‘Power grab’: Hialeah council president pushes for direct access to department heads

A proposal praised as common sense on one side but condemned as a power grab on the other sparked a fight on the Hialeah City Council — and with the mayor promising a veto, the conflict is likely to march on.

On July 14, the Hialeah City Council passed an ordinance on a 4-3 vote brought forward by Council President Paul Hernandez to establish council committees that would have the power to question department heads without the mayor’s permission. Under the current interpretation of the city’s charter, council members must go through the mayor’s office to ask any question of a department head unless they are gathered as a “legislative body,” said Hernandez.

The current system isn’t “functional” and makes the council a “middle man,” Hernandez said. He added that it also gives the impression that a mayor could screen submitted inquiries before questioning a department head.

Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez vehemently opposed the ordinance at both the June 9 and July 14 council meetings.

Under the ordinance, the council president would create committees and assign council members to them, with each council member receiving at least one assignment, excluding the president. The president would then assign which departments fall under each committee. The council president told the Miami Herald the ordinance allows the council to do what he said constituents already presume it does: ask questions to come up with solutions for residents’ problems.

“You’ll have what I feel will be a much more effective council and a council that’s just going to be able to do its job,” Paul Hernandez said.

Hialeah uses a strong mayor government model. But last year’s council elections chipped away at some of Mayor Hernandez’s council influence with an influx of younger members, two of whom beat the mayor’s own endorsed candidates.

Mayor Hernandez called the ordinance a “power grab” and swore to veto the measure. He also refused to support a possible charter amendment that would grant council members the individual ability to question department heads without the mayor’s involvement when prompted by the council president.

“You don’t have eight mayors in the city. You have one mayor who’s the administrator,” Carlos Hernandez said at the July 14 meeting. “There’s a balance of power.”

Mayor Hernandez said the current model works for Hialeah and that he does not want to mirror Miami-Dade County’s setup. And he said if the council ever wanted to question a department head, they could meet as a legislative body to do so.

“If any of you vote for this, you’re voting against your own power,” Carlos Hernandez said. “Because you might be in today, but you’re right, you might be out tomorrow.”

But council president Hernandez said it would be inefficient to have the entire council meet, and make quorum, beyond its regularly scheduled two meetings a month rather than establish the committees. And he added that at one point, the council was formed as a legislative body for a meeting and when he tried to ask the chief of police a question, the mayor shut him down.

“The mayor, for whatever reason, stepped in and said ‘No, you don’t ask him questions, you go through me,’ “ Paul Hernandez said.

When asked about that particular incident by the Miami Herald, Mayor Hernandez said he didn’t recall the circumstances but implied he was still in the right.

“Remember, I am the administrator. The mayor of the city is the administrator of the city,” Carlos Hernandez said. “So, questions I can ask the department head to answer, and 99% of the time they will answer. But sometimes, I’m the one who wants to answer.”

Carlos Hernandez also said the council president sometimes “confuses” the legislative and administrative functions of the council and that he’s “been acting like he’s brand new on the council” with this proposal.

The council president said that beyond the one incident, the mayor has been good about letting council members ask department heads questions. But his concern is for future mayors, who he said may weaponize their ability to keep department heads from answering questions that stem from certain council members they may not like. Mayor Hernandez will be termed out of his office in 2021.

“That kind of authority or, you know, that kind of just eagerness to exercise that authority and take away the right of a council member to ask questions — that’s what dangerous about this system that we have presently,” the council president said.

Paul Hernandez said if the mayor does make good on his promise to veto the ordinance, the council likely doesn’t have enough votes to overturn it. So he’ll explore other options to revive the proposal, including bringing in outside counsel to examine Hialeah’s charter and determine whether council members actually need to be gathered as a legislative body to question department heads, as the city attorney has determined they must.

And council president Hernandez insists the move isn’t a power grab, as the mayor has alleged.

“The idea of establishing committees is not a novel concept. I’m not reinventing the wheel here,” Paul Hernandez said. “I’m just doing what’s right.”

The mayor confirmed to the Miami Herald that he’s going to veto the ordinance but intends to keep a “regular relationship” with the council.

This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 1:31 PM.