As expected, Alex Fernandez, the aide to Miami Beach Vice Mayor Deede Weithorn, was fired from his city job by the newly-elected mayor Tuesday for endorsing the opponent in the recent mayoral election.
The city will defend its action by saying that Fernandez was an at-will employee.
But everybody knows that it was because he got involved in the election. Political payback for getting behind the wrong guy. Because another aide who supported the right guy, Mayor Philip Levine, was rewarded with a better job.
Even though we’ve all seen it coming since Levine was elected, it just doesn’t smell right.
I called the mayor to ask him why Fernandez was fired and Leonor Hernandez, who worked for Commissioner Jonah Wolfson and took time off to work for the mayoral campaign, was promoted to his office. I was transferred to Hernandez’s extension and left her a message. But… awkward.
“I feel like I am being singled out,” Fernandez said, adding that he did not sign a document that the Human Resources department presented him with. “It said something about how my terms of service was up. But I know the reason I was terminated was retaliation.
“Why am I being fired and Leonor is being hired by the mayor’s office?”
Good question. Especially if everything Ladra hears about Hernandez got out of her property code violations, her foreclosures, her abysmal credit report and how she was able to buy a $300,000 house anyway — folks joked on the campaign trail that Levine bought it for her but she has allegedly told people it was an inheritance — is true (and I’m looking into it for more on that later).
Is this how Levine plans to clean up City Hall?
Ladra called Levine’s Chief of Staff Alex Miranda, who I was told started with the city staff on Monday (man, that was a quick process!). I left a message for him, too, but I’m not holding my breath. Miranda, who couldn’t kick me out of the swearing in like he blocked me from a mayoral campaign event to defend first amendment rights, has not answered one of several emails I have sent him since he blocked me from asking the mayor any questions in person after the swearing in Monday. “Let him have his day,” Miranda said after shaking his head no. And maybe, in hindsight, it was too courteous of me to do so.
Because I really do think we need an explanation now that Levine is not acting as the CEO of his own private company, where he can fire anyone for any reason (within some limitations), but as a public servant elected to govern and represent a community, not retaliate against those who supported former Commissioner Michael Gongora against him.
About an hour before he was fired, Fernandez sent a memo to the Human Resources department to report what he called an increasingly “hostile work environment” since he had heard from his boss, the vice mayor, that she was being pressured to let him go “simply for engaging in activities protected by the first amendment.”
There is weight to the argument that it was a little boneheaded of Fernandez to mail out an endorsement letter, whether or not he has the right to, when he works in that kind of environment and in a position that is controlled by the mayor. But if it was wrong for him to get involved, then it was wrong for Hernandez to get involved. And both should be treated equally.
One would think that Weithorn would have put her foot down (like I heard Commissioner Ed Tobin did for his aide), but according to Fernandez, she had been threatened with losing the juicy finance committee if she balked. So she crumbled.
“She said she was goig to defend him and then she didn’t,” Gongora told Ladra Tuesday, adding that he felt some personal guilt knowing Fernandez paid a price for supporting him.
“I knew last week when it went around that she wouldn’t get a committee if she didn’t get rid of him. It was a matter of when, not if Alex was going to be fired,” Gongora said.
People have told Ladra that this makes her look weak. But maybe she is secretly the architect of Fernandez’s public exposing of what looks like obvious political retaliation. She was out of town this week — didn’t stick around for the swearing in, after which she was voted as Vice Mayor again (with giggles from the dais) — traveling to see family for the holidays. But she seemed sort of defeated and frustrated when she called me back Tuesday afternoon.
“The charter clearly states it’s the mayor’s purview,” Weithorn told Ladra. “I did call the legal department. I asked what were my rights. I have none. I was clearly told the mayor could fire him.”
She said she didn’t sign the termination form and would have no reason to fire Fernandez, who has done a good job for her for almost two years for a salary of about $50,000. “There’s been no performance issue,” Weithorn said, adding that while she knew it was coming, she had not been notified until Ladra called her.
Weithorn also said that she may not hire another aide if the person has to be approved by Levine, even though he told her when they met Friday that he would not block any “reasonable” applicant. (Of course, he gets to define reasonable).
The Vice Mayor also confirmed that there had been pressure to fire Fernandez and that she had been threatened with losing the finance committee (read: relevance on the commission) and choice boards if she made any move to save Fernandez.
“Nothing directly from the mayor,” she said, and everybody knows that Miranda is the one doing Levine’s wet work.
But even though the mayor has the right to fire Fernandez, via the charter, it certainly looks like the wrong thing to do.
“This is a case of ‘to the victor go the spoils.’ But I do think there’s a problem firing a sitting commissioner’s aide,” said former Miami-Dade Commissioner Katy Sorenson, founder, President and CEO of the Good Government Initiative, a University of Miami program that offers training on policy-making and ethics to newly-elected officials.
“I can’t imagine any mayor in Miami-Dade County firing staff of a county commissioner,” Sorenson said, adding that this move — particularly on the day after the mayor was sworn in, or his first day of real work — could have reverberating effects.
“It tells us that he’s going to assert his power right from the get-go and make it very clear he’s in charge,” Sorenson said. “I’m sure it will have the effectiveness he wants. It’s going to make people nervous. Unfortunately, that can result in a morale problem.
“That’s a consequence that he has to be on the look out for. If everyone feels that their job is at risk, it will lead to bad morale and inefficiency,” said Sorenson, who thinks Levine is a good candidate for the next class and is going to invite him.
“The problem with setting this kind of tone is that he is creating a climate of fear. And when you have a climate of fear, you don’t really get the best out of people,” Sorenson said.
Ladra keeps coming back to Fernandez’s question: “Why am I being fired and Leonor is being hired by the mayor’s office?”
Nobody has been able to answer yet. Because, while everyone expects the supporters of the victors to rise in power along with their benefactors, nobody expects their political speech to be stifled in this country. Or we shouldn’t be conditioned to, anyway. While everybody expects Gabrielle Redfern, former Mayor Bower’s chief of staff, to be let go after her boss fails to be re-elected, nobody expects the aide of a sitting commissioner who stayed out of the fray to get axed just because the mayor feels like it.
Neither Gongora nor Weithorn nor Bower could recall anything like this happening before.
“Alex had never been reprimanded,” Gongora said. “I think it is highly unusual for a commission aide anywhere to be fired directly by the mayor.”
Fernandez, who is technically on leave until Friday when the termination takes effect, has spoken to an attorney to see if he can get an answer.
I’ll keep asking, too. Stay tuned.
Miami Beach: A tale of two aides, Fired and Hired added by Ladra on
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