Four months ago, Miami-Dade voters tossed out Mayor Carlos Alvarez by an overwhelming 88 percent majority. His crimes: handing out minuscule raises, driving a fancy car, and slightly raising taxes. Now he's been replaced by virtual carbon copy Carlos Gimenez.
Mayor Tomás Regalado needs to go.
Related Content
More About
Thing is, we should have recalled another mayor. Sure, Miami's top man, Tomás Regalado, speaks eloquently en español. And he hasn't yet upped tax rates. But politically speaking, the guy has wreaked havoc like a drunken, locked-out NFL player on South Beach.
In less than two years in office — a third of the time Alvarez served — Regalado has been far worse. He has burned through four city managers — one every six months on average — and enraged black Miami by letting police leadership dodge responsibility after cops killed seven civilians. He has also watched the feds launch a full-blown investigation into whether the city cooked the books. Even worse, Miami's bond rating has plummeted, so taxpayers are sure to take more lumps.
Regalado has even violated his own hiring freeze and handed out six-figure severance payments.
"We're the laughingstock of the nation right now," says Anthony Hatten, head of the city's general employees' union. "With every new story coming out of city hall, I get more and more embarrassed."
Any voter with half a brain should realize by now: We recalled the wrong guy.
Here are ten reasons Norman Braman should have aimed his fury a little farther south, right at Dinner Key.
1. Regalado's Communication Chief Is No Angel
Walfrido Moreno, a frail, grandfatherly, 80-year-old activist, was about to introduce two Cuban rafters who had recently survived an exodus from Havana to a group of gathered journalists when Angel Zayon, a 30-year-old reporter from Telemundo 51, approached the podium.
"You are a coward, not much of a man, and a traitor," Zayon screeched into a microphone. The old man had criticized Zayon's reporting, which was none too complimentary.
In response, Moreno slapped the much younger Zayon across the face. Despite the half-century difference in age, Zayon pressed charges. The old guy did 60 days of community service.
That incident was only the most sensationally crazy moment in Zayon's odd career as a provocateur, failed political candidate, and, as of last month, $70,000-per-year chief of communications for the City of Miami.
Zayon's hiring is all the more troubling because Regalado's city manager not only violated a freeze to bring him on but also waived education requirements to employ a guy with only a high school diploma.
Not absurd enough? Add this: Regalado didn't even fire the acting director of the department, Mario Riquelme, when he hired Zayon away from TV Martí. Instead, the mayor split the tiny department in two, naming Riquelme "director of audiovisual and broadcast operations."
Riquelme makes $95,251. That means more than $160,000 of taxpayer cash goes to two men to oversee eight employees — four TV staffers, one photographer, two media experts, and a secretary — according to city records.
Zayon's resumé didn't get him the job. Sure, he had hosted Cuba al Día on TV Martí and worked at Telemundo and WACC-AM (830), but he lost to Marco Rubio in a bid for the Florida House in 2000 and failed in a run for the Miami-Dade County School Board three years ago.
So maybe Zayon's most important qualification was this: At the mayor's inauguration, Regalado introduced him to the crowd as "Angelito Zayon, my fourth son."
2. He Ignored the Hiring Freeze
To stave off bankruptcy, the city declared a hiring freeze in May 2009, several months before Regalado took office. Emergency operators, two years later, are 27 folks short of their minimum number, thanks to unfilled positions.
Almost every department has had to work short-staffed — except for Regalado and his deputies.
He and his former city manager, Tony Crapp Jr., personally waived the freeze for 23 hires in their offices during the past 16 months, a New Times review found. Crapp also authorized dozens of hires in other departments. Though their actions cost the city hundreds of thousands in salary and benefits, no one can explain what some of the new employees do.
In a recent interview, Regalado presented New Times with a list of what he said were the only hires since the freeze began. It included mostly temps — lifeguards and pool attendants, for instance — and a batch of 30 firefighters.
"There's nothing political," he says. "There are no ghost employees or political hires here."
Alas, when New Times went to the official city records, we found a very different list — one that includes 783 names, not 200.
Subtract temporary hires and there are still nearly 250 new full-time employees who have joined the payroll since May 2009. Some hiring, indeed, seems very questionable.
For example, in early January, Crapp let the city waive the freeze to bring on Madelin Pacheco at a $55,000 annual salary. A former customer service rep at El Dorado Furniture, she was named special projects assistant in the Office of Grants Management. What's that? Crapp's description of her job in a January 11 memo is even more baffling than the title: "She will assist in coordinating and implementing various special projects, work on improving department operations... and overall cost effectiveness."
