It's not easy being a Miami-Dade County commissioner. The salary ($6,000) stinks, the hours are atrocious and you've got to sit through lots of marathon meetings. Hard on the tush as well as the psyche.

The public hearing on the proposed 2009-10 county budget started at 5 p.m. last Thursday and ended about 4:30 a.m. Friday. For their labors commissioners got nary a thank you from most citizens, even though they didn't increase the millage rate, and catcalls from those who wanted a modest tax increase to maintain some vital services.

So you can understand why the Gang of 13 feels unappreciated. None more so than their chairman, Dennis Moss, who's hypersentive to criticism. Some time back he even proposed that county administrators pipe up to correct factual errors made by speakers in the chamber and assign a media watchdog to correct reporters' mistakes.

We in the media make plenty, of course, although not intentionally. Nor do commissioners intentionally make mistakes, although Moss certainly made a bad one last Thursday by trying to shush a woman upset over the mayor's big staff pay raises.

Beatriz Pi, a 53-year-old Miamian who is partially paralyzed from a childhood bout with polio, rolled up to the podium in her wheelchair and began a blistering attack on government waste and extravagance. When she criticized Mayor Carlos Alvarez by name for those big pay raises, Moss interrupted and said she needed to stop her ``personal attacks.''

In fact, the mayor's pay raises -- and those Moss gave to 18 members of his staff the very day Alvarez called for belt-tightening -- are part of the budget, a subtlety that seems to have eluded the chairman.

Pi continued, but was cut off by Moss, which sent a strong message to the hundreds of people waiting to be heard: Don't knock those pay raises or you'll be shut down, too. A terrible message since many people across the county are seething over the raises, which have become emblematic for everything they don't like about Miami-Dade politics.

``When we're in a democracy and before the commission we have the right under the First Amendment to express our way of thinking,'' Pi told me by phone. ``He (Moss) tried to stop me with his arrogance, but I continued my speech and when I got downstairs the people on the first floor who were listening starting clapping and cheering.''

The feisty Pi, who was born in Cuba and lived in Miami for the last 29 years, diagnoses the problem with County Commission thusly: ``They forget that they are our employees.''

Most commissioners seem to be living in a bubble that not even a budget crisis can burst. It's caused in part by their bloated (and often overpaid) staffs who fawn over their bosses, assuring them they're right and that all those nattering editorial writers, fat-headed columnists, letter writers and e-mailers are wrong.

Commissioners also spend a good deal of time at events where they're stroked by constituents, many of whom are campaign contributors, who need their votes or the goodies they can bestow. Each Miami-Dade commissioner gets a ``discretionary spending account'' of $727,500 annually to spend as he or she pleases, although those funds are likely to be reduced or eliminated in this budget cycle.

Chairman Moss says he gave his staff big pay raises because of all their ``added responsibilities'' after he became the commission chairman last November. Give me a break. People in the private sector lucky enough to keep their jobs get added responsibilities without pay raises. The chairmanship is a rotating honor that carries a nice title and a bigger office, but not much more. The chairman makes committee assignments and appoints chairs, oversees the commission staff and signs the payroll and presides over meetings. That's it.

Moss has struck an imperious tone during his tenure, insisting during meetings that any commissioner who wants to speak to staff or conversely must do it ``through the chair.'' That may be how it's dictated in Robert's Rules of Order, but Moss' dogmatic insistence casts a stifling, egotistical pall over commission meetings. To watch him at work you'd think he's the sun around which the commission revolves.

But it's the citizens who are the sun around which the commission revolves. And if that wasn't made clear at the first budget hearing last Thursday, it will be made crystal clear at the one coming up on Sept. 17.

If any citizen wants to voice criticism about excessive, unjustified pay raises -- without making it personal -- they should be allowed to speak. Without threats.

At the top of Moss' county website it says, ``Let your voice be heard.'' OK, Mr. Chairman, then let it, And you might want to read what's written just below: ``Direct input from the people is critical for me to best serve the people.''

If you really believe it, take the input. And rescind the raises.

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