Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago and Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson are calling for an investigation into a Tallahassee trip City Commissioner Melissa Castro made in January, citing newly published records they say show she misused public funds for personal benefit.
Castro says it’s just the latest attempt by the Mayor and Vice Mayor, with whom she’s sparred publicly for years, to discredit her. She wants to air the issue during the Commission’s next meeting.
In a press release Tuesday, Lago points to a blog post by a Substack account called Aesop’s Gables that contains numerous city documents with details about Castro’s trip. He said the documents shared in the post are accurate.
Castro, who is running for re-election, flew to Tallahassee on Jan. 23, three days before the start of a Florida League of Cities (FLC) event she previously notified the City Commission, City Manager Peter Iglesias and City Clerk Billy Urquia she’d be attending.
On the day she landed, Castro attended a meeting of the Florida Commission on Ethics, which was holding a hearing on whether she had a conflict of interest in her work as a Coral Gables official and as the head of a permit-expediting company that does business in the city.
The Ethics Commission determined there was probable cause to believe she had a conflict, which the panel said explicitly is not a finding of lawbreaking or an ethics violation.
In a travel request form submitted to the city ahead of the trip, Castro said she planned to fly to Tallahassee on Jan. 26. The form listed $481.51 for two nights at the Residence Inn by Marriott. Castro says the room was never booked.
Her later expense claim instead lists a three-night stay at the Four Points by Sheraton Tallahassee Downtown totaling $1,506.71, including hotel taxes charged after she paid with her personal card.
Also included was a list of Uber charges, one of which showed a $20.94 ride to Tallahassee International Airport on Jan. 27, one day before Castro’s return flight. Anderson suggested the ride was for another person.
The city ended up reimbursing her just $488.99 of the $2,226.16 she claimed for the trip, which ended Jan. 28 — $7.48 more than the original estimate for the two-night hotel stay. That was because Castro’s annual travel allocation had been exhausted, according to Lago.
Image and emphasis via Aesop’s Gables.
“If these records are accurate, I am outraged,” he said.
“Commissioner Castro owes our residents a complete explanation of why she traveled to Tallahassee days before the official city business she cited, what expenses taxpayers ultimately paid, and whether any of those expenses were connected to her personal appearance before the Commission on Ethics.”
In phone interviews Tuesday, Castro confirmed she indeed flew to Tallahassee three days earlier than she initially told the city in a memo where she stressed the trip was “not optional or personal,” but part of her responsibilities in representing Coral Gables.
At the time, Castro was Vice Chair of the FLC’s Development Code Compliance and Redevelopment Board. She’s now the panel’s Chair.
But she also confirmed the authenticity of an audio recording Aesop’s Gables published showing she appeared before and addressed the Ethics Commission on Jan. 23. After that, she said she rented a car, drove to Destin to visit her boyfriend, and then returned to Tallahassee ahead of FLC event’s kickoff.
Despite the extra time she spent in North Florida, Castro said she actually “saved the city money” by flying up on a Friday rather than a Sunday or Monday, when the FLC event began. Sunday and Monday are indeed generally more expensive for domestic flights than Friday, according to NerdWallet.
She noted that she still only boarded two flights, one to Tallahassee and one back to Miami, and did not include any other expenditures she incurred Jan. 23-25 in the form she submitted to the city.
“It happened to be that both those things were scheduled over there at the same time,’ she said, referring to the Ethics Commission hearing and the FLC event. “Changing the flight was more economical for the city than me just needing the flight. And was I really supposed to fly up, then back down to Miami, then back up there again 24 hours later? No. So, I just paid for my hotel.”
Castro — who, like Lago, is running for re-election this year — argued that her trip to Tallahassee included activities that were personally beneficial, the city didn’t pay a cent more than it would have spent had she only attended the FLC event.
“(The city doesn’t) own my time 100% of the time,” she said. “I get to do what I want to do, on top of the fact that I saved them money.”
Lago and the person behind Aesop’s Gables, which has published dozens of posts critical of Castro, maintain that Castro lied when she told city officials her trip had no personal motivation and that she should face scrutiny in light of information showing otherwise.
The Mayor called for full disclosure and review of Castro’s relevant travel authorizations, receipts, reimbursements, hotel charges and other supporting documents.
“Public service requires transparency, particularly when public money is involved,” he said. “You cannot tell residents that a trip is strictly official business and then leave unanswered questions about whether that same taxpayer-funded travel facilitated your attendance at a personal ethics proceeding. Every dollar needs to be accounted for.”
Image and emphasis via Aesop’s Gables, substantiated by Mayor Vince Lago.
Anderson also raised the issue during a City Commission meeting Tuesday, describing the expense forms Castro submitted to the city as an “overcharge” and questioned the Jan. 27 Uber charge.
“Those types of expenses are not appropriate, and I suggest you take the opportunity to rectify that rather than make our taxpayers pay for your personal travel when you needed to go up there for an Ethics hearing and stay in hotels for additional days,” Anderson said, adding that the original room rate Castro received approval for was significantly cheaper than the one she included in her post-trip invoice.
“IRS rules, rules that exist in the city on charges that are allowable for city events were just violated. I’ve gone on business trips many times and I don’t charge … the government for things I shouldn’t.”
Castro told Anderson that while she got to Tallahassee “earlier for personal matters,” she did not charge the city for costs related to her earlier arrival.
Lago, at City Hall, suggested to Castro that she repay the city for the rest of the trip’s costs, noting she still faced additional findings from the Ethics Commission on her potential conflict of interests.
“You have enough issues with the Ethics Commission,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s the best interest of the city to move on. … It’s a good opportunity for you to show good faith as an elected official.”
He later accused her of using the FLC trip as an excuse to use taxpayer money to fund her appearance before Ethics Commission.
“You can try to put as much smoke up as you want and confuse people, but at the end of the day, it’s just disappointing, and I’m giving you a lifeline to say, ‘Hey, I’ll just pay back the flight and get out of the way,’” he said. “It’s ridiculous.”
Castro said she felt ambushed and requested that time be set aside in the next City Commission meeting so she could go over her activities in Tallahassee and for what she did and didn’t invoice the city.
“We’re in this political environment and you want to point fingers when I’m a pretty honest person, especially when it comes to money,” she said. “I’m pretty transparent.”
The blog post, Lago’s press release and City Hall discourse come four days after Castro called for an independent authority to review Lago’s professional relationship with the University of Miami before the city approves a proposed 30-year development agreement with the school.
In a resolution, Castro pointed to Lago’s leadership of Hammer Commercial Construction, an approved university contractor that the Mayor has said spent about 22 years working on UM projects.
Lago has denied any double-dealings, saying he is a Hammer employee with no stock, equity or ownership interest in the company and that Hammer is not party to the development agreement, played no role in its preparation and would receive no money through it.
Castro and Lago have had a bitter relationship for years, frequently clashing during City Commission meetings, since Castro and outgoing Commissioner Ariel Fernandez won upset victories over better-funded opponents Lago supported in 2023.