Miami's union leaders aren't celebrating this Labor Day weekend, but city taxpayers should be thankful.
The city called a ``Banana Republic'' by its detractors is now the toast of the town among struggling property owners. Commissioners showed the rest of South Florida local governments that, in the midst of a protracted recession, elected leaders can make the tough calls without decimating services.
The budget that Mayor Tomás Regalado and City Manager Carlos Migoya proposed -- and commissioners unanimously passed -- is tough medicine. The approved pay cuts of between 5 percent (for those earning $39,000 a year or less) and 12 percent (for those earning $120,000 or more annually) maintains the city solvent.
And by making those cuts -- and capping the payouts for employee pensions at $100,000 a year (for those not yet vested in the more generous plan) -- the city saved 1,300 jobs, about a third of its workforce. Miami declared a ``financial urgency'' in May to bring some sanity to the contracts when it became clear the unions wouldn't budge.
Of course, Miami's police union is suing. The firefighters' union -- which must represent the best paid emergency personnel in the area if not in Dubai -- filed its lawsuit even before the budget vote, lost in court and is now appealing.
HIGH-RISK CITY
The cops and firefighters say Miami is a high-risk city, so they deserve more pay and perks than if they worked in, say, Coral Gables.
Except a lot of high-risk jobs pay less than $100,000 a year, which is about the average for firefighters in Miami. Think construction workers up in skyscrapers, the window-washers outside high-rise buildings, teachers in rough neighborhoods. Or our men and women in the military -- talk about risk and stress. Their pay is a fraction of what public-safety officials earn in Miami and Miami-Dade County.
Police and firefighters are our guardian angels, and they deserve good pay and retirement benefits. But when the people they are guarding have gone broke -- laid off through no fault of their own because of a sour economy, losing their homes in foreclosure -- the angels should think heavenly thoughts. Instead, they're shouting at mayors and commissioners at public hearings -- as happened in Hialeah recently.
CULTURE SHOCK
The unions are in culture shock. Yet workers in the private sector aren't. They've had to take pay cuts and unpaid furloughs until the economy recovers.
Miami's shenanigans decades ago got us into this mess, by taking money from the firefighters' pension plan to plug holes in other parts of the city budget. The firefighters were right to sue then.
But at some point the fairness issue crossed over into a ``sock it to the taxpayers'' reality in a city with a high concentration of poor. Without the changes, one-fifth of the city's operating budget -- about $105 million -- would be needed to cover pension costs. It's nuts.
LEADING BY EXAMPLE
Regalado, who won with union support and voted for the piñata contracts full of goodies when he was commissioner, was true to his campaign promise of leading by example. He took a pay cut right after he was elected. He tapped a retired banker, Migoya, to serve as city manager for all of $1 in salary, and he delivered.
Unlike Miami-Dade government officials, who insist the county can't get any tougher with unions until contracts begin to expire and who are looking to raise the millage rate to close a $400 million budget hole, Miami's leaders get it.
As Regalado has said: `We're not going to kill the city to save the government.''
