She was the first (and only) woman to run Miami-Dade’s government. Now she’s retiring

The late-night call came as a surprise, offering Alina Tejeda Hudak the biggest promotion she could hope for in a steady climb as a county administrator in Miami-Dade government. She assumed it would quickly end her career.

On the other end of the line around 11 p.m. on March 15, 2011 was Carlos Alvarez, the county’s mayor for only 96 more hours before he had to leave office after being overwhelmingly recalled in an election that evening. Alvarez’s ouster would have left County Manager George Burgess in charge, except Burgess had resigned in the wake of the recall, too.

Alvarez wanted to install Hudak as manager before he surrendered power, leaving her to run the government until the county held new elections for mayor. She thought there was a good chance the next mayor would show her the door too after her role as the new face of county government’s status quo, following a hand-off from the deeply unpopular Alvarez.

“I knew full well that it could be the end,” Hudak said in a recent interview, ahead of her retirement Wednesday as Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s senior deputy and a 35-year employee of Miami-Dade. “I know it sounds Pollyanna, but I felt this tremendous responsibility to do it. I spent so much of my career here. I didn’t want the community to think this government was in crisis.”

Hudak did accept, becoming the first woman to serve as county manager. With no mayor in office, she took on the ceremonial duties of that office, too — most notably, her signature appeared on each of the paychecks the county issues every two weeks for a workforce of more than 25,000 people. She also happened to be the county’s last manager. The office formally went away in 2012 under a charter amendment voters had approved two years earlier as part of a move to make the mayor the county’s top administrator.

The 59-year-old departed county government Wednesday to a capacity crowd in the County Commission chambers, some colleagues matching Hudak’s favorite hot-pink color in their wardrobe choices. “My daughters told me this was my Alina jacket,” said Jennifer Moon, the veteran budget director and Hudak protege whom Gimenez tapped to replace Hudak as deputy mayor overseeing Transportation, Solid Waste, Elections, Animal Services and other departments. “And I had to wear it.”

Hudak leaves Miami-Dade government as a $285,000-a-year deputy mayor, one of four in the Gimenez administration and an original pick by the new mayor to help him navigate the county through a budget crisis. The Gimenez job offer extended Hudak’s career with her first employer. She started as a management trainee in 1984 when county government was still housed in the civil courthouse on Flagler Street. She took the job after turning down a slot in the federal recruitment program so prestigious that the University of Miami threw a party to celebrate her acceptance after graduating from the school’s masters program for public administration.

Hudak preferred to stay close to home, and quickly moved with county government to its current headquarters in the 29-floor Stephen P. Clark Center. The tower is named after one of the four mayors she’s worked for at Miami-Dade. All but one year of her tenure was spent at the top, in the mayor’s suite on the 29th Floor. The one exception was her largest setback: a demotion from assistant county manager in 1996 to run the General Services Administration for nearly two years in the late 1990s.

“I was devastated,” Hudak recalled. She was about eight months into a difficult pregnancy when the news came. Weeks later, she was in her bed after giving birth to daughter Kristina, signing termination papers for an employee under investigation for an alleged bribery scheme. In the wake of the scandal, Hudak was still recovering from giving birth when she made a tour of the county fleets under her supervision. “I went to every shop. I was this big and swollen and went to every fleet operation. I made sure they knew they had a director that cared about them.”

Her tenure in county government is long enough that she has commemorative coins issued for the opening of Metrorail stations after the system debuted in 1984. She’s been called out for every county weather emergency since Andrew, including severe storms in the mid-1990s that forced her to leave the bedside of her dying father. She sees relics of her career in every commute, including a street off U.S. 1 named for a slain police officer whose death prompted a late-night call to Hudak, who then realized she knew the officer from high school.

“We’re losing an institution,” County Commission Chairwoman Audrey Edmonson said Wednesday.

Aside from her stint at General Services, she’s served as an assistant county manager or a deputy mayor since 1993.

Hudak’s most recent portfolio included some of Gimenez’s most problematic areas, including the under-funded transit system and a bookkeeping mishap in lighting and security districts that ended with the county sending out hefty bills in 2015 to reconcile accounts. She also presided over Miami-Dade’s successful response to the Zika crisis and the speedy completion of the 2018 recount of statewide races, when the county’s Elections Department emerged as a star in the wake of bungled counts in Broward and Palm Beach.

“She was vital in making sure I had the county resources I needed,” said Christina White, the Miami-Dade elections supervisor who reported to Hudak and now reports to Moon.

People who worked with Hudak describe her as a hands-on administrator whose stone-faced demeanor at commission meetings obscures a tough taskmaster.

“Behind that sweet smile is a killer,” Gimenez said during Hudak’s standing-room-only retirement event. He was referring to Hudak’s role as the primary administrator overseeing the county’s response to the 2016 Zika outbreak. While Miami-Dade was faulted for not being ready to war with mosquitoes as Zika spread earlier that year, the county moved aggressively once the disease struck.

Along with working as deputy mayor, Hudak was the county’s Solid Waste director, running the agency charged with mosquito control. She oversaw an unprecedented spraying operation, over fierce objections from some Miami Beach residents, and a mobilization of county crews to tackle standing water countywide and treating 150,000 drains with insecticide, twice in three months. “We’re the only government who beat Zika,” Gimenez said. “She faced a lot of criticism. And just did a fantastic job.”

She spearheaded the county’s annual fundraising drive for breast cancer research, including painting an entire trash truck pink for the occasion. The family tailgates before UM football games. Hudak said her church has been a “source of peace” outside of County Hall. She and her husband, Coral Gables Police Chief Ed Hudak, are part of a a group of five families who socialize, read the Bible and maintain an extended text chain of support. “We tell each other ‘Come Holy Spirit’ when we know we’re having a bad day,” she said.

Gimenez said after his 2011 win, some advisers urged the former fire chief and Miami city manager to clean house. Gimenez said he never considered letting Hudak’s role as a key Alvarez deputy tarnish her value to the new administration.

“Bosses change” in government, Gimenez said. “You’re asked to do a job in a professional way. Alina always did that. Why in the world would I fire her?” Burgess said he thought Hudak was too respected to put herself at risk by taking on the manager’s post: “Alina was her own brand.”

The Tejeda family left Cuba in 1964, and wound up in Miami about six years later. “We moved to Westchester,” she said. “We were the first Cubans on the block.” Hudak recalls armed guards at the airport forcing her mother to strip down to her girdle before she left with a lone jeweled ring. “I wear it every single day,” Hudak said.

The Hudaks have spent their careers in the public spotlight, including a 1994 wedding write-up in the Miami Herald that included the bride’s salary (then $99,000 a year). Now the parents of Kristina and Jennifer, the couple’s romance began after a chance meeting in the chambers of the County Commission. He was a plainclothes detective at the time, and she said he spoke so smoothly she assumed he was a lawyer. She described their marriage as the “King and the Strong Queen form of government.”

Chief Hudak was in the front row of the commission chambers Wednesday, Kristina by his side. Jennifer was in New York for an internship, watching a Facebook livestream of the ceremony and crying. Hudak’s voice quavered the most when talking about her family, colleagues, Gimenez and when addressing the Solid Waste employees gathered to watch her final commission meeting.

“To the secret heroes of the everyday,” she said. “Thank you so much for teaching me about compassion, and so many other things, and what it takes to deliver service.”

“This has been my whole life,” Hudak said near the end of her speech. “And I’ve loved every single minute of it.”

This story was originally published July 10, 2019 at 9:23 PM.