While alarms are sounding about reduced services and Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez threatens to lay off up to 700 employees — including 250 police officers — to balance the $4.4 billion county operating budget, our commissioners will consider spending close to $100 million just today on everything from engineering to janitorial services to concerts to personal trainers. Can […]
The Miami-Dade Police sergeant who got caught racking up questionable overtime has not been fired and is not on the list of officers to get canned by Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez‘s plan to balance the budget by firing 255 cops. He’s not even getting bumped down a notch. In fact, he was recently transferred to […]
Some call it payback for the 5% loss and the veto override that arguably strained some of his already-limited ability to negotiate with the county employee unions, but Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez is proposing new contracts that ask for a 10% cut in base pay and hints at a new battle with our county labor […]
Aside from Miami-Dade County’s lay off of 21 employees in the last couple of months to help deal with what Mayor Carlos “Not So Golden Boy” Gimenez says is a bulging budget shortfall, the incoming crop of new police officers has been cut in half from four academy classes to two. But Gimenez assured commissioners in […]
Although the county has more than 500 vacant budgeted positions — salaries that are never collected though the expenditures are reflected in the 2014-2015 budget — Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez has laid off almost two dozen county employees so far this year. These are reportedly only the first “heads to roll” in an expected employee […]
It’s hard to believe it, but we saw it with our own eyes. And it’s on video tape for proof: One after another, people came before the Miami-Dade County Commission Tuesday evening and basically begged commissioners to tax them further to save libraries, fire-rescue services and dogs and cats. But mostly libraries. More than eight […]
A ‘message’ to the mayor: Careful, they may veto you. Without a doubt, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez was already walking a fine line. Last week’s last minute veto of an 8-4 decision by the county commission, for many, is just the last straw in a series of possible political abuses by the man we elected […]
On tonight’s big budget night, which everyone has been anticipating, commissioners are flying blind. Pretty much just like the rest of us. That’s because the last minute about-face made by Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez — who first proposed a small tax increase to maintain services and then switched to a more politically convenient (really? how’s […]
Pick a commissioner, any commissioner. A group of activists will go to County Hall this afternoon and pick a name out of the hat. The winner, if we can call the chosen that, will face a recall effort for their vote on keeping the tax rate flat and slashing county services. “We are on a […]
When the unions come to heads with the Miami-Dade Commission today on their multiple impasses, one commissioner may be even more aggressive toward them than others. Judging by Monday’s committee of the whole performance, Commissioner Esteban “Stevie” Bobo has taken on the role of labor raider in the county’s very obvious efforts to lay blame […]