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While campaigning for Miami mayor last fall, Eileen Higgins promised voters a \u201cdeep dive\u201d into runaway city spending, but neither she nor her staff responded to repeated requests from the Spotlight for help obtaining employee salary data.<\/p>\n
(Courtesy of Eileen Higgins)<\/p>\n
Such pay boosts may help explain why in the current fiscal year, salaries and benefits for City of Miami workers will account for roughly 77% of the city\u2019s $1.8 billion operating budget, a number that has increased 57% in just five years.<\/p>\n
So how much, exactly, did each city employee actually take home last year?\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Spotlight asked, repeatedly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The city won\u2019t tell us.<\/p>\n
After our December reporting showed that the number of city workers with base pay of at least $200,000 had more than doubled in two years, we filed a public records request seeking a full accounting of annual take-home pay.<\/p>\n
Sorry, city officials told us, such records don\u2019t exist. But they can be created, for a price: $193, to reimburse IT staff for two hours of their time.<\/p>\n
We agreed to pay.<\/p>\n
But days later, the offer was abruptly rescinded.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease be advised that the Office of the City Attorney has requested that we refrain from proceeding with this request,\u201d Orlando Rodriguez, Assistant Director of the Office of Communications, wrote in an email, \u201cnoting that under state law the City is not required to create a new record in order to fulfill a public records request.\u201d<\/p>\n
So how can we obtain the data? we asked.<\/p>\n
Rodriguiez refused to answer: \u201cAs previously stated, I must defer to the\u00a0city\u00a0attorney\u00a0on this matter.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
We appealed the decision to City Attorney George Wysong, who promised \u201cwe will look into this.\u201d<\/p>\n
We never heard back. He\u2019s not answering our emails.<\/p>\n
We also appealed, repeatedly, to Miami\u2019s chief administrator, City Manager James Reyes. He didn\u2019t respond.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To understand what records do exist and which ones might shed light on total take-home pay by city workers, we asked for an interview with Human Resources Director Angela Roberts. She declined, after repeated requests, to speak with us.<\/p>\n
So we submitted questions in writing to the Office of Communications. (City rules prevent its employees from responding directly to the media.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In their response, officials confirmed that all employee pay \u2014 including base salary, overtime and other adjustments \u2014 is recorded at the \u201ctransaction level\u201d and stored in systems that can be queried and exported.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They also confirmed that the city maintains a payroll database tracking all payments made to employees and has previously exported that data for audits and internal analysis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Producing a comprehensive figure of \u201ctotal compensation,\u201d officials noted, would require combining payroll data with information from other departments, including pension contributions and benefit costs.<\/p>\n
In its responses, the city acknowledged that it has, at times, produced reports showing total annual compensation by employee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, the records can be produced.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the city won\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n
Hoping to bypass the city\u2019s administrative staff \u2013 the very people whose employment data we\u2019re seeking \u2013 we appealed to our elected officials. District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo and his communications aide did not respond to our repeated requests.<\/p>\n
Neither did Mayor Eileen Higgins, and her staff assistants, who arrived in office last December on a promise of bringing customer service and accountability to City Hall \u2013 as well as a \u201cdeep dive\u201d into runaway city spending.<\/p>\n
Multiple requests to Higgins and her office staff requesting help obtaining the salary data went unanswered.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a city where overtime and other forms of additional pay play a major role in earnings \u2014 particularly in public safety departments \u2014 a full and complete picture of city employee compensation has broad policy implications: for setting the annual budget, for setting employee base salaries, for meeting pension obligations and for negotiations with the local municipal workers union.<\/p>\n
Previous news reports, for instance, have detailed how City of Miami Fire-Rescue personnel have at times ranked among the city\u2019s highest-paid employees once overtime is included, in some cases earning nearly as much in extra hours than in base salary.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the city\u2019s police department, heavy overtime has at times allowed employees to substantially increase take-home pay, driven by staffing shortages, scheduling practices and union rules.<\/p>\n
Because pension benefits are typically tied to an employee\u2019s highest-earning year, the ability to increase income through overtime can directly affect long-term retirement payouts, making total compensation, not base salary, the more meaningful measure of costs to taxpayers.<\/p>\n
What the city\u2019s current administration \u2014 and at least some of its elected officials \u2014 are offering for public consideration is only a partial view: base salaries, job titles and department assignments, along with aggregate personnel spending in the budget.<\/p>\n
But in a system where overtime and supplemental pay can substantially increase earnings \u2014 and future pension obligations \u2014 what the city won\u2019t show us remains a critical piece of its financial picture.<\/p>\n