Miami has been fashionable. City Hall is in turmoil.

Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez has visited early primary states in recent weeks to contemplate a Republican presidential run based on the premise that his trendy city has boomed in troubled times — calling it “the Miami miracle.” he it. Techies have come to the city from San Francisco. New York bankers. Taxes – and the murder rate – are low.

It makes for a rosy story, not untrue.

At the same time, a very different story recently unfolded about Miami in a drama-filled civil trial against a city commissioner accused by a pair of businessmen of violating their First Amendment rights by putting inspectors on their bars and restaurants in political retaliation. Testimonies from a parade of former government employees portrayed City Hall as a toxic workplace, riddled with dysfunction.

On Thursday, a jury ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, holding the commissioner, Joe Carollo, liable for more than $63 million in damages.

Miami has long been a city of confusing stories, the airbrushed image it projects to outsiders often obscuring the complicated reality that lies beneath. But nowadays the contrast between the Miami brand and the ins and outs at City Hall seems particularly stark.

Beneath the city’s shiny post-pandemic hood lies the inner workings of a local government in turmoil. The trial and revelations came at a pivotal time as Miami teems with new residents whose arrivals have put a strain on services, housing and roads, and as Mayor Suarez, who took office in 2017, considers capitalizing on the city’s popularity to run for higher office.

The mayor was not involved in the process, but a national campaign would re-examine the issues in City Hall under his auspices, a reminder that Miami has never been more easily summed up than his marketing pitch.

“Miami is not the glamorous place everyone believes,” said Manolo Reyes, a city commissioner who was not on trial. “We have problems, and we need to solve and address those problems.”

There are disturbing signs after the trial. A federal judge ordered the city last month to draw new commission districts after discovering that commissioners — there are five who make up the city’s legislative body — racially overstepped the boundaries last year. Last week, a former spokesperson for Mr. Suarez pleaded guilty to receiving sexually explicit photos of a 16-year-old boy after first meeting him at City Hall in 2019.

In April two black officers filed a whistleblowing case to the Miami Police Department, who said they faced discrimination and retaliation after reporting corruption. In January, a retired police sergeant converted her radio signal shoot the chief for “destroying” the department.

Mr. Suarez — who will face Governor Ron DeSantis, with whom he has sometimes openly disagreed, as he enters the Republican primary — does have some data to brag about: wages and salaries have risen more than in most other major metropolitan areas. The unemployment rate is lower than the national average. The real estate market remains vibrant, albeit slightly less than during the pandemic, in contrast to the recent downturn in other major cities.

“I focus on the results and the results are very clear,” Mr. Suarez, a 45-year-old Cuban American and the president of the US Conference of Mayors, said in a recent interview. “That says the Miami model is a working model that is scalable in urban America.”

But Miami also ranks as one of the most unaffordable cities in the country for housing. It consistently has one of the highest rates of income inequality.

At City Hall, spending has stalled on a $400 million bond that voters approved in 2017 to address widespread flooding, lack of affordable housing and other infrastructure issues. The police has its third chief in three years. The city attorney and her relatives are faced with questions on whether companies they owned or helped financially benefit from a county-led program now under investigation.

After repeated run-ins with the city commissioners, which included pushing his police chief out in 2021, Mr. Suarez turned around and worked on his notoriety. He found a niche by posting videos online about his recovery from Covid and later promoting the city. He famously responded to a venture capitalist proposing to move Silicon Valley to Miami in 2020 by posting on Twitter: “How can I help?”

He also promoted cryptocurrency heavily, calling Miami the “crypto capital of the world” before it collapsed last year.

Mr. Suarez has come under increased scrutiny following a series of revelations by The Miami Herald about his failure to disclose financial interests, including that a developer paid him at least $170,000 the past two years to help with a $70 million project.

“I don’t know why my local newspaper is obsessed with how many jobs I do,” he said said on the CBS news program ‘Face the Nation’ on Sunday. “I think they should focus on the job of mayor, which I think I do an excellent job at.”

Mr. Suarez, who is in his second and final term, has declined to disclose its advisory clients. He receives compensation of about $130,000 for his part-time job as mayor, though his power — and, according to critics, any credit he can claim — is limited: He has no committee vote, but can veto legislation and hire the city manager and fire. (A separate mayor and commission run Miami-Dade County, a much larger government whose mayor has broad executive powers.)

Former mayor Tomás Regalado, Mr. Suarez’s predecessor and a fellow Republican, who is considering running for mayor again, called Miami “ethically challenged.”

“The city is going through a very difficult situation administratively because you have a city commission where every commissioner believes that he is the mayor and the manager,” he said. “And you have an absent mayor.”

At trial, Mr. Carollo, a city commissioner and former mayor, stood up to two businessmen, Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla, who said that Mr. Carollo “armed” the code enforcement department against them for being Mr. Carollo’s opponent in supported in 2017.

Mr. Carollo, a Republican who at age 68 has been a bombastic figure in Miami politics for decades, countered that his actions were intended to preserve residents’ quality of life and ensure that plaintiffs’ properties , some of which had fallen into disrepair, were restored. safe and working with proper permits. During the trial one night it was noticed that one of their bars was running an illegal boxing ring.

Mr. Fuller and Mr. Pinilla have extensive properties in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami; Mr. Fuller is a co-owner of Ball & Chain, a popular bar and nightclub. The plaintiffs’ attorney said their companies had been sued 84 times for code violations. One company had to move and another had to close.

The jury found Mr. Carollo liable for $15.9 million in punitive damages and $47.6 million in punitive damages.

The trial, which began in April, was riddled with bizarre allegations and startling anecdotes, including that Mr. Carollo patrolled the plaintiffs’ properties late at night and wanted an aide to secretly distance one of their businesses from a church. measure, looking for reasons to revoke a liquor license.

Mr. Carollo, who took the stand for several days, called prosecutors’ witnesses — including a former city manager, three former police chiefs and several former assistants to Mr. Carollo — liars with personal “grievances.”

“I would take my criminal record against anyone in town,” he said.

In the recent interview, Mr. Suarez dismissed the process. “It’s typical for the press to focus on things that are negative,” he said.

The city spent at least $1.9 million in legal fees to defend Mr. Carollo, who could appeal the verdict on Thursday. But a more serious case looms for City Hall: The corporate entity that owns the Ball & Chain nightclub has filed a separate lawsuit against the city, not the commissioner, for $28 million in business losses.

That process is pending.