Here we go again: Commission restores 5% under threat of veto

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Even under the threat of another inevitable veto, Miami-Dade Commissioners voted 8-5 Thursday to restore a 5% contribution for a group health care “trust fund” that county employees have been giving back to the county since 2009 and led to an impasse between the administration and 11 of the county’s labor unions.

They passed Commissioner Barbara Jordan‘s quick motion to restore the 5% — part of 16% in concessions for many if not all employees — starting in the next paycheck and to take the $57 million that move would require for this fiscal year from the trust fund’s established surplus.

The colleagues who supported her — and the county’s 25,000 employees — were Commissioners Bruno Barreiro, Jose “Pepe” Diaz, Audrey Edmonson, Jean Monestime, Dennis Moss, Javier Souto and Xavier Suarez.

But union leaders and employees are going to need one of the dissenters on the dais — Commissioners Lynda Bell, Esteban Bovo, Sally Heyman, Rebeca Sosa or Juan Zapata — to change his or her mind to override the certain veto that is coming from Mayor Carlos Gimenez.

Again.

Gimenez told a Miami Herald reporter that she didn’t even have to ask him what he would do.

“The Mayor believes the Commissioners who voted in favor of returning the 5% acted irresponsibly because they are also asking the Mayor to go into the County’s reserves to cover the shortfall,” said Gimenez spokeswoman Suzy Trutie. “The implication of using reserves to cover recurring costs will only create a bigger budget gap next fiscal year.”

Everybody saw it coming.

Sosa told TV reporters after the meeting ended abruptly and arguably early around 2 p.m. that she expected to be back in commission chambers on the matter in 10 days. On the dais earlier, she jokingly asked the county attorney “Do I have to chair the meeting?”

It was, by then, an old joke repeated often Thursday. PBA President John Rivera asked if it was Groundhog Day in reference to the movie where characters keep living the same day over and over again. Commissioner Diaz said he felt like it was an exercise in futility. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” Diaz said.

And even though the county attorney assured him that there could be a completely different outcome this time, everyone pretty much expects the veto. The mayor has 10 days to do it. But how much do you wanna bet it comes Friday night? At 8 o’clock?

Still, even when, er, I mean even if (read: when) Gimenez vetoes the 5% restoration of workers’ pay — which he has disingenuously called a pay raise on Spanish-language radio — and when, if, the commission fails to override, it’s pretty likely that the employees will get their paycheck made whole anyway. Two commissioners floated the idea of returning the concession in two parts — 3% now and another 2% in the summertime. One of those is Heyman, one of the five naysayers.

“It looks like it’s going that way because of the way the conversation drifted,” said Terry Murphy, who works for several of the unions.

“It’s just so aggravating the fact that if he can’t win at the negotiating table he then rules by minority vote,” Murphy told Ladra echoching arguments he and union attorney Mark Richards made about this impasse hearing being illegal. The PBA has challenged the mayor’s last veto, arguing that as strong mayor and chief negotiator, he can’t veto a commission mediation on impasse. It’s like one of two litigating parties telling a judge that his ruling is wrong, they said.

But the appeal of a decision by PERC to uphold the veto could take months through the 3rd District Court of Appeals. And this can and should be resolved before that.

Ladra thinks that the union leaders and members will be amenable to some now, some later approach. They just want to get this shell game — Human Resources Director Arleen Cuellar admitted it was a “smoke and mirrors” scam that was always intended as a pay cut — over with for once and for all.

“Tell me about it,” said Emilio Azoy, who represents he employees of the water and sewer department, which is a proprietary department that can absorb the cost of the 5% money grab. He, too, thinks his ranks and other employees will get their  money back even if it’s in pieces.

“That’s what we saw here today,” Azoy told Ladra.

But employees shouldn’t have to wait to get their own money — which they willingly gave when asked during hard times because they trusted they would get it back — in phases. Was it taken from them in phases?

With a little education, we should be able to turn one of those “no” votes on the full 5%. I mean, if Heyman is willing to give it back piecemeal, why wouldn’t she vote for them to get it back now? What difference does it make if they get it in July? It still comes out of the same annual budget. Would that much be saved?

And Bovo and Zapata, who have both been critical of the lack of information or downright misinformation coming out of the administration — paricularly Zapata, who laid into Budget Director Jennifer Moon recently at a finance committee meeting for what he described to me as shifting numbers — should rethink their positions in light of the fact that the mayor has been very disingenuous.

Gimenez said the unions did not want to negotiate, but labor representatives said that was not true. That they have repeatedly provided savings information and alternatives and that the mayor is the one who won’t budge. That’s not negotiating. And it’s not out of character for Mayor I Know Everything. Gimenez says this will cause service cuts and layoffs, but he doesn’t say that’s only if the county continues funding the healthcare trust fund to a surplus, which it doesn’t have to do. Remember, this is same “magician” who threatened to close libraries and fire firefighters until he, lo and behold, found funds to keep both. What do you say we keep looking, Mr. Mayor?

And it was Gimenez who refused to waive the ridiculous “isolationary period” that precludes county staff or union reps from providing the commission with pertinent information about the issue. They are supposed to make the decision in a vacuum. The unions, in the interest of transparency, were willing to waive the Sunshine like provision so that commissioners could be better informed. The mayor, who wouldn’t know the meaning of transparency if it were spelled out for him inside a Ziploc bag, was not.

But of course not! He knew he was going to issue a veto statement late Wednesday night at the 11th hour and didn’t want to level he playing field. Que cynico!

But that tells you something, folks and commissioners: Gimenez does not want you to know all the facts. No le conviene.

Maybe Sosa might be the one to appeal to. The chairwoman is a fair person. She did not want to give he 5% to some employees and not to others, even though that is exactly what the commission did when they returned the 5% to sanitation and aviation workers last year.

And she did say, after all, that she was against restoring the 5% because she feels it would lead to a hike in property taxes.

“Making a hole of this nature right now is going to force his commission to raise taxes. And I can’t be there,” said Sosa, who is up for re-election and could be in full campaign mode when the next budget talks start.

What if, Chairwoman, you can do it without raising taxes? What if you can do it using just a bit of the surplus reserves that are not doing a thing to help bond ratings, plus maybe some of the Jackson capital projects funding — now that they have that $830 million bond — and other savings identified by some of the unions themselves.

You complained about how your hands were tied because you did not have all the information and that the impasse was not the result of your actions.

“But at the end of the day, we are the bad ones here.”

You don’t have to be.

  Carlos Gimenez, labor issues