County budget director gets love, forgiveness for blunder

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While she may have borne the wrath of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez, county Budget Director Jennifer Glazer Moon got a lot of love, understanding and forgiveness from the commission when they voted Thursday to approve the do-over budget.

And she also got the fine imposed by the mayor lifted.

County commissioners were forced to take a revote on the final budget for 2014-15 after the state notified the county that they had published the wrong figure in the newspaper announcement on the public hearing in September. It’s a technicality and the state probably didn’t have to make the county take the vote over again.

But rather than throw Moon under the bus, as her bossman Gimenez did last month, commissioners quickly made comments to make her feel better about the blunder.

“It reminds us that we are human,” said Chairwoman Rebeca Sosa, “and that we are not the only ones who make mistakes. Especially when there are no bad intentions.”

When the meeting was over — in a record 40 minutes — Sosa went into the chambers and gave Moon a big hug.

Gimenez had suspended Moon for a day and two other budget department supervisors for up to a week. But he also said initially that Moon would have to pay for a new required advertisement out of her own pocket, something that may have cost her between $8,000 and $12,000.

At Thursday’s deja vu hearing, Commissioner Juan Zapata offered to contribute $3,000 from his district office account (read: district office slush fund) to help cover the costs of any ad.

“I’ve played a lot of team sports in my life, and I think we should all kind of stick together in victory and in defeats,” Zapata said, in what seemed like a sideways jab at the mayor.

Asked about the “fine” at the budget hearing Thursday, Gimenez backed off the harsh punishment, saying that Moon’s pay would not be docked because the county could use the savings from the suspensions to cover the costs of a new ad.

Ladra is certain that some of the backlash he received from both inside and outside County Hall when he first meted out the penalty had something to do with the back-pedalling.

  Carlos Gimenez, Juan Zapata, Miami-Dade budget, Rebeca Sosa