Who earns the most in Hialeah city government? Not the mayor. Search our pay database

When a new mayor takes over Hialeah’s city government as the top administrator, the city’s top paycheck won’t come with the new job.

The outgoing mayor, Carlos Hernández, finished eighth on Hialeah’s list of best-paid employees, earning about $190,000 last year, an amount fixed by the city charter.

Two administrators reporting to Hernández earned more: Police Chief Sergio Velazquez, whose $211,000 compensation made him the city’s second-best-paid employee in 2020; and Armando Vidal, the Public Works director who finished first with an annual compensation of $237,000.

City government in Hialeah, Miami-Dade’s second-largest municipality, is set for a change at the top in November when a term-limited Hernández departs and the winner of the mayoral election takes office. The city holds a primary for all candidates Nov. 2, with a run-off scheduled for Nov. 16 if nobody captures 50% of the primary vote.

Hernández has held the post for 10 years, taking office after his predecessor, Julio Robaina, resigned to run for Miami-Dade mayor in 2011. That year, Hialeah voters adopted a change to the city charter setting the mayor’s compensation at $190,000 per year: $150,000 in salary and $40,000 to cover expenses.

Compensation data requested by the Miami Herald shows Hialeah’s top administrators earning far less than their counterparts in Miami-Dade County.

Hialeah doesn’t pay as well as county government

The Herald published an analysis of county compensation in May that showed the county’s top lawyer at the time, Abigail Price-Williams, earning the most, with $416,000 in annual compensation. Hialeah’s city attorney, Lorena Bravo, earned less than half of that in 2020 — making about $205,000, landing her the fifth slot on the city’s best-paid list.

If Vidal, Hialeah’s Public Works director, was a county employee in 2020, his $237,183 yearly compensation would have landed him the 113th slot on Miami-Dade’s best-paid list.

For the Hialeah list, the Herald used the same criteria as the county compensation database.

How to search the Herald’s compensation database

We’re publishing the compensation information for any employee who earned at least $8,900 in 2020, the equivalent of working 20 hours a week for the year earning last year’s hourly minimum wage of $8.56.

More than 1,200 employees met that threshold in 2020, and the compensation database embedded in this story allows you to search by name, department, position or view the complete list. (To view the entire payroll, don’t select a Division in the pull-down bar.)

The database can also be sorted to show which employees received the most overtime pay, and which saw the largest share of their pay from overtime compensation.

Along with the the lower salaries, the Hialeah compensation data departs from Miami-Dade’s in another way.

Unlike the county, Hialeah redacted the names, titles and departments of 22 employees, providing only their yearly compensation. That included the No. 7 employee on the city’s best-paid list, who earned $200,000 in 2020.

Bravo said the redactions were authorized by Florida exemptions in open-records laws applying to under cover police officer.

“Waiving the exemption and revealing their identify jeopardizes their safety,” she said in response to written questions. “The public is not being denied the opportunity to know the salaries of its local government employees [but] only the identity of these specific class of employees who serve the public at high risk to their life and safety.”

Miami Herald staff writer Aaron Leibowitz contributed to this report.