Thursday February 15, 2007
More strong-mayor fallout in Miami Today: “[C]ommission chairman Bruno A. Barreiro revealed that he’s pushing a plan to gut the county’s budget department and bring key financial analysts directly under commission control — despite County Attorney Murray A. Greenberg’s opinion that the move violates the county charter.” Also, the charter review looks like it’s going forward.
Tags: charter, county, politicscomments powered by Disqus
The commission is spitting in the face of the electorate. This is simply unacceptable behavior for people who are voted into office and supposed to accept the will of the people.
I was thinking about that this morning. I agree, but with some reservations. An argument with some plausibility is that the voters gave the mayor certain powers, but the commission needs to spell out such powers as are within the ballot initiative that will allow it to exert some checks on the mayor.
I was also thinking about a “the hubris of these people demands that they be thrown out of office” movement. Problem is, how would someone campaign on this? Would they say “as commissioner, I promise to not exert my authority, and to let the mayor do whatever he wants”? That’s not a winning line.