We should all have an ex like this one

Miami Herald
June 17, 2007

We should all have an ex like this one
By CARL HIAASEN

Every divorced guy would love an ex-wife like Barbara Gomez.

As the chief of Miami's public housing agency, she helped funnel more
than $1 million in city contracts to companies employing one of her
former husbands.

The lucky dude is Ruben A. Santana, a one-time Sweetwater cop and
carpet salesman. He and Gomez divorced in 1978, but apparently the
spark never died.

Gomez's theme song should be: Stand By Your Ex-Man.

Stand by him even after the FBI raids his house and finds 11 weapons,
including a fully automated AR-15 machine gun.

Stand by him even after he goes on the lam for 15 months as a federal
fugitive.

Stand by him even after he does six years in the slammer for smuggling
cocaine in a shipment of tropical fish.

When Santana got out of prison in October 2004, his loyal ex-wife was
there to help him make a new start on life. So, unwittingly, were U.S.
taxpayers.

Within weeks of Santana's release, Gomez recommended to the Miami City
Commission that federal monies be taken from a nonprofit group and
reallocated to, among other recipients, a firm that had just hired
Santana as marketing director.

The company, which provided meals for the poor, was called Judy's
Catering. It was a financial shipwreck, although its travails didn't
discourage Gomez from being generous.

During a 16-month stretch when her ex was the marketing director,
Judy's Catering got almost $700,000 in loans, grants and bids through
Gomez's department.

One hefty loan was for $300,000. Six months later, the company's phone
was disconnected, and city inspectors couldn't find the owners.

By then, Santana had popped up as executive director of a nonprofit
agency called Sunshine For All Inc., which also prepares meals for the
needy and inspects public housing for AIDS patients.

Once again, Santana's presence was providential. Since he joined
Sunshine For All, the group has received almost $300,000 and has been
promised $200,000 more.

Gomez, who has other problems relating to unorthodox loan policies at
the housing agency, insists that the funds showered upon Judy's
Catering and Sunshine for All had no connection to her ex-husband
being employed there.

In January, Gomez told the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development that she and Santana had ''no business relationship or any
type of relationship for the past 30 years,'' except for a son from
their brief marriage.

Santana has the same story. He says Gomez wasn't involved in steering
all that money to those companies.

Please. Why can't these two crazy kids just admit they still care
about each other?

Public records examined by The Miami Herald's Larry Lebowitz and Oscar
Corral show that Santana's $60,000 annual salary is paid directly from
city funds approved by his ex-wife.

If that ain't love, what is it?

The state attorney's office is asking the same question.

HUD initially ruled there was a conflict of interest, but the agency
later reversed itself. Now its investigators are reopening the case,
apparently suspecting that the good fortune trailing Santana is not
the idle coincidence that he and the former Mrs. Santana claim.

Indignant taxpayers might well wonder why funds that were meant to
provide services for the poor are paying the salary of a convicted
drug smuggler and former fugitive.

Remember, folks, it's Miami. A six-year hitch in prison is not the
worst thing you'll ever see on a résumé here.

Last week, the city's auditor blasted the housing agency for, among
other things, loaning millions to developers who never finished
promised projects and often didn't repay the loans.

As reported in a Miami Herald series, the agency demolished nine low-
income townhomes in Overtown even though they were 70 percent complete
-- and Habitat for Humanity had offered to finish them for free.

In another curious case, lobbyist Al Lorenzo was allowed to walk away
from a loan of almost a million bucks that he'd received to fix up low-
income apartments, most of which were eventually demolished because
they became slums.

The city says that no special treatment was accorded to Lorenzo, who
happened to be Mayor Manny Diaz's campaign manager in the last two
elections.

As for Diaz, he insists there's no crisis in the city housing
department, although he admits to having some concern about the large
loans and grants awarded to employers of Ruben A. Santana.

Santana isn't the only noteworthy ex-husband of Barbara Gomez. In
February, she was divorced from Rene Rodriguez, who is under criminal
investigation for his actions while he was director of the Miami-Dade
Housing Agency.

The county's affordable-housing program was an even bigger cesspit of
corruption and cronyism than the city's. How wacky that the two people
running those operations were married!

It remains to be seen if Gomez will be as helpful to Rodriguez as she
has been to her previous ex-spouse, or if her beneficence toward
Santana will endure through these troubled times.

Love works in mysterious ways, especially when the subpoenas start
arriving.
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KLM (19.06.2007 07:09)