Hialeah will have a budget hearing tonight to announce a raise in taxes. That’s right. Tonight. As in almost two months too late.
And also a couple of weeks after an election in which Mayor Carlos “Castro” Hernandez and Council Vice President Luis Gonzalez vowed never to raise taxes.
Coincidence? Yeah, riiight.
The Florida Department of Revenue last week told the City of Progress — as well as four other Miami-Dade municipalities — that they had to re-have budget hearings because they either submitted erroneous paperwork or they violated laws that require cities to advertise increase in taxes.
Hialeah apparently didn’t advertise the increase. But of course not! There was an election coming! The Department of Revenue is being unreasonable!
But something tells Ladra that isn’t the only problem auditors would find if they reviewed the City of Progress’s books. Especially since this budget was fraught with problems for weeks before it was approved in a meeting that followed what many believe was a certain violation of the state Sunshine Law that prohibits commissioners from discussing dias issues outside chambers.
Both former Mayor Raul Martinez and Fire Union Vice President Eric “Braveheart” Johnson told the administration that the numbers were not adding up. Johnson told them at a public hearing Sept. 9 that there were several mistakes throughout the 300-page+ document.
He also sent an email to the Department of Revenue with his concerns. He told them there was about a $1 million discrepancy from the summary to the actual budget.
“It is 1 million dollars off,” Johnson wrote, giving the state some context about the city’s finances and former officials, including the recently indicted former Mayor Julio “Roba-Y-Na'” Robaina.
“There is a long standing history of budget improprieties inside the city of Hialeah which have gone unnoticed by the DOR,” Johnson said. “The city will again underestimate its revenue and overstate its expenditures without any accountability.”
The Department of Revenue has not replied to Johnson after the initial “we’ll look into it” email, but they apparently have not yet addressed the concerns with the content of the budget. Today’s hearing is required because the city simply did not advertise the increase in taxes, not because there are discrepancies in the numbers.
They noticed a “budget hearing” instead of a “tax increase.”
Coincidence? Yeah, riiiiiight.
So, the city is having the hearing again tonight at 7 p.m. before the regularly scheduled meeting, so they don’t lose revenue sharing and any ad valorem tax monies above the roll back rate, which is all they would get if they do not advertise correctly.
This time, they advertised it as a tax increase — on page 6B of the local section on Saturday, the least read day of the week.
But was this an intentional fraud perpetrated on the people of Hialeah so that Mayor Hernandez could get through the election saying he had not raised taxes (even though he raised fees)? Why, yes, Ladra believes it is. It’s either that or Hernandez and the entire finance staff in Hialeah is way in over their heads and shouldn’t be in the business of overseeing a $253-million budget of your money.
So at best it’s incompetence, at worst it is dishonesty.
I would say the chances are more that it was intentional than it was an “honest mistake.” Because, otherwise, why not just say “ooops” and be done with it? Hernandez, as usual, would not take my calls. Chief of Staff Arnie Alonso, reached on his cell phone, hung up on me after I told him who it was.
Former Mayor Julio “The Other” Martinez, who overwhelmingly lost his bid to unseat Castro Nov. 6, thinks that the state should keep looking because it will find other issues with the budget.
“It’s what we were telling everybody during the campaign,” Martinez said. “We knew he had to increase taxes, but he filed some phony paperwork.”
Former Mayor Raul Martinez had also found almost 20 errors in the budget — ranging from executive salaries in some of the 17 departments that did not match from page to page and thousands of dollars in discrepancies for employee salaries. One example he cited in September was City Clerk Marbelys Fatjo‘s office, which had two different figures for salary allocations — $57,662 in the summary, which went up to $89,765 two pages later.
That’s some inflation! A difference of more than $32,000.
“There can be no errors in math,” Martinez said, certain that the errors are not “transcribing” mistakes as they have been characterized, “but central errors of how the budget was put together.
They needed to balance it and threw numbers everywhere. That’s a lack of transparency,” the former mayor said.
Budget Direct Ines Beecher, who was hired in February to replace the forced-out Alex Vega (more on that later), had said in September that the errors would be easy to fix and City Attorney Bill Grodnick — who is retiring in April — agreed with her that there would be no need to rehold the first public hearing because the “minor changes” would be in the budget for the second reading.
Wonder what they are going to say tonight.
The new tax increase hearing begins at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 501 Palm Ave.
Hialeah has post-election tax increase re-hearing added by Ladra on
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