Alonso pleads guilty, says she is sorry: Former Dade Commissioner Miriam Alonso apologized 'for all the pain that our actions have brought' after she and her husband pleaded guilty to theft and.

Byline: Scott Hiaasen

Oct. 27--In 1998, Miami-Dade Commissioner Miriam Alonso penned an editorial bemoaning the plague of corruption scandals then afflicting the county, and lashing out at "the venality of certain corrupt officials." On Thursday, some eight years later, Alonso's own venality was finally laid bare: She pleaded guilty to 20 felonies for looting campaign accounts in 1998 and 1999 and trying to cover up the crimes. Her husband, Leonel, also pleaded guilty. "Are you doing so because you are, in fact, guilty?" Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Peter Adrien asked the ex-commissioner.

"Yes, sir," said Alonso, who was removed from office after her arrest in 2002. Alonso then read a prepared statement, as required by prosecutors under her plea agreement: "We hereby acknowledge our guilt, and also take this opportunity to apologize to our family, friends and the community for all the pain that our actions have brought. We now will focus on atoning for our misdeeds and fulfilling the conditions of our sentences," she said. Alonso, 65, was later handcuffed and led out of the courtroom to the county jail, where she will begin a 4 1/2-month jail sentence -- 90 days in custody followed by 45 days served on weekends. She and her husband will also serve two years of house arrest and three years of probation. The Alonsos stole more than $100,000 from political campaign accounts in the late 1990s. They disguised the thefts as campaign expenses using bogus business receipts and checks to phantom workers. Thursday's guilty pleas come nearly six years after Miami-Dade police and the inspector general's office first began investigating the couple. The Alonsos must pay those departments $250,000 to cover the costs of the probe -- on top of $105,000 in cash that Alonso's chief of staff gave to police. "Any day that you get a public official that comes before the court and admits wrongdoing and is taken away in handcuffs is a good day," said Miami-Dade police Lt. Antonio Rodriguez, the lead investigator on the case. The court case stalled for three years in a legal fight over thousands of documents seized from the Alonsos' home. A judge released most of those records last year. However, lawyers on both sides said the case was still years away from going to trial. In her 1998 editorial on corruption, Alonso noted the public's "justifiable wrath when people see that the punishment meted to its perpetrators is insignificant compared with the magnitude of the offense." But prosecutors said that ending the case was as important as settling on a fitting punishment. "The community needed to have closure. ...