Go along with the rest of Florida, pay county commission fairly

As a task force wrestles with how to increase Miami-Dade commissioners’ salaries above a pitiful $6,000 a year to oversee a gross domestic product larger than that of 141 nations, two issues emerge: how high to set pay and how to get voters to approve. 

The 15-member appointed panel whose work is required by the county charter agrees that the current $6,000 level in the charter is ludicrous for a full-time job. That’s light years ahead of past charter reviews that often tried to hide the elephant in the room.

But as the review team this month heads to an official position on commission pay, it’s seeking examples of counties that raised commission pay while trying to decide how to get voters to agree that fair pay can improve governance and that being cheap is costly to taxpayers.

The review panel must look out of state to find locally increased pay. Florida law requires every one of the 67 counties to pay commissioners on a state scale based on population of a county that rises with the cost of living. Miami-Dade alone is allowed to opt out of that scale, which it did in the 1950s by cementing a flat $6,000 pay into the charter. Hence, the need to change the charter to smash that cement.

The state scale sets the pay of commissioners of the six largest counties at $123,781 – a figure that’s due to rise this week, as it does every October. The new figure is as yet unannounced. But Miami-Dade opts out of all that.

Therefore, the lowest commission pay in Florida before the increase is $6,000 in Miami-Dade, population 2,832,794. Next lowest are Liberty County, population 8,575, which pays $31,339; Lafayette County, population 8,690, which pays $31,419; and Glades County, population 13,609, which pays $34,077.

After this month’s increase every commissioner in Florida will receive more – except in Miami-Dade County, which is the largest county and has global economic impact.  

What’s that impact? With Miami-Dade’s $239 billion in gross domestic product (2023 figures), if we were a separate nation we’d have the 53rd largest global economy, far larger than Hungary, Ukraine, Cuba, Slovakia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador or Guatemala, among 141 smaller national economies than ours.

If the charter review team looks beyond Florida it will find county commissioners or their equivalent across the nation that can and do raise their own salaries.

In Illinois, they can raise salaries but not during their terms of office, which can lead to some commissioners being paid more than others they serve with. Michigan county officials can approve raises for themselves, as can those in Georgia, New Jersey, California and Maryland, an incomplete national look shows. 

The easiest thing to do here is to ask voters to remove any mention of pay from the charter and to use the state-mandated scale. Even at that scale, Miami-Dade commissioners would be underpaid versus peers in other large counties, since above 1 million residents the state scale has no bonus as population grows.

If the charter review team recommends that, it would only be the first step in a three-step quest to make a change. The county commission would next have to vote to put the question on a ballot. Then, voters would have to be persuaded that equity and common sense require a change in the way we pay commissioners.

In the past, voters have been the stumbling block in commission raises. They’ve never said yes. But then, they’ve never heard from proponents who in an organized way made the logical case for pay that’s fair to both commissioners and the public.

One member of the charter review team, state Sen. Alexis Calatayud, suggested that Miami-Dade commissioners be paid as legislators are – and she noted that she gets $29,000. What she didn’t mention is that state legislators generally meet in one session a year to make laws and don’t deal with multi-million-dollar contracts as county commissioners do the year around. 

I don’t like commissioners dealing with spending and buying decisions, but they do. Tripling or quadrupling their salaries as the senator suggested to “go for a lower hanging fruit” would be paying commissioners $18,000 or $24,000 a year as they deal with billions in spending and often agree to deals for public lands and zoning. The dangers of paying very little for that should be obvious – and a public campaign should make it even more obvious.

Excluding sitting commissioners from raises could also ease a sale to voters.    

The review team has taken the first step in agreeing that pay of $6,000 for a full-time job is morally wrong, pennywise and pound foolish. Agreeing to use the state pay scale would avoid regular debates about how much to pay now and when to raise pay by how much. It would all be a formula that’s logical and seems fair.

The job of selling the change to voters will fall to civic organizations, which in the past sat quietly. As the charter team correctly implies, a sales job will be needed. It would be a great opportunity for community leaders to support what should be a no-brainer, telling voters why they should do the right thing for their own benefit. 

First, however, the charter review team must do the right thing. They’re on the smart path now.

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