Jun 25, 2009 7:57 pm US/Eastern
Fired Miami Bureaucrat Continued To Get Full Pay
Miami City Manager Arranged Golden Parachute
Some Commissioners Outraged By The Largess
Shirley Richardson Was Retained By City Manager Peter Hernandez
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
Miami's Civilian Investigative panel last January fired its executive director, Shirley Richardson. Richardson, board members said, was an overpaid underperformer. The vote to terminate the allegedly incompetent manager was unanimous.
But for the five months since her dismissal, Richardson has continued to draw her full executive director's salary of $168,000 a year, an $800 a month car allowance, and a $200 a month cell phone allowance.
Miami City Manager Pete Hernandez, who opposed Richardson's firing, is the source of the largess. Declaring that "the budget is my domain," Hernandez shifted Richardson to his office in city hall - as an assistant to an assistant - where her job duties and responsibilities were unspecified. Hernandez told
CBS4's Gary Nelson Thursday that he felt bad for Richardson getting fired, thought she deserved a "severance" of some sort, and thought it was "fair" to continue to pay her full executive director's salary while he "looked for a position to place her in."
Richardson, under city personnel policy, would have been entitled to a "roll back" to a considerably lower salary than the executive director pay and perks she received at the Civilian Investigative Panel.
"I tried to do the best I could to resolve the issue," Hernandez said.
City Commissoner Mark Sarnoff was livid to learn of the sweetheart deal. "It is a huge disservice to the citizens of Miami," Sarnoff said. "At this time, with the financial state that the city of Miami is in, we need to be a lot more vigilant about what we're doing."
The chairman of the Civilian Investigative Panel said the golden parachute extended to Richardson adds insult to injury, because the city continued to take her pay from the CIP's budget. "With the budget strained and resources stretched, it's difficult to understand this," Chairman Tom Rebull said. The CIP is charged with investigating alleged police wrongdoing.
City Manager Hernandez said he has found a new post for Richardson - at the considerably lower salary of $100,000 a year. He intends to name her as coordinator of a yet to be established Department of Strategic Management.
City Commissioner Tomas Regalado said he doesn't understand the purpose of the new department or what Richardson will do. "I still don't know what the new office of Strategic Management is," Regalado said. "I asked the manager, and he said they have created this new department. It's odd."
Odd, Regalado said, that a manager fired for alleged incompetence by one agency, would land as coordinator of another.
Sarnoff echoed those concerns. "If you can't function as the administrator of one department, why would you suddenly be able to be the administrator" of strategic planning, Sarnoff said.
Richardson did not return repeated calls from
CBS4 News seeking comment for this story.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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