Mayor Vince Lago likes to do his homework. He pores over contracts, scrutinizes special permits, questions applicants and arrives at Coral Gables commission meetings armed with details that sometimes leave those on the other side of the dais struggling to keep up.
But diligence is not measured only by how many questions an elected official asks. It is also measured by whether the same standards of scrutiny are applied to everyone.
The Oct. 27 commission meeting offered a revealing test.
For 34 years, a retired Coral Gables fire captain had sold Christmas trees at Coral Gables Baptist Church under the name of the Coral Gables Firefighter Benevolent Association. City officials came prepared to show that the association received a flat fee for the use of its name and that the business made no cash donations. The owner said he gave trees to charities instead, and he maintained that he was marketing a private business, not a charity. Lago and Commissioner Richard Lara questioned whether the arrangement provided the charitable support customers might have expected. The owner withdrew his application.
Those were fair questions. A business that invokes a charitable cause should be able to show what it gives.
Later that evening, the commission took up a company whose president faced allegations involving something far more serious, but with a revealing similarity. Matthew West, president of West Construction, had been under federal indictment since 2023, charged with using a company owned by disabled veterans as a front to win a government contract reserved for them. Lago urged his colleagues to bypass their procurement staff’s recommendation and negotiate with West Construction for the $1.2 million Art Cinema expansion. No one mentioned the indictment. Eight days later, a federal jury convicted West on all three counts, as the Gazette reported.
The two cases rhyme. Both involved businesses trading on associations with people the public honors: firefighters in one case, disabled veterans in the other. The arrangements were vastly different. The tree seller had a paid naming agreement; West was convicted of participating in a fraudulent federal contracting scheme. But the contrast in City Hall’s scrutiny remains striking. Officials subjected the tree seller’s charitable representations to a public grilling. They raised no comparable questions in public about the contractor’s president.
We do not know whether Lago or City Manager Peter Iglesias knew about the federal case. The Gazette asked directly, and the city did not answer. Its spokeswoman explained that procurement’s routine litigation searches cover the entity submitting a bid, not its principals. No comparable questions about the indictment were raised publicly when Lago advocated for West. When elected officials use their discretion over public contracts, residents should not have to guess what information they considered.
That was not the city’s first opportunity to examine the case. The commission unanimously awarded West Construction the $7.6 million Fire Station 4 contract in November 2023, weeks after the indictment became public. West was the lowest qualified bidder, staff recommended the award, and every commissioner, the mayor’s critics included, shares responsibility for that decision. The city’s records say due diligence was completed, but what that review included remains unclear.
That award became Lago’s main argument last month for choosing West again. Past performance may establish a company’s ability to deliver a project. It does not resolve unanswered questions about the integrity of its leadership.
West Palm Beach asked those questions. Before hiring West Construction for a $35.5 million park project in January 2025, its officials discussed the indictment publicly and required a plan for running the company without its president, according to The Palm Beach Post. The city hired the firm anyway. Scrutiny did not prevent the award. It helped make the decision an informed one.
Nor is it beside the point that Matthew West gave $1,000 to Lago’s political committee, Coral Gables First, and $1,000 to Lara’s campaign in 2025. Nothing shows those contributions influenced a vote, and we do not suggest they did. But relationships like these are exactly why hard questions belong in public.
The city’s procurement chief has been making the case for established procedures all fall. When Lago questioned her auditing recommendation in September, Celeste Walker-Harmon told commissioners, “The process is the process. It was open, it was fair, and it’s transparent.” The city ultimately selected her first-ranked choice, CBIZ, after negotiations with two firms. At the Art Cinema meeting, she explained that the city judges construction bids on price once companies qualify and that it does not normally negotiate after bids are opened.
The city should take its own procurement chief’s advice.
It should also close the gap its spokeswoman described. Bidders should have to disclose relevant pending criminal charges, convictions and federal exclusions involving their owners and top officers. Staff should verify those answers, weigh charges differently from convictions and give companies a chance to explain. When commissioners override a procurement recommendation, they should say why in writing, in public, before the contract is signed.
As for the Art Cinema, now that the city is seeking final offers from both bidders, the work should go to the lowest qualified bidder unless the commission can state a clear, defensible reason otherwise.
None of that requires abandoning discretion. It requires making discretion accountable.
Like him or not, Lago is a hardworking mayor, and he was right to ask whether a business that invokes firefighters actually supports them. The answer is not for Lago to ask fewer questions. It is for him, his colleagues and the city’s procurement staff to bring the same seriousness of inquiry to every business, political friend or foe, seeking something from City Hall.
Right now, it doesn’t look that way.
