A sunny day, a city commissioner, a story deadline

A couple of weeks ago a fight broke out at county hall. No, it wasn’t one of those grand fisticuff events involving a commissioner and a lobbyist. This one was between Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez and the Miami Herald. Seems like the mayor took offense to the Herald having some reporters snooping around his private domain -- namely, the mayor’s offices on the 29th floor. They were looking for more employee raises as Alvarez was spouting county poor mouth.

Alvarez called the Herald most of the names in the book, even telling them they were a failed business on the verge of bankruptcy. The more he ranted, the more I thought it sounded like what the Herald should have said to him. In essence, it was the proverbial pot calling the proverbial kettle black. All I could think was that the second estate (the politicians) was badmouthing the fourth estate (the news business), and neither one of them is in very good shape.

And if you think through it a little further, the first and third estates are not in such great shape either. That’s the church and the people.

Before this tiff came about, the Herald sent out their new local columnist du jour, Myriam Marquez (now also editorial page editor), and she wrote a piece saying that, in her opinion, Miami Mayor Manny Diaz had done a far better job running his government than Alvarez had done running his. For the life of me, I can’t understand how she ever came to that conclusion. My only guess is that, since she’s put in just four years at the paper, she hasn’t yet been able to find city hall to actually interview Diaz. Someone should tell her that Miami City Hall is in another town -- Coconut Grove.

The greater question is how did we end up with these two incompetents as mayors? I’m beginning to think the election process could be somewhat flawed because it does not include an easy way to get rid of elected officials. We need a method by which we vote against politicians, not just for them. That’s already in place for appellate judges (should or should not retain), but I’m not sure just how it would work with politicians. However, I do think it definitely should apply to incumbents who are running unopposed for re-election. They should get an up or down vote, not just an up vote where a single vote would re-elect them.

In so many areas, the electorate has been sold a bill of goods. Look at the “strong mayor” form of government we have in both the city and the county. Before our current mess, we had elected commissioners and a mayor who was really just a glorified commissioner who got to cut ribbons and kiss babies. The governments were in fact run by managers who worked for the commissions. Piss off a majority of commissioners and the manager was gone. It wasn’t great, but at least there was some grass-roots accountability.

About 15 years ago we were told that we needed a professional politician/manager to run the government, one who answered directly to the people. It sounded plausible and we all bought it. Somehow it never translated into what we were sold, and even after several modifications, we ended up pretty much where we began, only now with hundreds more employees, many new levels of bureaucracy, and virtually no accountability to the electorate.

Alvarez, who essentially doesn’t have a job, now has a staff of 62. Fifteen years ago, the county mayor’s office had 80 percent fewer employees. The City of Miami’s now-bloated mayor’s office had a secretary and a couple of aides. What do all these new people actually do? Why don’t we let them all go and see what jobs truly need to be done?

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And now back to the Herald. Last month Biscayne Times published a story written by Erik Bojnansky about problems within the so-called leadership of Coconut Grove’s King Mango Strut, the goofy little annual parade that lampoons just about everything and everybody (“King Mango Strut Strife: Not Funny”). The last two surviving directors of the nonprofit corporation that controls the Strut have been at odd for several years and have been unable to come to an agreement about the future management of the parade. Actually, management may be the wrong word. How about operation?

The BT story was straightforward and laid out the issues between co-founder Glenn Terry and long-time Strutter Antoinette Baldwin. This was by no means the first story about Strut problems, as they have been well documented on local blogs, including New Times’s “Riptide 2.0.”

Several days after “Strut Strife,” the Herald ran a front-page story about the Strut, written by veteran reporter Chuck Rabin. The article was basically a rehash of the BT story, an indication that the Herald once again had been caught sleeping on another good local story. But the article had one glaring omission: Rabin failed to note that Glenn Terry was also a Herald columnist. This was not just an omission; it was an egregious journalistic error.

However, the Herald, in its matchless fashion, found a way to make it even worse. A week later Terry circulated an e-mail message defending his position and making him look as if he had nothing to do with the parade’s problems. A week after that, the exact same piece showed up in the Herald as Terry’s bi-weekly column in the Grove/Gables “Neighbors” section.

It was nothing more than a soft-core hatchet job on Baldwin, and nobody at the Herald even noticed. Forget that there were factual errors throughout the column, including a comment that Terry never made money running the parade. The Herald obviously has cut so close to the bone they have no editors left who can read and write. Proof of that is evident every day.

Local politicians are in the toilet. The Miami Herald is in the toilet. Is it time to get rid of the politicos and close down Miami’s Only Daily, and then start all over?

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