Carlos Gimenez a liar? Or the mayor who cried wolf?

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Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez was painted as a liar last week at the impasse hearing.

And commissioners who are likely to revisit this matter after he vetoes their 8-5 decision last week to restore the employee’s 5 % group healthcare contribution — not a pay raise, as he’s been cynically calling it on Spanish-language radio, but a restoration — should think about how truthful he is or is not before they continue to allow him to govern with an iron fist of falsehoods.

Gimenez says there is no way to restore the 5% contribution to group health care that they were scheduled to get back already without cutting services and laying employees off.

He says the unions were not willing to meet with him.

He says he offered alternatives to union leaders who want the county to simply stop taking an extra 5% from its workers paychecks to cover a healthcare trust fund hole that doesn’t exist anymore.

He says he tries and tries and that he is talking to a wall.

“For them, it’s all or nothing,” Gimenez told commissioners Thursday as the elected considered the administration’s impasse with 11 labor unions.

He says he offered one-time bonuses for the lowest paid workers and a 3.5% pay cut in lieu of the 5%, but what he didn’t say was that neither of those things were on the table for the impasse hearing. When he says that he can’t give the employees’ their money back without it resulting in cuts in services and staff, what he doesn’t say is that happens only if he continues to fund the group health care at this alarmingly unnecessary rate.

Blah, blah, blah. The mayor says a lot of things and leaves out what he doesn’t want us to know. But what can we believe?

Let’s take it one by one, shall we?

On the 3.5% paycut: “The employees wold see an increase in paycheck and county would get savings on fringes,” Gimenez said. What he didn’t say: Those county savings add up year after year as the pay cut affects everyone’s retirement. Plus, again, it’s not on the table. But it might be a glimpse at what unions can look forward to hearing about when negotiations for the next contract start this spring.

On being the better man: “Commissioners, it takes two to negotiate. We cannot negotiate alone,” Gimenez said, putting the onus of he impasse on the workers. But several union leaders and representatives have not only told Ladra about alternatives and avenues for other savings that they have proposed to deaf ears, they’ve shown her. And union leaders say they were willing to sit down and talk about the issue at hand, the 5%. But the mayor apparently wanted to talk about one-time bonuses and a pay cut, instead.

On the future: “My administration will continue to work with our labor partners to ensure a mutually acceptable resolution.” Doubt it. He will work with labor partners to jam whatever he thinks is his best plan down their throats. He  has dug his heels in, folks. Don’t you see it? Gimenez has not proven himself to be the kind of person who gets over a grudge. It can only get worse from here.

Attorney Mark Richard, who represents some of the unions and whose oration is brilliant, made the same point at Thursday’s meeting, calling the mayor’s integrity — or whatever is left of it — into question.

“What you just heard is absolutely a misrepresentation. You’re being told that the unions are recalcitrant, are not trying to bargain,” an incredulous Richards said, adding that in 30 years he has never experienced a show quite like the Gimenez Hour.

Both he and attorney Jim Casey, who represents two of the unions, said they had never seen anything like the mayor’s belligerence in their long careers. Casey has been negotiating contracts for unions since the early 70s.

“In each and every case we’ve ended up with an agreement.  But benefits have never been proposed or given to a union in a vacuum. Almost always presented in good faith… contracts are taken back to membership voted upon and then ratified by you, but in the last several years we have not seen that kind of negotiation going on,” Casey told commissioners.

“What we have seen is negotiation by impasse and veto. Negotiation by disrespect and negotiation through the media,”  Casey added. “Since 72, I have been a county employee or negotiator. I have never seen anything like this in my entire career. The end result has been negotiating by bullying.”

Said Richard: “Since 1983, I have reached contracts here under Avino, Steirheim, Perreira, Alvarez. I’ve been here through all of them.” Gimenez, he said, simply does not play fair.

In addition to calling the hearing illegal — because he PBA has challenged the mayor’s authority to veto the December decision to restore the 5% and that is going to court — he said it was a violation of the “isolationary period” for the mayor to send a veto message memo at the 11th hour, giving unions no time to respond.

“Who gives information at 8 at night to the other parties in a legal proceeding instead of cover of day?”

Someone who is not being completely forthright, that’s who.

The 5% concession given by employees starting in 2009 was supposed to fill in a hole in skyrocketing healthcare costs for the whole family of county workers. It was to be temporary. But Thursday, the mayor — adding that he doesn’t “have amnesia” — said he never meant to give it back.

“I don’t care how many times people say ‘promise.’ They can say it 10,000 times but it doesn’t make it true. If there was a promise and there wasn’t a re-opener, we wouldn’t be here talking about it,” Gimenez said, about the language in the contract that shows the 5% contribution should end this month.

And now employees have heard, straight from the mouth of Human Resources Director Arleen Cuellar, that the 5% “group health care” contribution was “smoke and mirrors” and intended as a pay cut in the first place.

Commissioner Barbara Jordan sounds like she is getting sick of the wolf cries.

“What I hear here is that we never intended to give the employees back their money because we may have to raise taxes in the future,” she said, and told Gimenez to “stop playing games.”

Commissioners consider this: If Gimenez were as honest as we once thought he was, why would he refuse to waive the “isolationary period” terms so that the unions could bring their arguments, data and ideas to commissioners themselves? My guess is that his lies gain more traction in a vacuum of information.

Union leaders — and not Gimenez — are the ones who pointed out that financial auditors have reported a $21 million surplus in the healthcare trust fund, far greater than the 60 days worth of claims that is the common standard, on the high end, to have on hold.

“How did that magical $21 million show up? They can’t afford a dollar, not a dollar,” Richard said. “We didn’t have money and now there is $21 million.”

Ladra is not the only one feeling a dejavu. Isn’t this the same thing that happened with the threats to cut libraries and how many was it? — 22 fire stations. No, just 18! No, just 11! No, just six! No, just two. No, zero!

Gimenez is the boy who cried wolf.

“Everytime we are told there’s no money, he finds some money,” Richard said.

“We don’t know if it’s voodoo money. We don’t know if it’s kabalah money,” the attorney said, drawing chuckles with some of his zingers and poking fun at the new term “cost neutral” that the mayor likes throwing around.

“What is that? An underarm deodorant,” the lawyer quipped, then got serious.

“Why can’t you find cost neural for 5% but you can for 3.5? It’s moving the cheese.”

It’s also crying wolf.

Let’s hope commissioners don’t fall for it again.

  Carlos Gimenez, labor issues, Miami-Dade budget