Norman Braman did not talk taxes with Mayor Gimenez

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Several people have wondered out loud whether Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s sudden change of heart on the budget, setting a flat tax rate, had anything to do with Norman Braman and a possible threat at a recall like the one that paved the way for his existence.

I mean, all electeds cower at the auto magnate’s political wrath and — since he owns several prime acres of real estate in Midtown — he hates property taxes.

But Braman – who single-handedly financed the ouster of former Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez – told Ladra he had nothing to do with it.

Still, the motor mogul – who is concentrating his political muscle (read: money) this year on the campaign for Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado — thinks that what Gimenez has done is “shameful.”

His word, not mine. But I would use it, too.

“It is very sad to close libraries and lay off firemen. I don’t know where the Mayor’s priorities are,” Braman wrote to me in an email. “He was in favor of hundreds of millions for Steve Ross, a multi-billionaire, signed a labor agreement that allowed a large number of county employees to be paid substantial salaries for union work only, that amounts to a little over $2.5 million annually.

“With a little sacrifice spread through various departments and curtailing the type of three-week taxpayer-paid trip that the mayor along with staff, etc., took to Spain and doing away with the county commissioners’ slush funds, the libraries would remain open,” Braman continued.

“What did the trip to Spain cost and the other trips Commissioners and others went on, at taxpayers’ expense?”

Ladra is looking into that (read: more on that later). But Braman is only one of several people who think that there is enough fat in the budget already to help close the gap into which the mayor wants to throw 20-some libraries and 149 firefighters.

This is an open invitation for readers to tell me what else – besides the junkets to Spain – they think we can stand to lose instead.

  Carlos Gimenez, firefighters, Miami-Dade budget, Norman Braman, recall