Miami Beach commissioners side-step voters and increase their compensation by $20,000
The Miami Beach City Commission voted Wednesday to increase its members’ overall compensation packages by nearly $20,000 annually by boosting monthly car and phone allowances and adjusting monthly stipends in a way that accounts for inflation and taxes.
The move, which will be retroactive to an election this past November, allows the city’s elected officials to raise their compensation without changing their relatively meager base salaries — $10,000 for the mayor and $6,000 for commissioners annually. Those amounts have gone unchanged for nearly 60 years and require a citywide voter referendum to address.
Two commissioners,
Alex Fernandez and David Suarez, voted for the increases but said they would not personally accept them. Suarez said he donates his current salary to the nonprofit Pelican Harbor Seabird Station in Miami.
“When I ran for the City Commission, I knew what I was running for,” Fernandez told the Miami Herald. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to be voting to increase my own compensation.”
Mayor Steven Meiner was the lone “no” vote on the proposal but did not indicate that he planned to personally reject the additional compensation. He did not respond to a request for comments after Wednesday’s meeting.
Including stipends and car and phone benefits, elected officials’ current compensation is around $39,000 per year for commissioners and $40,000 per year for the mayor.
Those amounts will go up substantially under the measure approved Wednesday.
Monthly stipends, now set at $2,000 for the mayor and $2,250 for commissioners, will increase by 23% to account for inflation since 2018, the last time the stipends were adjusted.
The stipends will increase by an additional 24.8% to effectively cancel out the effect of federal taxes on those payments.
A $500 monthly car allowance for commissioners will be raised to $800 and a $50 biweekly cellphone allowance will be increased to $100. Both figures will match the allowances provided to the city manager, attorney and clerk.
The stipends and allowances will be adjusted for inflation each year.
The stipends are intended “to help offset the expenses associated with their public offices,” city officials wrote in a memo on Wednesday’s agenda. Those expenses include “providing food for elderly and needy residents, purchasing tickets to attend a myriad of civic, non-profit and community events in order to engage with city residents, and sending newsletters and correspondence to the city’s residents to keep them apprised of city business.”
Elected officials can spend the stipends at their discretion with no receipts required.
The Miami Beach mayor and commissioners are considered part-time employees, and most continue to work full-time jobs while in office. The City Commission sets policy in Miami Beach, while a full-time city manager runs day-today operations and oversees city staff.
For years, elected officials in Miami Beach have argued that salaries should be increased to encourage more people to run for office and account for the hours needed to do the job.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Commissioner Laura Dominguez said her expenses last year exceeded the amount of the stipend.
Commissioner Tanya Katzoff Bhatt, a marketing professional, said she sold her house so she could afford to run for office last year and said she might need to drive for Uber or Lyft to make ends meet.
“Running for office, we know we’re not doing it to make a fortune,” she said. “I think that making these administrative adjustments to just keep up with the cost of living and proper tax reporting is a very reasonable thing to do.”
Persuading the public to approve pay raises has proven a stubborn task. Voters narrowly rejected a proposal in 2018 to increase the mayor’s salary to about $75,000 and commissioners’ salaries to about $45,000. One year later, voters rejected a similar measure that would have taken effect after the elected officials at the time had left office.
Resident advocacy group Miami Beach United opposed the compensation increases Wednesday, saying in an email this week that the item should be deferred until after a Charter Review Board has made recommendations on the matter.
A separate item proposed by Fernandez on Wednesday allows elected officials to hire an additional staffer receiving about $120,000 per year. Fernandez said he needs the additional staff “to better serve the public.” The item passed unanimously without discussion.
Last April, Miami Beach city commissioners — only some of whom are still in office — voted to allow themselves to receive pensions if they serve more than two years of a fouryear term in office, when previously they would have needed to be reelected to be eligible.
Under the city’s retirement plan, elected officials are eligible to receive lifetime monthly payments once they leave office and are 62 years old. The payment amounts come to approximately $500 per month for officials who serve more than half of a four-year term and around $1,000 per month for those who serve two terms.
“From the time that we wake up in the morning until the time that we go to sleep, I’m spending time for the city,” Rosen Gonzalez said at the April 2023 meeting. “We are here for you, and we need the community to be here for us moving forward.”
Meiner and Fernandez voted against the pension item, citing ethical concerns.
On Wednesday, Rosen Gonzalez said she hopes to try again to put salary increases on the ballot — and, finally, persuade residents to approve them.
“Every other city has been able to do this except for us,” she said.
Elected officials’ salaries vary widely across MiamiDade County. Some municipalities don’t pay their elected officials a salary, while others pay commissioners $30,000 or more, according to a 2018 report from the Miami-Dade County Ethics Commission in the most recent analysis.
WHEN I RAN FOR THE CITY COMMISSION, I KNEW WHAT I WAS RUNNING FOR. I DON’T THINK IT’S APPROPRIATE FOR ME TO BE VOTING TO INCREASE MY OWN COMPENSATION. Miami Beach Commissioner Alex Fernandez