The City of Miami has a 5 seat commission which creates resolutions and ordinances for the city, and a mayor who administers the functions of the city and has chair powers over the city commission. The mayor can (must? does? I'm not sure) appoint a member of the commission to act as the chair on his behalf.
The public should understand that to pass ordinances and resolutions only 3 votes on the commission are required, however the mayor can veto these actions. Overturning the veto would require 4 votes of the commission.
Now the immediate background of the situation at hand.
In November of 2019 the make-up of commission changed after an election, creating a voting block of three white, Cuban-American career, politicians, and despite regularly paying lip-service to democracy, they more accurately act as though they were oligarchs in old Havana.
Back-slap and a Half
The moment Alex Diaz de la Portilla (his last name translates to of the little door) took his seat on the city commission he, Manolo Reyes and Joe Carollo aimed their political weaponry squarely at mayor Francis Suarez, and the prevailing order. There's a new order in the city of Miami.
As their first order of business the trio aimed wanted to fire the city manager. To justify this they moved to have the Auditor General investigate claims the city manager did illegal improvements to his home. The mayor vetoed this command, a move which the city attorney contends is invalid. And simultaneously commissioner Manolo Reyes issues an individual request to the Auditor General, citing language from the city code to justify the jurisdiction of such a directive.
At this point I don't actually know the status of that request, and whether the Auditor General has pursued it. However before that could come to a head the city manager offered a letter of resignation, effective date to be determined. A rather sly, confusing move. By promising to resign at some point did the manager and mayor think they could avoid the fiasco of an investigation into the actions of city administration for the benefit of the manager.
The big, dirty, power move however came when the trio, by way of DLP, passed a resolution removing Ken Russell from the chair of two Community Redevelopment Agency boards and giving those seats to themselves, as well as the next week appointing each other to be the co-chairs.
The Commissioner Doth Protest Too Much, Me Thinks.
This all then brings me to my final, perhaps rather unimportant point: Commissioner Ken Russell whines too much. At both the meetings where the trio switched up CRA leadership Commissioner Russell made it a point to grand stand over his progress with the CRAs and the pettiness of the power grab. However, I can't help but remember many things local citizen blogger, Al Crespo, wrote about Ken Russell in the first year of his office.
And I remember them because it seems that instead of handling the new reality of an opposition majority on the city commission, Commissioner Ken Russell wants to whimper into oblivion. Unless he can find a way to make good with DLP, whom he offended during the election campaign for funding a competitor, Russell will get nothing done in his current term. And he spends all future meetings with the same demeanor he's had so far this year, he'll be known undoubtedly as a lame duck, an ineffective whiner who cares more about looking good than getting anything done.
(Links may not be appropriate for a work environment.)
July 18, 2016
Septeber 18, 2016
Approximately November 2016
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