetta resigned last month, hours after a judge ruled in a county-filed lawsuit that Fiscal Operations had to open its books.

Fiscal Operations owner Calvin Grigsby said the company’s contract allows it to spend the money any way it sees fit. Lunetta and other port officials have not given an explanation for allowing the expenses.

Fiscal Operations also has a link to the federal Operation Greenpalm corruption probe that has brought down Miami’s city manager and finance director and a city commissioner.

Last fall, FBI agents showed a videotape that investigators contend shows Grigsby and a Metro-Dade commissioner discussing a $300,000 kickback for steering business to Grigsby’s bond firm in San Francisco. Grigsby has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing.

Rex Sherman, director of research at the American Assn. of Port Authorities in Alexandria, Va., said the Miami seaport’s management structure may be to blame for the financial problems.

“The activities of the company have to be monitored,” he said. “That’s what was missing in Miami. There wasn’t that oversight.”