During the next few years, Zayon bounced around from TV station to TV station, eventually ending up at Office Of Cuba Broadcasting, while at the same time forging a relationship with attorney John H. Ruiz, with whom he became a director of Ruiz’s, La Ley Broadcasting School, part of a larger vertically integrated mini-conglomerate of La Ley enterprises, including La Ley Sports and La Ley TV.
In October of 2010, Zayon applied for the job of Communications Director for the City. Even though he was the Mayor’s “4th son,” Zayon had 2 major problems when he applied for his job: First he wasn’t qualified, and secondly, the city had a hiring freeze.
Both of those problems were quickly overcome when he received waivers signed by then City Manager Carlos Migoya and Chief Financial Officer Larry Spring. There’s no sense being the Mayor’s “4th son” if you can’t get preferential treatment for a job you’re not qualified for.
Zayon celebrated his new $70,000 job by buying a new car. What is it with these guys and German cars? First Bert Gonzalez at the CRA went out and got a fancy new BMW X6, when he got his salary doubled, and then Zayon went and got a new Mercedes.
ZAYON WASTES NO TIME IN SCREWING THE POOCH
The story up to this point would be enough for most people to roll their eyes, and comment about the Banana Republic nature of Miami politics, but the REAL story starts here.
You see, Zayon came into the job of Communications Director with the intention of continuing to work for La Ley. First, as mentioned above, Zayon is a director and pitchman for La Ley Broadcasting School.
For the record, Zayon is listed in Florida Corporate Filings as 1 of the 2 directors of La Ley Broadcasting School.
And to keep his hand in the broadcasting arena, every evening from 6 to 7 PM, you can see him host an hour long TV show for La Ley on Gen TV, Channel 8 on Comcast.
Gen TV, Channel 8, is also the home of TV Marti, which airs a nightly show hosted by Zayon’s “big brother” Tomas Regalado Jr, the Mayor’s “1st son.”
Zayon has made no secret of this continuing relationship La Ley, as evidenced that on the afternoon of January 5th, when standing outside City Hall with a number of TV reporters, I personally heard him respond to a question from a reporter from one of the Latin TV channels who asked him if he was still doing stuff with La Ley, responding yes, he was.
Of course, why such an admission would not have triggered an alarm bell going off in a “reporter’s” brain is an entirely different story about how this level of corruption continues to go unreported in Miami, but I’ll deal with that one day soon.
Zayon is a full-time City employee, and therefore should be on the City clock until 5 PM. The traffic from the MRC building to the studio takes him right into the middle of rush hour traffic heading West out of the city, and given that he needs some time before the start of the show to prep, every day that Zayon has appeared on TV, he’s been screwing the City, not to mention all the other times he disappears, such as Friday the 14th, when he left the MRC building at 2:55 PM, with a very attractive, dark haired woman. They headed West on SW 8th Street, and North on 5th Avenue and then, like Hansel & Gretel, they disappeared over the hill to Grandma’s house.
Zayon as of this writing has never filed for a waiver to allow him to moonlight, nor, as a $70,000 Department Director, would he normally be allowed to do so, especially since moonlighting as a TV host while being the City’s Communication Director represents a lot more than just screwing the pooch financially.
LA LEY IS IN THE HOUSE
If this wasn’t enough to qualify Zayon as the top Pooch Screwer currently in the City, Zayon, within weeks of becoming Communications Director for the City, arranged so that La Ley was allowed to broadcast live from the annual City of Miami Christmas Tree Lighting at City Hall - the only show and station to do so - and, before the show ended Commissioners Suarez, Gort, Carollo and City Manager Migoya made cameo appearances, along with Zayon himself. The stars of the show however were the Mayor and his daughter Raquelita.
The segment with the Mayor starts with John Ruiz, owner of La Ley, effusively praising the Mayor, saying, “There are many people that like to criticize, but I’m going to tell you from my heart - and it’s the truth - you are doing a fabulous job...”
“SISTER” RAQUELITA RELAGADO SHOWS THAT THE FRUIT DOESN’T FALL FAR FROM THE TREE WHEN IT COMES TO LOOKING OUT FOR HER “BROTHER”
On Thursday, January 13th, the Miami Herald published a story about the Miami-Dade School Board considering whether to start broadcasting student athletic events. (See copy below.)
And who suggested the idea? Why, none other than new school board member Raquel Regalado.
And whose company was it that she recommended do the broadcasting? Why, none other than La Ley Sports, which is tied to La Ley Broadcasting School, which is tied to La Ley TV Show.
How sweet is all that. “Daddy” Regalado arranges for “4th” son to get a cushy job at City Hall for which he’s unqualified for, and “sister” Raquelita is in there pitching to help “4th” brother land a deal for John Ruiz, Zayon’s partner, and employer to get the School Board to grant his company the right to broadcast high school sports, and to essentially do it by putting these shows on late night TV and selling advertising.
As for providing this service to the School Board for “free” as mentioned in the Herald article, why not. La Ley owns the broadcast equipment, the production costs are minimal, and they make their money from selling advertising. Additionally, the real hustle is in the ability of the broadcasting school using the connection to the Miami-Dade School Board to hustle prospective students and using Zayon’s City connections to provide credibility.
Hustling the young and gullible with dreams to cough up big bucks for “training,” is a time honored tradition when it comes to acting and broadcasting schools.
Now, to be very clear, Zayon is not identified as an owner of La Ley Sports in corporate records, but he is a director of La Ley Broadcasting School, and he is the host of La Ley’s nightly TV show, and since this is a vertically integrated mini-conglomerate, they all feed into one another.
