Coral Gables Environment, Politics and Government
March 16, 2011 Leave a comment
This is a good first step, but all of the former Mayor’s associates should be cleaned out asap.
The next step will be to begin a major reorganization of the county government, which is said to have more than sixty departments and more than 3,000 people who earn more than $100,000.
There is a lot of bureaucratic and actual fat (observe some of the police officers) in the county government.
March 16, 2011 Leave a comment
Does this sound familiar to those of us in Coral Gables–city managers retire or resign, and are never fired.
Hours after Mayor Carlos Alvarez was removed from office by a resounding recall vote, Miami-Dade County Manager George Burgess is set to step down.
Burgess is expected to make the announcement during a Wednesday afternoon news conference which Alvarez is also expected to attend.
via Miami-Dade County Manager Burgess to Resign | NBC Miami.
March 16, 2011 Leave a comment
The city of Coral Gables is not exempt from the impact of lower wages in the US. The city cannot grow based solely on large-scale corporate profits, but should have a broad base of support from the consumer and the wider community. Evidence is clear that wages have been stagnate for a decade or more and the rich are getting richer.
…data…[on wages and productivity]… underscore that there is a bigger story than public versus private compensation and a more penetrating set of questions to ask than who has more than whom. The ability of the economy to produce more goods and services has not translated into greater compensation for either group of workers. Why has pay fared so poorly overall? Why did the richest 1% of Americans receive 56% of all the income growth between 1989 and 2007, before the recession began (compared with 16% going to the bottom 90% of households)? Why are corporate profits 22% above their pre-recession level while total corporate sector employees’ compensation (reflecting lower employment and meager pay increases) is 3% below pre-recession levels? The answers lie in an economy that is designed to work for the well off and not to produce good jobs and improved living standards.1
Essentially, economic policy has not supported good jobs over the last 30 years or so. Rather, the focus has been on policies that were thought to make consumers better off through lower prices: deregulation of industries, privatization of public services, the weakening of labor standards including the minimum wage, erosion of the social safety net, expanding globalization, and the move toward fewer and weaker unions. These policies have served to erode the bargaining power of most workers, widen wage inequality, and deplete access to good jobs. In the last 10 years even workers with a college degree have failed to see any real wage growth. [Underlining and emphasis added.]
March 16, 2011 Leave a comment
GEORGE VOLSKY
OUR APRIL 12 ELECTION: SLESNICK’S RECALL?
“We’ll do the same next month,” an excited friend almost shouted on the phone Tuesday night when the Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez’ and Commissioner Natasha Seijas’ recall votes were almost tabulated. “I am sure that Slesnick, thinking about April 12, will not sleep well tonight, afraid that we’ll regard that election as his recall.”
Mayor Don Slesnick can always swallow a couple of sleeping pills, or console himself with several “stiff ones.” But it is almost certain that he wasn’t a very happy camper seeing the huge percentage of recall votes which proved without a shred of doubt the county’s unprecedented, unexpected and unquestionable rejection of Alvarez and Seijas, motivated principally by the residents’ ire over the tax increase they had approved.
Also without doubt, Slesnick confronts the Alvarez tax problem. In the last several months he has been trying to muddle that issue – as well as the fiscal disaster of his and David Brown misrule – by telling our residents that he’s been a good mayor because, among other reasons, he was given a Taiwan medal. But truth be told, he has voted for a tax increase four times during his 10 years in office. Moreover, in each year of his City Hall decade the actual amount of taxes paid by Coral Gables property owners was progressively higher.
Early on Tuesday, speaking to a friend I predicted – not very convincingly – that Alvarez might lose by 70 percent of the vote. It had never entered my mind that the astonishing 90 percent out of 204,000 voters would tell the county mayor that “enough is enough.” (Seijas was ousted by the same percentage in her district.)
The Tuesday election has proved that the dissatisfaction with and the distrust of elected officials is deep and widespread, and that the Coral Gables voters are not different from those of Miami-Dade at large.
The election not only demonstrated that the residents were up in arms against high taxes. As one astute observer said they simply “want the bums out,” especially the officials who for many years have been closely associated with highly unsavory administrations, as Slesnick was cheek and jowl with the disgraced former city manager Brown.
Already analyzing last November’s midterm national vote, many local observers had concluded that what happened throughout the country might be foreboding for Slesnick, who has just unexpectedly announced his decision to again run for office. Previously, he had been personally assuring anybody willing to listen that he was through with City Hall after 10 years as mayor.
Last November, Richard Namon, civic activist and businessman, today a candidate for commissioners, put it succinctly: “Almost everybody who has been in office for a long time is on a chopping block. In my long life I have never seen such a strong anti-incumbent sentiment. It is Herbert Hoover all over again.”
There is hardly a knowledgeable Coral Gables resident who would consider Selsnick’s tenure a success. Under the City Charter he has the same vote as the other four commissioners. But in practice, in league with Brown he was able to manipulate the city commission, counting on the virtually automatic support of Commissioner María Anderson (once reportedly a devote Catholic now about to become a Protestant preacher), and more often than not on the votes of the other three commissioners.
In 2001, when he arrived at City Hall, Slesnick had encountered the city pensions to be 100 percent funded. In 10 years that funding base has shrunk by almost half, with the accumulated obligation shortfall of close to $200 million. During Slesnick’s tenure, the benefits that the city additionally pays employees (as well as the mayor and commissioners) increased from 35 percent of their salaries in 2001 to the economically unsustainable 70 percent today.
Slesnick is counting on his large propaganda chest, close to $150,000, as his winning card. He has some unions, notably the firemen, contributing heavily to his campaign, besides the big checks from a number of city contractors, lawyers and supporters outside Miami-Dade and Florida. While subsidizing the Alvarez recall billionaire businessman Norman Braman invested over $1 million of his own, the county mayor collected almost as much to counter that effort, and he even used county employees to disseminate his propaganda. (Seijas reportedly had ten times more funds to thwart her recall than a small group of residents who gathered sufficient signatures to put her name on the recall ballot.)
Neither Alvarez’ nor Seijas’ cash made any difference whatsoever. The Miami-Dade voters, including those in Coral Gables, unceremoniously booted them out. Unsurprisingly, then, Slesnick might well be very worried: he sees ominous writing on the wall.
Coral Gables Watch 