‘Drag the mayor from her house’: Delay in swearing in new leaders causes panic
The special election results to fill two vacant commission seats in Biscayne Park were certified by the Miami-Dade County Elections Department last week, but the swearing-in ceremonies for the winning candidates were delayed for two days after a planned ceremony was abruptly canceled at a “chaotic” public assembly Tuesday.
MacDonald Kennedy and Virginia O’Halpin were sworn in before a modest gathering of residents just before 5 p.m. Thursday.
The village administration relented to pressure from Kennedy and concerned residents, but not before the seemingly mundane ministerial action had been “botched so badly,” Kennedy said.
Angry residents crammed inside the tiny village’s historic log cabin Tuesday to demand that the two new members of the commission be sworn in and that the village certify the election results.
But the surprising absence of Mayor Tracy Truppman — which the administration had been made aware of five hours earlier — meant just two sitting members of the five-seat commission were present for the meeting. A minimum of three members is needed to reach a quorum.
The election was held Jan. 7, and the village charter stipulates that new commissioners “will” commence their terms within 10 days of the election. That deadline will pass on Friday, and the newly elected commissioners were worried that if they were not sworn in before that deadline, the will of the voters would have been violated.
About 7 p.m. Tuesday, the village’s contract attorney, Rebecca Rodriguez, informed the crowd that Truppman would not be attending the meeting and that it would be canceled. Rodriguez quickly walked out of the cabin and did not answer phone calls from the city manager, Krishan Manners.
“Someone started yelling, ‘Lock the door!’ ” said Miami-Dade County Commissioner Sally Heyman, who was in attendance Tuesday. “Someone said, ‘Drag the mayor from her house.’ ”
The village of about 3,000 residents has been in a state of turmoil recently, Heyman said. The former police chief was sentenced to prison in 2018 for directing his officers to frame black men in a string of unsolved burglaries. Last year, two commissioners resigned within a month of each other.
“I was there, like many, to see the city move forward,” she said.
On the agenda on Tuesday, apart from the swearing in of the two new commission members, was the election of a new mayor. In Biscayne Park, the commission chooses its mayor after every election.
With so much on the agenda, did Truppman give the city a reason why she couldn’t attend?
“Not one I can repeat,” Manners said in a brief interview Thursday. “We really don’t need press on this.”
A copy of an email exchange between Rodriguez and Truppman, obtained by the Herald, shows that Rodriguez knew about the mayor’s expected absence as early as 2:21 p.m.
Heyman, who represents Biscayne Park, called the attorney’s actions “unacceptable.” She said the mayor’s absence was suspicious considering the 10-day deadline to certify the election results.
“Shame on them,” she said. “The attorney to know it, and the mayor to do it.”
Heyman, who had to rearrange her schedule Tuesday evening because of the planned meeting, said the village should have informed the public about Truppman’s absence earlier in the day. Heyman was in attendance with several former elected officials from the village and current officials from other municipalities, she said.
“I think quite a bit of this was intended and strategically done,” she said. “I think people were aware of some of these conditions. That’s all the more troubling.”
Before he learned he would be sworn in late Thursday, Kennedy said the village had a “crisis” on its hands.
“We live in a democracy and elections are sacred in this country,” he said. “And the will of the people needs to be recognized. The people of Biscayne Park elected two people to represent them.”
Ron Meyer, an elections attorney based in Tallahassee, said he did not think the charter’s 10-day phrasing means that a new commissioner cannot take office after that apparent deadline.
“If nobody will do anything until, say, the 18th, I don’t think the person who was elected is unelected or anything,” he said. “It seems to me that the person who is elected might want to consider forcing a swearing in.”
Kennedy said he did not want to speculate on why Truppman was absent, but the two have “no love” for each other.
Before his election, Kennedy clashed with Truppman as a concerned resident. He called for her resignation in the past.
During the special election cycle, he said, Truppman accused him of illegal campaigning, which he denied.
“I hope there is a legitimate reason why she was not there,” he said. “I also hope it’s not a way to circumvent a certified election result.”
This story was originally published January 16, 2020 at 4:51 PM.
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