More paycheck errors for some Miami-Dade commissioners as car allowance goes missing

Would Miami-Dade commissioners miss their $10,500 car allowance if it went away one year? We have a partial answer to that question.

As news broke last week that Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez was mistakenly over paid $1,000 a week for all of 2023, county administrators were cleaning up another payroll mistake with the elected board.

The five commissioners elected last fall never received their monthly $875 car allowance, multiple commissioners confirmed in recent days.

The result: Human Resources is preparing a one-time pay boost of $7,875 for five commissioners to cover the short-changed perk of office for the 13-member board, according to information released Monday afternoon by the administration of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

READ MORE: Miami-Dade mistakenly paid a county commissioner an extra $1,000 a week. Nobody noticed

The commissioners affected each took office after November elections: Anthony Rodriguez, Marleine Bastien, Juan Carlos Bermudez, Kevin Cabrera, Anthony Rodriguez and Micky Steinberg.

“I knew it was part of the stipend but didn’t realize it was missing from our pay,” said Rodriguez, a former state lawmaker who was selected by fellow commissioners to serve as vice chair of the board.

In an email Monday afternoon, Melanie McLean, deputy director of Human Resources, said the corrected pay will appear on the commissioners’ next check, scheduled to be issued on Aug. 25. She said the error on the auto allowances was discovered last week after the Herald asked about the apparent over-payment of Gonzalez.

“The issue on the car allowance was identified as a result of an audit of all Elected Officials’ pay while reviewing the over-payment for Commissioner Gonzalez,” McLean wrote. “The Chiefs of Staff of Commissioners Bastien, Steinberg, Rodriguez and Bermudez were all notified on Thursday morning. Commissioner Cabrera was notified on Wednesday evening.”

After multiple payroll bungles, call for an outside audit

On Monday, Levine Cava announced an audit by her administration of the Gonzalez mistake. In his own statement, Gonzalez said that review wasn’t enough and called for an independent auditor to examine county payroll records.

“Taxpayers deserve to know that their money is being spent correctly and County employees should have the peace of mind that they are not being over or underpaid,” Gonzalez said. “An independent auditor is needed to review and make recommendations on how to fix current processes, and to bring greater transparency to help restore confidence in County government.”

Car allowances are a rare perk in Miami-Dade’s 30,000-person payroll. Data released by Human Resources in 2022 listed only 156 employees receiving car benefits in 2021.

While county employees get paid every other week, the car allowance for commissioners only appears in one paycheck per month.

In budget votes last year, commissioners approved a $10,500 yearly car allowance, up from $9,600, as part of a broader pay hike that more than doubled total compensation to $138,500 a year. That includes about $50,000 in additional retirement contributions.

READ MORE: Miami-Dade commissioners quietly endorse a big compensation hike for themselves in budget

Commissioners who voted on the higher pay weren’t affected by the payroll mistake. Those votes occurred in September, and the commissioners with the lower paychecks took office in November.

Personnel staffers apparently noticed the error while sorting through a different paycheck mistake flagged by the Herald using online pay records.

Last week, Human Resources, a department that reports to Levine Cava, said a data-entry error mistakenly added $2,008 to Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez’s paychecks since a few weeks after his appointment to a vacant commission seat in late November.

The error was discovered after the Herald asked why Gonzalez was earning so much more than the other board members, based on publicly available compensation data posted on the county’s website.

Gonazalez, a lawyer who reported making $188,000 last year in the private sector, must pay back the $34,000 in erroneous extra county pay.

On Monday, Levine Cava released a memo ordering an audit of payroll records over the Gonzalez mistake.

“Last week, I was made aware of an issue with the County payroll system that resulted in an overpayment to a member of the Board of County Commissioners. Our Human Resources Department has informed me that they are addressing the error,” Levine Cava wrote in the Aug. 21 memo to Ofelia Tamayo, director of Audit and Management Services. “Concurrently, the department is developing extra measures to identify similar errors or discrepancies.”

In the memo, Levine Cava asked the audit staff to work with Human Resources and the Finance Department to “determine the exact cause of this error” and make recommendations on needed fixes.

The memo did not mention the compensation errors with the other five commissioners, who said the administration contacted their offices last week about the mistakes after the Herald inquiry. It appears that when the new commissioners were entered into the payroll system, the requirement for an $875 monthly payment was omitted

“They said it was a human error,” Cabrera said Monday of the administration officials who briefed him on the error. “They apologized.”

This story was updated after it was originally published to reflect a county official’s response, including clarifying the precise amount owed to the five commissioners.

This story was originally published August 21, 2023 at 5:05 PM.