Next to recall? Carlos Gimenez thinks he’s always right

• Tweet
• Sumo

• Tweet

A ‘message’ to the mayor: Careful, they may veto you.

Without a doubt, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez was already walking a fine line. Last week’s last minute veto of an 8-4 decision by the county commission, for many, is just the last straw in a series of possible political abuses by the man we elected because he was so gosh darn honest and nice.

Gimenez said his veto Friday afternoon of the commission’s 8-4 decision to return the 5 percent taken two years ago from the solid waste workers – just the solid waste workers, because they are the lowest paid and because they came and cried, literally, about their case – was more of a message than policy.

He said it would set bad precedent in the upcoming negotiations with unions, all of which have “me too” clauses that reopen when other unions get benefits restored. He said there was a fairness issue, also, because he wants to have his hardline “I know better than you” attitude with all the unions, not all except one. And he said that while he was moved by the stories of financial hardship told by employees, “those economic hardships are shared by countless families throughout our communities.”

Glad he didn’t say his family, too.

But still, didn’t our relatively logical and cognizant commissioners talk about all this when they discussed and debated giving the 5 percent back to the solid waste workers at length at the impasse hearing? Or wasn’t Gimenez listening to them again?

“I don’t understand that message,” said Commissioner Xavier “Mayor Sir” Suarez, regarding the general sentiment that the message to commissioners is to stay out of his business. “He should have understood the message we sent him on that 8-4 vote. The message should have been the other way around.”

Ya think?

But the mayor who says he has an “ear to the community” seems downright deaf and is acting more like a dictator than an elected mayor, strong or otherwise. He is also not getting the message from those who say he can find the money elsewhere to save the libraries and fire services and to fund the animal services to the extent mandated by voters. That’s because he knows better than we do. He is never wrong in his mind.

Political observers have mentioned to me how they have never seen a popular mayor gain so many enemies so fast.

Now that his passive aggressive arrogance is out of the closet, Gimenez is disliked or, at the very least, distrusted by a whole rainbow of constituents: the pet lovers, the firefighters, cops and other public employees, their families and their friends, the anti-tax people, the pro-tax people, the Democrats, many Republicans. It’s become almost trendy to have a certain distaste for the mayor. The few who still like him don’t say it as much — at least not publicly.

In fact, there has been talk about a recall. Even before last week’s raffle recall was announced against Commission Vice Chair Lynda Bell , there was talk of a union-financed recall of the mayor. Fred Frost, vice president of one of the groups that is promoting the recall, told Ladra that Gimenez could very well be next.

“He’s very unpopular. And we haven’t ruled that out,” Frost said, adding that the expense was discouraging, and he should know since he was at the AFL-CIO when the union funded a campaign against the strong mayor charter change that eventually passed.

“Right now, what we’re saying is let’s get this one under our belt,” Frost told Ladra.”I think we’re sending the message already.”

Malas lenguas say that labor union leaders have been talking among themselves about funding a recall of the mayor not based on his tough stance on them – which would be a hard sell to the general public, who buys that public worker as enemy crap. No, they are going to base it on the series of gaffes and issues – even the mayor admits to “missteps” – that he’s had in just a short time.

• As soon as he got elected the first time in 2011, he hired five deputy mayors who make more than the $1.1 million needed to make the solid waste workers whole.

• 

  During his 2012 re-election campaign, he got in bed with the Hialeah hoodlums who got their hands caught in the cookie jar of absentee ballot fraud. Whether he knew it or not, the boletera who was later arrested for collecting ABs was traipsing in and out of the Hialeah campaign office of a man once elected because of his alleged integrity.

• He then sided with Dolphins Stadium owner Stephen Ross, a billionaire who donated heavily to Gimenez’s campaign, to renovate the privately-owned faciltiy on the public’s back. In fact, he brokered the unprecedented deal and then went to Tallahassee to lobby for it, despite the fact that the majority of his constituency was against it. He simply thinks we were wrong.
• He always thinks he’s right. That’s why he vetoed in March the commission decision to go with Safewrap at Miami International Airport to go with the second place bidder instead. The commission overturned that one.
• Then he flies off to Europe. He goes under the guise of an economic trade mission to a country where the unemployment is skyrocketing, but then stops over in Paris for the Air Show and Rome for a visit to the pope with one of his favorite lobbyist friends, Jorge Luis Lopez. They take pictures with the Pope. He may have come back with a new car.
• He comes back to present a budget that he says is necessary to preserve services but immediately flip flops after he learns that he won’t have the votes on the commission to pass it (or he hears from his insider group of lobbyists that a tax hike could spell his death in 2016). Instead, he presents a slash-and-burn budget that – rather than charge less than $50 more per average household – cuts library hours and fire rescue units and fails to fund animal services at the level mandated by voters in November.
• Then he cancels a budget town hall with the people in the area where he is going to get the most flak — so he can go hobnob with his Columbus High buddies and some lobbyists at the White House the day the president recognizes, 40-some years late, the Miami Dolphins perfect 1972 season.

And now, this.

Gimenez says in his veto message — very predictably pandering to votes — that he has to think of the whole community and not just the county employees he likes to use as a scapegoat for his and his lackeys misspending.

But the problem is that he, again, thinks he knows better than anyone. Wasn’t the impasse hearing a quasi judicial meeting in which the commission was acting as an arbitrator? He is on one side and the labor unions are on the other. He won every one of his arguments except for one.

Why does the mayor, one of the parties at impasse, have the right to over ride the arbitration of the elected commission? It’s like a lawyer telling a judge, “Nevermind. I’m going to do what I wanted to do in the first place.” Really? Really?

Suarez said the message is more like a slap in the face.

“If the commission accepts the mayor’s veto, it undermines not only our position, but what he asked us to do, which was to act as an arbitrator,” Suarez said. “You don’t negotiate, get to impasse, go to an impasse hearing where you are agreeing to let the board make the choice, and then, if you don’t like the outcome, veto it. This is too much power for one person.”

Observers think that he has the votes to make the veto stick. An override needs 9 votes. Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz , who was in the hospital and absent from the vote, is thought to be with the solid waste workers. But Bell, who everyone believes voted yes because she saw where the majority was going, might swing back the mayor’s way when her vote might actually make a difference. Even with last week’s raffle recall hanging over her head. Maybe especially with the recall hanging over her head.

Granted, union leaders have been working non stop over the weekend and all day Monday and Tuesday, talking to their friendly commissioners to keep them on their side. But commissioners are likely hearing from lots of people on a lot of other different matters — especially about the pets, the firefighters and the libraries. Throngs are expected at County Hall today, the last day that commissioners have to reconsider.

Ladra hopes they are listening at least on this one brazen veto and don’t back down from their previous decision.

Because the mayor sure isn’t listening to them. He already thinks he knows what is best for all of us. If the commission backs him on this one, his head will get even bigger.

  budget cuts, Carlos Gimenez