To: Road Walker who wrote (510296 ) 9/4/2009 11:06:13 AM From: tejek 1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) | Respond to Residents were further outraged last week when the Miami Herald reported that Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez, one of the few Miami politicians with a reputation for probity, had raised the salaries of his chief of staff and other top lieutenants this year as high as 15% while calling for a 5% pay cut for county workers. Alvarez spokesperson Victoria Mallette says the raises resulted from a 2007 referendum that gave Miami-Dade's mayor, until then a relatively weak post, broad new powers that in turn thrust heavier duties on his staff. She also notes that Alvarez actually cut his office's budget last year by almost 15% and that he helped build an $80 million reserve fund. Still, a Herald editorial called Alvarez's raises "irresponsible." Watchdogs like Valladares complain that Miami-Dade's bureaucracy, like so many local governments in this decade, got too bloated during the economic boom. The County Commission, for example, has a staff of more than 200 serving only 13 commissioners - and yet it still managed to screw up tasks like its oversight of Miami-Dade's scandal-plagued housing agency. Many Americans find it hard to feel sorry for Valladares and all the other Floridians who pay no state income tax. Floridians are indeed guilty of an arrogant belief that living in "paradise" should be a birthright as cheap as gassing up an SUV. It was, until Florida's relentless and miserably planned growth spawned problems that the peninsula is struggling to handle, including skyrocketing property taxes and hurricane-insurance premiums. Governor Charlie Crist has tried in recent years to rein in those twin vampires, but together they can still exceed what folks in many other states pay for state income tax, local property tax and homeowner's insurance combined. And whereas high-cost states like New York, California and Illinois also have some of the country's highest median incomes, Florida's is in the bottom half.
