Miami-Dade finds another $8.5 million for non union workers

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No me digas.

For months, the lowest paid county workers — garbage collectors, librarians, bus drivers, janitors — fought to get back the 5% they had been providing for five years to a bogus “healthcare fund” that was used to balance the budget. Finally, they got that deduction from their paycheck restored, but Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez and the commissioners fought tooth and nail against giving the employees what basically amounts to their own money back.

It was going to break us, remember? It was such a toxic issue, there was a veto. And then an override.

On Friday, it was quite a different picture as Gimenez and the BCC tripped all over themselves to restore the same bogus 5% to 2,500 or so employees not covered in union contracts who are under the mayor’s purview — the secretaries and crossing guards, the spokespeople and commissioner’s staffers who have continued to contribute even though their coworkers stopped getting the funds taken from their paychecks in February.

“We’re all one big happy family and we should treat all our children the same,” Commission Chairwoman Rebeca Sosa basically said, like always. Even outgoing Commissioner Lynda Bell — who owes much of her defeat Aug. 26 to unions who worked against her — voted for it.

Is Ladra the only one that finds this hypocritical? And, well, just a little bit mysterious?

I mean, there was absolutely no money in the budget to give the employees their money back in February. Then there was. Now, suddenly, there are $8.5 million more in a drawer somewhere and the day is saved. Again. And nobody questions how this keeps happening? Especially given the fact that the county was going to lay off somewhere around 700 people just a few months ago?

Don’t get Ladra wrong. These employees deserve the same treatment as the others and they were all hoodwinked together. Commissioners did the right thing Friday by making these public employees whole. It should have happened long ago. And maybe it should be retroactive. Hey, just open another drawer somewhere.

But where is the accountability? Are we supposed to just shake hands now that this is resolved, sing kumbaya and pretend the threats never happened?

For employees, perhaps, it is a case of ‘don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’ Which, come to think of it is a saying that doesn’t make any sense because you should look it a gift horse in the mouth, to see if there’s a fight coming. Maybe it’s closer to Stockholm syndrome. We can’t expect them to keep digging after they get what they always asked for, which is what they were always promised, which is just what they had given up.

But the media and the public should ask the mayor and commissioners how this keeps on happening, how public money just keeps popping up at the right moment — a little bit here, a little bit there — in a $6 billion budget that grows every year. We should ask them if this is the best way to conduct business.

Certainly we should ask them to open all their drawers.

  labor issues, Miami-Dade budget