On the other hand, the mayor, facing the likelihood of a bruising re-election race, will surely take heat from the unions for cutbacks and job losses.

On the campaign trail last year, Gimenez promised to protect law-enforcement jobs. “I’m not laying off any police officers,” Gimenez said in a debate on WMBM-AM (1490) against opponent Julio Robaina. Gimenez later acknowledged layoffs would be possible without steep union concessions.

Martinez, for his part, said in a September budget hearing that he hoped commissioners would be strong enough to make tough decisions after approving the mayor’s budget. “I do not want to see any cops laid off,” he said, foreseeing that the police union and county would hit an impasse.

Gimenez cautioned commissioners last year that his 2011-12 budget, with its lower tax rate, depended on union concessions — some of which the unions would oppose and would get bumped up to the commission for a decision that could result in layoffs.

The unions indeed made numerous concessions, including agreeing to pay 5 percent more toward health care. The mayor’s proposal would bring that number up to 10 percent.

Yet despite approving the budget, commissioners at the Jan. 5 meeting at times appeared surprised by the prospect of terminating employees.

“They voted to lower the property taxes, and I was assured by a large number of commissioners that they would do the right thing when it came time to do it,” Gimenez said. “Why did some of them change their minds? Was it political courage to do what they did?”

Commissioners who opposed Gimenez’s proposal said the necessary budget cuts could come from elsewhere in the budget, without requiring the extra 5-percent contribution or the layoffs. They have not put forth specific proposals to achieve that goal, however.

The county sent the first wave of pink-slip notices, which don’t take effect until Feb. 3, to 118 police officers and 17 corrections officers Friday, with more to come to professional employees and supervisors starting Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters at County Hall Thursday, Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz rejected the suggestion that he and other commissioners on the prevailing side of the vote reneged on the commitment they made last year to balance the lowered property-tax rate budget by imposing tough union concessions.

“We have kept our word,” Diaz said. “We reduced taxes.”

Martinez, likewise, dismissed the idea that voting against Gimenez’s plan was politically expedient. The mayor’s opponents showed resolve by voting in favor of the unions in a political climate that has turned against organized labor, he said.

“The truth of the matter is that supporting workers’ rights now is not a popular thing,” Martinez told The Miami Herald. “Contrary to what everybody is writing, that [we] buckled to union pressure — no.”

Former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferré, a frequent local politics pundit who went on Spanish-language radio to discuss the dispute, agreed with Martinez that backing the unions was “a bolder political move” than supporting Gimenez.

But Ferré, who also said the commission should have voted for Gimenez’s plan, said the commissioners’ decision won’t go over well at the ballot box in a community fed up with bloated government, and which ousted former Mayor Carlos Alvarez and Commissioner Natacha Seijas largely because they supported higher taxes.

“This is an angry community. They’re angry because of taxes. They’re angry because of services. They’re angry because of unemployment,” Ferré told the Herald. “I think Gimenez is going to win this one.”