Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez named a new chief of staff late Monday as part of a reshuffling in his office.
Lisa Martinez, who has been the mayor's senior advisor, will take over as chief of staff, Gimenez wrote in a memo to department directors. The position will no longer be a hybrid job as it had been under Deputy Mayor Chip Iglesias, who will continue overseeing his portfolio of county departments.
Iglesias will also be Gimenez's point man on the negotiations with David Beckham's investors over a potential soccer stadium.
Martinez, a one-time elementary schoolteacher who later worked for the school district's intergovernmental affairs and human resources offices, has taken on special projects for Gimenez over the past two years. Most recently, she has been responsible for a task force examining the future of the public library system.
As chief of staff, she will have to navigate the complicated politics of County Hall, including reaching out to county commissioners who have asserted their power and recently rebuffed Gimenez's request to continue requiring a pay concession from public employees.
Her first assignment, according to the memo, will be to organize a a "top down restructuring" of county departments. As a result of the elimination of the pay concession, Gimenez has asked his directors to come up with new savings. His office will begin by not replacing Ruben Arias, Gimenez's former director of public affairs who is now Commissioner Lynda Bell's chief of staff. The mayor's deputy chief of staff, Alex Ferro, will become director of external affairs, taking on some of Arias' work in intergovernmental relations and constituent services.
And Michael Spring, director of the county's cultural affairs department, will move into an expanded role as Gimenez's senior advisor for cultural affairs and recreation, presumably absorbing some of the projects Martinez had been shepherding.
For now, the changes should save about $50,000 in the mayor's office personnel budget, according to the memo.
12 comments:
Yet there are still 2 Port Directors, both making massive salaries. Corrupt co-director Juan Kuryla needs to go.
So Lisa Martinez will be in charge of firing County Staff? So sad. And so wrong. What a terrible job she will have.
The Subject line of the memorandum, "Moving Forward," demonstrates that our peevish and petulant Tin Horn Dictator and Grand Panjandrum Senor Gimenez indeed has his "panties in a wad."
Lord have mercy. More folly and foolishness from County Hall.
THE worst Mayor in the history of Miami-Dade County!
From his memo on 2/11/2013, our county mayor "eliminates the director of public affairs position from the my office TO, and reduce my overall personnel budget by approximately $50,000.
Am I reading this correctly? There is only a savings of $50k when he's reducing the director of public affairs position? That person made more than double of that amount. Are the inner circle of his office getting a bump up in salaries by carving up the carcassed salary of the guy who (left minus $50k?).
It looks like the surviving aides all get pay increases.
Where did Gimenez learn basic math? Unbelievable.
Maybe the County can borrow money to cover the shortfall - like Detroit!
Find that list that used to be posted in the Herald comments section that listed all the cronies. The list had about 100 names of politically-connected people. He needs to get rid of all the overpaid cronies that are still there from the George Burgess days.
If you know how the county works, you know Lisa Martinez drafted the memo. Gimenez doesn't sit down at a computer and begin typing. He just signs things. Most of the time, memos are simply submitted for his signature and he signs them. This type of memo is unusual only because it likely started with Gimenez telling Martinez what he wants to see in it. Burgess and Alvarez operated the same way. The draft memo arrives on his desk paper-clipped in a heavy green folder with a white piece of paper taped to the front that says "For the Mayor's Signature." If Gimenez doesn't like a line or a word, he may mark it up and send it back to be fixed.
Sometimes budget office hack/crony queen Jennifer Moon writes these when it pertains to budget matters, but I think Martinez definitely wrote this one. If you ever detect a different tone in Gimenez's correspondence, it's because the person who drafted it has a different tone.
I will believe this thinning of the herd when I see it. Gimenez reappointed the same idiots left over from the Burgess and Shiver administrations. They are all masters at surviving. They convinced dimwit Gimenez to keep them in high paying positions when he came on board--no job advertisements, no job interviews. They manipulated the mayor and reshuffled themselves.
Kathie's comment above is close, but I would put the number of true cronies at about 300. Show me a department director, deputy director, or division chief, and I will show you a crony. You can identify a crony because they don't go through job interviews to get their jobs like the rest of us. Deputy Mayor Alina Hudak, Elections Supervisor Penny Townsley, Internal Service Director Lester Sola, Seaport Director #1 Bill Johnson, Water & Sewer Creep John Renfrow, and Budget Director Jennifer Glazer Moon are all examples of cronies who go from position to position for decades without the inconvenience of a job interview.
Jack Osterholt is taking $225,000 from Miami-Dade County taxpayers and sending it to his home in Broward County. Gimenez could save $1 mil per year by firing Osterholt.
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