Mayor of Miami-Dade’s second-largest city: We won’t enforce county dining closures
Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez has lately made a habit of picking fights with other leaders over their handling of COVID-19.
He called out Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, saying he hasn’t given the city enough help in fighting the disease. He criticized Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez for his proposal to reduce CARES Act funding for municipalities, initially refusing to provide documentation of the city’s spending.
On Tuesday, he went a step further, telling his city’s police and code enforcement officers to stop enforcing the county’s ban on indoor dining — despite the legal requirement to follow the county’s emergency orders related to COVID-19.
“I cannot continue to do something I find wrong,” Hernandez told the Miami Herald shortly after holding a news conference on the matter. Gimenez “can come and enforce if he wants to.”
Hernandez insisted that he is “not asking anybody to break the law,” and that he doesn’t know if any Hialeah restaurant owners plan to reopen their indoor dining areas in response to his announcement. “I’m just saying we’re not going to enforce it,” he said.
Hialeah, the second-largest city in Miami-Dade and sixth largest in Florida by population, has had more than 21,000 confirmed COVID cases since the start of the pandemic, which is fourth-most among cities in Florida according to state data.
Gimenez ordered restaurants countywide to close indoor dining in early July as case numbers and positivity rates surged after widespread reopenings in May. Hours after Hernandez’s comments Tuesday, Gimenez announced the details of a plan that was already in the works to reopen indoor dining next Monday.
“I really don’t know what he’s talking about,” Gimenez said of Hernandez during a virtual press conference. “If restaurants in Hialeah open before Monday, they may very well find a Miami-Dade officer at their doors to enforce the county rules.”
The county’s COVID data has been trending in the right direction for weeks, with positivity rates recently dipping below 10% — although Gimenez has said he wants to see the 14-day positivity rate “as close to 5% as possible” before loosening restrictions. That rate was at 10.3% Tuesday.
Hernandez justified his defiance of the county order by citing a lack of evidence that indoor dining has contributed to the spread of COVID-19 in Miami-Dade. To the north in Broward County, those spaces have remained open and positivity rates have been lower than those in Miami-Dade.
But a lack of effective contact tracing has made it difficult to identify the sources of community spread with any certainty. Health experts advising Gimenez have said indoor dining can be dangerous because it requires removing one’s mask in an enclosed setting where the virus can spread. Restaurants have recently been tied to outbreaks in several other parts of the country, including San Diego and Minnesota.
Two Hialeah city councilmen told the Miami Herald on Tuesday that they disagreed with the mayor’s stance on enforcement, saying the city should wait for a reopening plan to be in place and should enforce the law.
Council President Paul Hernandez noted that COVID-19 numbers in Hialeah have finally come down after a spike earlier in the summer.
“Our numbers are finally low, and thank God that they are,” he said. “Obviously this latter shutdown has worked. I don’t feel like we should be going against it.”
Hernandez added: “The mayor seems to be feuding with everyone. I don’t see the effectiveness of it.”
Councilman Jesus Tundidor said he knows businesses are hurting and wants to help restaurants, but doesn’t think this is the best way to do it.
“Small businesses in Hialeah are suffering bad, but just opening up and doing our own thing, I don’t know if that’s really gonna help anybody,” he said. “Publicly coming out and saying we’re not gonna enforce [a] law ... I wouldn’t do that.”
This story was originally published August 25, 2020 at 1:14 PM.
