Local News

MIAMI (CBS4) ― During the third meeting since approving its balanced budget back in September, the Miami-Dade Commission finally voted on the method to cut public employees' salaries.

Earlier on Monday, Miami-Dade Commissioners had failed to reach a comprehensive agreement on how to slash some $200 million dollars in employee costs in order to achieve the balanced budget it approved more than a month ago.

But eventually with a 6 to 5 vote they agreed to give public employee unions a choice: In order to cut salaries, workers can either take a 5% cut in their base pay or they can give up holiday pay for the budget year.

Mayor Carlos Alvarez has said the county is spending approximately $4 million per pay period as long as the cuts remain unresolved - money that the county, at least on paper, does not have. By law, the county may not operate under a deficit.

The mayor had proposed across-the-board pay cuts for union and non-union workers. Some commissioners, though, favored a sliding scale of cuts, with those who make the most taking larger reductions and lower paid workers getting smaller cuts. This idea failed.

Unions for police, firefighters, garbage workers and others have a host of ideas of their own. It has all added up to a stalemate that may leave the ball completely in the mayor's court, with no alternative but mass layoffs.

Solid waste workers comprise just one of ten unions that must accept cuts - or have cuts imposed on them - if the budget approved in late September is to be enacted.

The garbage collectors say they have already given a lot and can't afford to give much more. "We don't have a problem with sucking up some of the issues," union president Marie Mobley Johnson told CBS4 reporter Gary Nelson. "But when it comes to all of it - at the price we're already being paid - no, we can't take that hit."

Police union president John Rivera complained Monday that the administration has been unwilling to negotiate alternatives to pay cuts. "They've said 'this is the way it's going to be and that's it!'" Rivera said. Firefighters' union president Stan Hills said the commission "has refused to raise property taxes and now wants to impose an income tax on employees."

Some commissioners think that if no comprehensive solution is implemented, the only real alternative is letting people go. To achieve the balanced budget through work force reduction would require nearly 3,000 employees to be laid off. "If this is the way the unions and the administration are going to come down, then let the layoffs be done," said Commissioner Jose "Pepe" Diaz. "It's no different than any other corporation out there in America right now."

Pay cuts are approved by the commission. Layoffs, however, could be imposed by the Mayor.

Commissioner Carlos Gimenez said "at the end of the day" it's up to the mayor to administer the balanced budget the commission approved last month, suggesting that it may be Mayor Alvarez who will have to take the political heat of laying off thousands of county workers.

"We can't have an unbalanced budget. It's against the law," Gimenez said. "We can't go back and change the millage rate and get additional revenue. The budget is what the budget is."

Alvarez and County Manager George Burgess told commissioners Monday that "time is money" and it is costing the county millions by delaying a resolution to the budget crisis. Alvarez cautioned that if commissioners opt out of pay cuts for county employees, forcing him to impose layoffs, citizens will see a profound reduction in county services.

Commissioners Monday did vote to impose a freeze on so-called "flex" pay and "premium pay" for three of the county's ten employee's unions. It would help achieve a small percentage of the budget reductions that are needed, but mayoral spokesperson Vicki Mallett called it a "step in the right direction."

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