County commissioners try to raise their own salaries on the down low. How Miami of them | Editorial

It’s not a good look for elected officials to ask for a raise when so many Miami-Dade residents can’t keep up with the skyrocketing cost of living in South Florida. If you’re a county commissioner, you either a) air out the issue and make a valid case to your constituents, or b) sneak into the budget a 130% increase in pay and benefits for yourself.

This is Miami-Dade County. Guess which way our commission went.

But, alas, Herald reporter Doug Hanks sniffed out something odd going on and reported that buried in the proposed county budget is a measure to raise compensation and retirement benefits for the 13 county commissioners from about $60,000 a year to $138,000.

The new pay rates were not listed in Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s 2023 budget proposal. Or in the commission’s published budget reviews. There was no discussion about it during a Thursday hearing.

The proposed pay hike would be put into effect by a 455-page ordinance that implements the county budget, passed on a 9-3 vote Thursday. Commissioners Jose “Pepe” Diaz, Joe Martinez and Raquel Regalado voted against it. Commissioner René Garcia did not attend the meeting.

But there’s no mention in that ordinance of the pay-hike plan itself. It was only on Friday night — the day after the budget hearing — that the Office of Management and Budget released it, the Herald reported.

We’re talking about an additional $1 million a year in taxpayers’ dollars. And there are no public hearings or advance notice about it? We smell something fishy, too.

The budget is not finalized, so the commission and the mayor have a chance to rectify this. We hope they will at least grant the taxpayers a separate discussion on this item in their next budget meeting — and that Levine Cava will make her feelings known about this proposal. Her office has said pay hikes were not her idea, but proposed by the County Commission, though by which commissioners exactly is unclear. A spokeswoman told the Editorial Board that, “The pay plan was released this year in the same way that it’s always been — it was distributed prior to the first public hearing, as required, and placed on the county website following the hearing.”

But the mayor’s administration put the budget together. Still, her office did not specify where she stands on the issue.

“The Board of County Commissioners proposes their own office budget each year and it’s up to the Board to vote on and approve the budget. I look forward to hearing further discussion about this item and the rest of the budget at the final hearing next week,” Levine Cava’s office wrote in an email.

Hiding behind a complicated budget process that few people understand does everybody a disservice. Commissioners are already looking too vested in their own job security after the Herald reported on a proposal to allow them to become “ambassadors” once they leave office. As consultants to the county, they would receive $25,000 a year to show up at things like ribbon-cutting ceremonies and to host dignitaries. That creates an end-run around voters, 77% of whom said in 2012 commissioners needed to be term-limited.

Voters have also said — six times in the past 20 years — they don’t want to pay commissioners more. That perhaps explains why no one wants to publicly lay claim to the compensation proposal.

This work-around gives the impression our elected officials are trying to put one over on taxpayers. That’s a shame, because commissioners can make a valid case that they make comparably less than their counterparts in other local government bodies. Not paying them enough ensures that only the well-off and well-connected have the financial stability to run for office.

The 2017 County Charter Review Task Force recommended setting commission salaries at about $100,000 to match a state formula used for government employees. That’s roughly how much city of Miami commissioners earn per year to run a municipality of 440,000 residents, the Herald reported. Miami-Dade County has 2.6 million people. Some cash benefits for county commissioners are still set at 1998 levels, according to a 2021 review by the board’s Office of Policy and Budgetary Analysis. Their pay, without retirement benefits, is currently $50,000.

The Miami-Dade County Commission should present these numbers to the public in a transparent process that doesn’t leave taxpayers feeling like fools. They should sit and listen to residents who want to voice their opinions. That is, after all, why we pay these elected officials — and we shouldn’t pay them a penny more until they publicly make the case.