Congratulations and sincere thanks to 369,914 voters who last week put in motion a vital upgrade I feared I would never see: they added a mechanism to the county charter to pay Miami-Dade commissioners fairly. Today they get $6,000 a year, the same as in 1957. These voters OK’d a Charter Review Ta sk Force recommendation that went to the ballot with commission consent to create an independent panel that annually sets commission pay. We applaud the team that for months deliberated this and other charter changes. Getting this far wasn’t easy, or fast. Miami Today has been calling for fair commission pay for over 25 years. As we sought charter review action on a raise way back in 2001, for example, this column explained it like this: “The dividends won’t be earned just by paying the current commissioners more, but by widening the circle of those who seek the office. Right now, only the wealthy or those who have very flexible hours on some other payroll can afford to be a commissioner.” We noted that for $6,000 most qualified people couldn’t afford the time to do the job properly, thus costing taxpayers many millions yearly, and concluded: “In fact, paying commissioners fairly is not aimed at being fair to them but at being fair to taxpayers, who stand to pay substantially less and get substantially more from government by offering elected officials a big raise – and then insisting on getting what they pay for.” Across the state, Miami-Dade alone now pays a pittance. The other 66 counties use a state-set scale based on population that pays commissioners in the smallest county $32,490 a year and rises to $127,779 in the biggest five counties. The measure voters OK’d last week will allow Miami-Dade to pay up to the state-set $127,779 or anything below it that the five-member panel decides. In fact, the panel doesn’t have to raise pay above $6,000 – it just creates the ability to exceed our 1957-set level. But you can bet on some sort of raise – and rightly so. While the state pay scale is based on population alone, the measure voters approved includes more factors. The independent salary commission must consider the duties and responsibilities of county commissioners, the salaries of commissioners elsewhere, the value of benefits or other compensation that commissioners receive, the increased cost of living and inflation in Miami-Dade, the county’s fiscal condition, and “the need to attract and retain qualified candidates for office.” Those logical criteria offer a far better look at pay than either the figure picked out of the air in 1957 by the creators of the county charter or the state yardstick that is based on population alone.Judging salaries will be neither simple nor perhaps unanimous, but the measure that voters put into our charter last week provides us with five independent judges. Salary-setters must be county residents who cannot be currently elected officials, county employees, registered lobbyists or family members of sitting commissioners. Appointing one member each will be the chief judge of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court, the state attorney, the public defender, the executive director of the Commission on Ethics, and the inspector general. This creative process thankfully gives a dual meaning to the term “clean slate” for commission pay. This new salary team is to each year decide whether to change commission pay and what it will be. Nobody else may alter the decision, but it certainly won’t break the bank – for example, it can’t be more than our neighbors in Broward pay. The salary team will meet in public, and only after two public hearings can it decide the year’s pay level, a figure commissioners must learn in time to set the next year’s budget. But we’re a long way from worrying about that. First, five independent appointments to the salary team must be made, and there’s no provision in the new charter amendment for when those appointments must come, or when the unpaid salary commission must meet to start the cycle. We suggest it be soon. It will take the salary team some time to meet and gather information on which to base its decisions. Data on what commissioners elsewhere are paid is public record, as is the inflation rate. But considerations like duties and responsibilities of commissioners are less tangible and deserve careful study. We don’t want the salary team to pick a figure like the charter team did back in 1957, when it pulled $6,000 out of the air – a figure that will stand until the salary commission changes it. Getting to this point wasn’t easy. A dozen past efforts made to raise commission salaries to reasonable levels all failed. Some proposals that got on the ballot failed because of mistrust of sitting commissioners. It’s a credit to the current commission’s improved reputation that 51.58% of voters last week recognized that $6,000 is not adequate for any worker anywhere for the time and effort that commissioners put in. Well done. Oh, and on a personal level, thank you to those 369,914 “yes” voters who have ended at last my seemingly endless series of columns seeking fair commission pay. I’m sure I’ll find other thorny issues to grapple with. The post Fairness, and our wallets, win unheralded election victory appeared first on Miami Today. ...read more read less