Commission end run around ballot box for big raise is wrong

For decades Miami Today has argued that Miami-Dade’s unfairly underpaid commissioners should ask voters for a raise. The commission has now chosen the absolute worst tactic, trying to sneak in a big raise without the required election.

Voters for years refused to amend a $6,000 commission salary for a fulltime job. Some said they couldn’t trust commissioners to be decent so why pay them decently. The commission’s stealth bid in the coming budget for a raise that was never aired in public will solidify that lack of trust.

A commissioner today has full-time work. As we noted last week, the most recent commission agenda included more than 200 items, each with backup documents. Just to ask the right questions and vote properly requires solid backgrounding. As taxpayers, we can’t afford commissioners who aren’t fully aware of what they vote on. With control over $10 billion, it’s too costly.

Then throw in committee meetings, briefings, public events, and visits with the public. That job, properly done, fully fills five days a week or more.

Back in the 1957, Miami-Dade as the state’s metropolis won the right to decide what the state decides for the other 66 counties. Our own Home Rule Charter provides that power. The state sets officials’ salaries in the other counties. We set our own, paying what then were part-time commissioners $6,000. Inflation alone would put the value at $57,000 today – never mind the increased responsibility in a far larger, more complex community. Still, we pay only $6,000.

Our last count was 13 separate efforts to get voters to amend the charter and raise commission pay, if only to allow people who are not independently wealthy, subsidized by an employer or on the take to be able to do the job full time. 

We have called on commissioners repeatedly to have the guts to ask voters again to raise the charter’s pay level. While it may not be obvious that paying a real salary can get the job done better, not paying a fair salary can lead to cutting corners and skirting decency.

Instead of confronting the issue squarely, however, commissioners just tried the back door. They budgeted without public discussion a $60,000 a year raise in fringe benefits, including increasing pre-retirement contributions from $11,500 to $61,000. That’s an end run around the ballot box. 

The bottom line would have commissioners paid $6,000 salaries but pocketing pay and benefits totaling $138,000.

The total isn’t unreasonable, but the way they’re trying to get it is wrong, without ever airing it in public or honoring the charter provision that only the voters can give raises. The only vote on this would be by 13 commissioners who are raising their own compensation.

It’s pretty soft when you can more than double compensation without asking the boss. But it’s not right. 

Look at the other 66 counties. Commission pay there is set by a formula in state statutes based only on population – the more residents, the more commissioners get. 

This year in Liberty County, Florida’s smallest with 8,575 residents, commissioners get $28,973 for a very parttime job. In the four largest counties, the state sets commission pay at $106,176.

One of those four largest, however, is Miami-Dade, and by charter we opt out and pay $6,000. That’s just not right. 

In fact, the $138,000 that commissioners have slipped silently into the budget without debate is about right, but it’s the wrong way to do it. It’s almost like a store clerk who feels he’s underpaid so he pockets money from the cash register to make up for it. That’s criminal.

What commissioners are doing is not criminal. It’s perfectly legal. They’ve found a loophole – if their taxpayer bosses don’t pay them what they think they deserve, they’ll just take it without asking the bosses.

This budget is coming up for another hearing. We hope that enough taxpayer bosses will turn up to complain that commissioners will rescind their bids to slip money out the side door. That hearing is at 5 p.m. Sept. 20 in commission chambers at the Stephen P. Clark Center, 111 NW First St. Throwing rotten tomatoes is not permitted.

We have called on commissioners to ask the public for fair pay not only because it is good for them but because it is also good for the taxpayers. We get what we pay for.

Underpaid restaurant employees should not make up for it by taking food out the back door, and underpaid commissioners should not make up for it by trying to slip a raise out the back door in outsized benefits that they just hand themselves. Both are just plain wrong. 

If you want a raise, have the guts and decency to ask your bosses for it, don’t just pocket it.