Bizarre order to mayor exposes flaw in county’s structure

What’s more bizarre than last week’s county commission order that the mayor thoroughly report the time she and staff spend filling commission orders to her to make thorough reports?

The legislation gives Mayor Daniella Levine Cava just 90 days to report to Miami-Dade commissioners the staff time and total costs of all reports written at their order over the past two years.

Actually, she’ll have to finish really early, because she is ordered to get the final draft to two agencies reporting to commissioners so they can be sure that she is adequately responding to the order and that her data are reliable. The agencies are then to report back to her so that she can revise her report based on their findings about her findings. The revised report must be on the commission’s agenda in 90 days.

She’s better get moving fast, or else.

Actually, or else what? While Mayor Levine Cava has conscientiously plowed through dozens of monthly report requests flowing from the commission, it’s a very tall order. But there is no penalty for failure, because commissioners couldn’t fire the elected mayor if she ignored every order.

Indeed, during Mayor Carlos Giménez’s tenure the Office of Commission Auditor reported quarterly on just how far behind he was in meeting commission orders for reports of every type.

The June 2017 report noted that the mayor then had 150 reports past due, even though during the past three months he had provided 102 commission-ordered reports and had reduced the past-due pile. Eighteen undone at that time had been due in 2015. One was so late that the commissioner who ordered it had already left office.

Early in Mayor Levine Cava’s term she was still pumping out reports due under Mr. Giménez.

But the mayor’s work on commission orders depends totally on goodwill. Mayor Levine Cava seems to be toiling to keep up. Her report, after it is audited by the Office of the Commission Auditor and nitpicked by the Office of Policy and Budgetary Affairs, will tell the world just how much time staff spends completing commission orders.

What the report is unlikely to state, however, is that ordering the mayor to report anything commissioners ask for at any time reveals a major flaw in county structure.

Until we got a strong mayor in 2007 in a power play and then dismissed the county manager role in 2012, the job that Danielle Levine Cava now holds was held by two people, the mayor and the manager. They had very different roles that should again exist.

The mayor then was the community’s elected political leader and spokesman. The mayor campaigned for improvements, envisioned initiatives, and was the county’s public face – hopefully working hand in hand with elected commissioners who may be from another party in a day of increased politicization. There’s a good model in how a president or governor should function.

The manager, on the other hand, was an impartial administrator. The job was to make the trains run on time, protect an effective staff from political influence, serve the public well, and carry out aims of the mayor and commission. The manager was the chief operating officer, making no policy while working equally for the mayor and commission.

The manager back then was responsible for providing all the reports and taking all those steps that commissioners demand in 90, 120 or 180 days. And those reports had better be on time, because unlike the mayor, a manager who ignored commission demands could be fired. The mayor does it today out of goodwill; the manager had to do it or else.

Under that structure, the mayor never reported to the commission any more than the commission ever reported to the mayor. They reported to the same people, the voters.

Can you imagine an elected president who must follow the orders of Congress, or an elected governor who must follow the orders of a legislature? Not likely.

But that is the awkward structure voters created, where the mayor can veto commission legislation as chief executive but reports to the commission as manager. Let’s untangle that web.
Meanwhile, the mayor must follow a strange request to report how much effort the county is expending for her to respond to strange requests.

No cause is cited for the request by Commission Chairman Oliver Gilbert III other than the commission wanting to know, as usual. No discussion last week preceded the unanimous vote to issue the order, which far too often is usual. There wasn’t even the normal committee review to kick the idea around before demanding a report for an unknown purpose and the highly unusual demand that the report be audited first by people who work for commissioners but not for the mayor.

If the ultimate report leads to filtering commission requests to melt the present blizzard of orders to the mayor down to a flurry it would be refreshing. If it then leads to review of the misguided blending of mayor and manager into a single job and seeks a countywide vote to make it happen it would be a very welcome miracle.