While John Ruiz is the ultimate benefactor of all of this, he’s just taking advantage of an opportunity and has no legal culpability as it relates to my claims about the unprincipled and self-dealing behavior exhibited by Zayon. That Ruiz was able to tell Regalado that he’s doing a fabulous job as Mayor on a show arranged for by Zayon in front of City Hall, is just serendipitous, and I guess for Raquelita, that, along with looking out for “brother” Angel, was good enough to convince her to pitch La Ley to her fellow school board members.
The ultimate responsibility and blame for the sleaze and corruption by his “4th son” lies with the Mayor who sanctioned Zayon to be hired.
IN CONCLUSION
And so, we come to the end of this little tale of cronyism, abuse of power, self-enrichment, and general sleaziness that shows that the Regalado family operates pretty much like a crime family when it comes to making sure that everybody pitches in to help the favorite “son” get a piece of the action when Daddy is the Boss of Bosses.
To have an unqualified, moonlighting, self-enriching, smart mouth, political zealot as the mouthpiece of the City of Miami at this time is both somehow appropriate, yet extraordinarily astounding.
For this guy to blatantly be on TV every night - on the same TV channel that the Mayor’s son Tommy is on later in the evening - is just about as in-you-face, FUCK YOU, as you can get! If the Mayor knew, then he’s culpable, and if he didn’t, he a complete moron, totally clueless and unworthy of being Mayor of Podunk, much less Miami!
Additionally, with Zayon’s arrival, La Ley now appears to be an appendage of the City’s Communication’s Department. They not only got exclusive access for the Christmas Show, but La Ley Broadcast School’s Melina Munoz, co-hosted the City’s Christmas Show, and Zayon made no secret that he planned to used La Lay Broadcast students as interns.
What’s probably depressing for some, yet not unexpected, is to find Raqueita Regalado, 60 days into her term on the School Board, acting as a shill for Zayon and Ruiz.
The Regalado’s, and so many others in City Hall, believe that they have complete entitlement to lie, cheat, enrich themselves, their families and their friends, and generally just shit all over the citizens of the City of Miami.
Sadly, a dollar to a donut says that Tony Crapp will do nothing, while again claiming he needs to consider all the facts. The Mayor will defend Zayon as a fine public servant and a “member” of his family. Raquelita will bristle at being called a shill, the State’s Attorney will stick her thumb up her ass and spin in circles like a Dervish as she continues to look for ways to ignore what’s going on, because short of a murder in City Hall, she’s not going to do anything about the corruption that you can stumble over anywhere you turn in the city, starting with her own admission that the Chief of Police lied about supplying her office the files on all the murder cases, and everyone else will say, “Damn, how much more sleazy and crazy can it get?”
Trust me readers, my tales of sleaze and crazy are only now beginning for real! This is Miami, Bitches!
Regalado then responded in kind by thanking Ruiz for La Ley’s support and participation in a Thanksgiving dinner for a group of poor people staying in Miami motels. During the Mayor’s thanking Ruiz, the show, using what is called B Roll, inserted video footage of the Thanksgiving Dinner.
This was a live program, and the insertion of B Roll footage from the Thanksgiving Dinner could only happen if the footage was racked and ready to insert, supporting the claim that the show was pre-scripted, and that Regalado fully knew what was going on, and didn’t just wander over to say “Hi.”
As the Director of Communications, Zayon was responsible for authorizing this show, and the simultaneous broadcast on the City’s Channel 77, which not surprisingly, included as one of the hosts, Melina Munoz, who’s featured in La Ley Broadcast School videos.
It’s also been confided to me that Zayon had let it be known that he would be bringing in La Ley Broadcast School students to work as interns in the Communications Department
While the jury might be out on whether Tomas Regalado was consorting with gamblers and trying to tamper with his police department’s raids against illegal video games, there is no denying that Regalado’s administration is riddled with cronyism and corruption that can be tied directly to him.
Take Angel Zayon, who was appointed the City of Miami’s Interim Director of the Office of Communications on November 3, 2010.
Zayon, long a fixture in the Latin radio and TV world, is perhaps best known in that community for being bitch slapped by a member of the Alliance Of Workers Of The Cuban Community, during a 1997 press conference, when Zayon, then working as a reporter for WSCV-51, was accused of insulting Andres Gomez, a leader of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, opposed to the Cuban embargo.
Following that episode, Zayon went on to try his hand in politics, first running against now US Senator, Marco Rubio, for a Florida State Representative seat, and then for a seat on the Miami-Dade School Board in 2008.
Word inside City Hall today is that the Mayor has managed to piss the Marco Rubio people off by employing Zayon, because during that State Legislative race, Zayon, with his usual flair for smart-mouth comments, allegedly called Rubio gay.
Rubio’s people have neither forgotten or forgiven this baseless slur, and given the City’s precarious financial state, pissing off a new U.S. Senator who could help with trying to get the City federal money is another problem the City faces.
To top it off, Zayon, as the Director of Communications, has become the gatekeeper for all of the “City’s media relations,” and will “serve as the sole liaison with the media..,” the result of the new order issued by City Manager Tony Crapp, as part of his effort to stem the growing leakage of information from angry city employees.
Unquestionably, this is less than an auspicious beginning for someone in charge of polishing the City’s image, and on the job for a little over 2 months.
WHO IS ANGEL ZAYON, AND HOW DID HE BECOME A CITY EMPLOYEE?
On November 12, 2007, during his swearing in as a Miami City Commissioner, Tomas Regalado, asked Zayon to join him and the rest of his family on the dais, introducing him as his “4th son.” (Click on video.)
The most interesting participant in this show was the Mayor’s daughter, Raquelita Regalado, Zayon’s “sister.”.
