Miami-Dade Firefighters – already in shock about the mayor’s about face on the budget for next year, which calls for six to eight stations to be shut down and 144 firefighters to be fired – got another surprise Friday.
In a meeting they requested to go over the rolling brownouts due to the $15 million shortfall this year – which they doubted, since they have more than 65 
budgeted vacant positions — county budget staff told fire union members that the those unit closures across the county were not really their fault for burning through their allotted overtime, as has been portrayed by the administration.
Not entirely, anyway.
Seems that there are two other reasons why the big hole is there: Somewhere between $5 and 6 million in projected taxes won’t come in, due to valuation adjustments and early pay refunds from the tax collector’s office – an issue that we might see mirrored in other budgets – and another $6.5 or $7 million is missing because of an accounting practice error.
An accounting practice error that county auditors allegedly identified way back in March.
Not that you would hear Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Not So Golden Boy” Gimenez mention it on the Michael Putney show Sunday morning. Nah. He doesn’t want to take responsibility for the lion’s share of the gaping hole that he throws our safety into by shutting down rescue units for 12 or 24 hours here and there. Especially since he’s already taking so much slack lately.
Really? Really?
“So it’s not us?” That was Miami-Dade Fire Union President Rowan Taylor at the meeting Friday.
“You guys got some bad numbers and your tax collection is down? You have a major administrative problem and you are blaming us?” Taylor told me he asked them.
Of course we wonder what other departments might also be facing as far as shortfalls in projected collected taxes. And I guess we’re going to find out.
But let’s talk about this one first. Because Taylor calls it a cover up. He says the mayor has not been honest about the reasons for the brownouts.
According to sources that Ladra spoke to over the weekend, including several at the meeting Friday and Gimenez Chief of Staff Chip Iglesias, about $12 million of the $15 million hole in this year’s fire rescue budget are due to unmet projections.
Iglesias told Ladra it wasn’t an accounting practice error on the rollover rate expected from the year before, as others told me had been explained at the meeting by the budget officials — who likely make more than 60 or 70 percent of the firefighters, by the way. Iglesias called the $6.5 to $7 million part a misjudgment in “bookings” – like how many transportation fees were actually charged to 911 callers compared to how many were expected, for example. Though the carryover could be calculated into that as well.
“It’s not an error. It is an accounting thing. It has to do with the way you book proceeds,” he said. “If you’re owed two million and you have not collected, you still book that.”
When those bookings are not collected, you are left with a hole.
“That caused a big swing in this year’s budget,” he said.
These numbers weren’t known to the mayor until last week, Iglesias said. But he also said, almost in the same breath, that they had some inkling months ago about the recalculations.
“You don’t learn about it ’til six months into the year’s budget.”
For the $5 to $6 million less in property tax revenue, Iglesias explained that even though the county budgeted only with 95 percent of the expected tax revenue, the actual income fell even below that. And this is likely to be the case as well in other taxing districts, like the general budget and the libraries.
“Budget cuts for other taxing jurisdictions will probably also be made,” Iglesias told me, adding that the fire rescue numbers were the first ones the budget office looked at because of requests from the fire union.
And, he added, it might end up a smaller shortfall as things tend to fluctuate from month to month. “There are things that can happen between today and October 1 and instead of $6 million it might be $4 million because $2 million more ended up coming in.
“Or it could come in higher.”
Ouch.
It makes sense that the mayor and his staff knew about this before their lovely trip to Spain and that was maybe part of the reason why Gimenez was originally planning a tax increase. I mean, the problem is probably repeated for next year’s budget. It makes sense they knew before last week because the brownouts resulting from the $15 million shortfall were rolled out before last week.
What makes no sense is that the message from County Hall has been that these “daily unit shutdowns” – they do not call them “brownouts” at County Hall – had to happen because the firefighters blew through their contractually agreed to overtime limit.
Again, Iglesias says I got it wrong. “Nobody ever said it was their fault,” he told me. “The overtime is over. And it has been because we need to cover holes. I mean, we are not selling widgets. But are there things in the contract that would help with overtime? Yes.
“Overtime is over and it’s not the first time, but there are other issues,” Iglesias admitted.
Maybe that should have been the message to begin with. So that the firefighters – who have already lost quite some confidence in their onetime colleague and can be seen all over town protesting the brownouts when they should be on duty – wouldn’t feel further forsaken by the mayor.
“This is absolutely another reason why we can’t trust him,” Taylor told me.
“He had to know about this when he went on TV and it said it was because of the firefighters’ burning through overtime . This is the budget office downtown and somehow we got blamed.
“It’s absolutely eroded any trust we had left in him.”
Fire rescue brownouts — blame accounting blip, not OT added by Ladra on
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