unanimously voted to send an ethics complaint<\/a> against Martinez to a special prosecutor for further investigation last week.<\/p>\nThe initial complaint alleges Martinez, who is up for reelection this year, used her position to help her friend Lisandra Roman get a special permit for an event at her Kissimmee restaurant, Lechonera El Jibarito, in an area where Martinez also runs a food truck business.<\/p>\n
The second complaint alleges Martinez failed to disclose a business relationship with a Kissimmee cake shop, Kenny\u2019s Cakes and Bakery, and alerted them of the city\u2019s small businesses grant program.<\/p>\n
The relationship allegedly stems from Martinez\u2019s food truck businesses that she runs alongside her husband, Coqui Kitchen, using the same address as the bakery. Martinez said she didn\u2019t receive any money from the cake shop and denied being business partners, but instead paid them to park the food truck there. She also said she paused her food truck business in order to focus on her reelection this year.<\/p>\n
The complaint also alleges that Martinez, who runs her own notary company, improperly participated in the process when she notarized the shop\u2019s application for the program. The cake shop\u2019s application was approved and they were awarded $10,000, the complaint says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI notarized the application\u2026that is my job,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to take anything from anyone. I am here to serve and to show transparency.\u201d<\/p>\n
Notaries attest to the validity of a signature and the signer\u2019s identity on official documents, and aren\u2019t necessarily endorsing the contents of the document. According to the Notary Public Professional Code of Responsibility, they cannot \u201crefuse to perform a lawful and proper notarial act without due cause.\u201d<\/p>\n
A notary manual published by the Florida Governor\u2019s office in 2019 bars notarizing a person\u2019s signature on a document only if that person is \u201cthe spouse, son, daughter, mother, or father of the notary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her accuser Fetzer denied any wrongdoing himself during a commission meeting last week and called any allegations against him \u201cfalse and defamatory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ethic complaints against Kissimmee Mayor Espinosa were also sent to a special prosecutor last week. The complaint against Espinosa alleges she personally benefited from leading the expansion of the city\u2019s premier small business grant program after businesses tied to her family applied and received nearly $50,000. It also alleges the firing of the city attorney in February was retaliatory after Olga Sanchez de Fuentes raised ethical concerns directly to Espinosa internally for accepting the grant money.<\/p>\n
A special prosecutor has already been appointed to begin investigating the initial complaints both against Martinez and Espinosa, she said. The special prosecutor has 90 days to investigate and present the research to the city commission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kissimmee commissioner Janette Martinez proclaimed her innocence against two ethics complaints against her, claiming they are politically motived…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[28,1975,114,266,115,139,141,140,1976,99,109],"class_list":["post-251331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-florida","tag-kissimmee","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-osceola-county","tag-politics","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}