Shame, shame, shame, Miami commissioners! You owe us all an apology | Editorial

We haven’t seen hijinks like these at a Miami City Commission in years. We haven’t missed them, either.

It was an embarrassment, played out in front of Miamians who expected to see real work get done. Instead, they got a circus.

From the start, it was clear it was going to be tense meeting. In weeks past, City Manager Emilio González already had been accused of breaking rules in getting a permit to do work on his home. He was going to tell his side of the story at this meeting.

But all hell broke loose first. A debate over the order of agenda items spiraled into a messy brawl that concluded with a 3-2 vote to adjourn the meeting — before noon. Commissioners yelled at each other; talked over each other; leveled accusations at each other — on taxpayers’ time and on their dime.

Even after the meeting adjourned, Commissioners Joe Carollo and Keon Hardemon threw insults and defensive jabs, as residents who came to speak on agenda items watched in disbelief.

Bystanders were left shocked at the sloppy, hostile hearing and its premature end, some rightly angry with the commission for wasting their time, other rightly aghast at the political theater that unfolded.

No city work got done; all 50 items on the agenda were left for the next meeting.

How do residents get a refund for that?

Among the items that never got addressed: the creation of an LGBTQ advisory board, the confirmation of an administrator to oversee the tax-funded Downtown Development Agency and regulations for food trucks.

What the audience saw were heightened emotions that sloshed over from the last commission meeting of 2019.

Carollo, who has a long, tiresome history of disruptive dais behavior and targeting enemies, wants the city manager fired for allegedly bending rules to get a permit to do work at his home. For weeks, Mayor Francis Suarez has tried to protect the manager.

Thursday, however, it all exploded.

Four of five commissioners voted to take up a section of the day’s agenda in a specific order, the Miami Herald reported. The newly selected commission chairman, Hardemon, was not present. He arrived later and began to preside over the meeting.

Hardemon announced his intention to hear a presentation from the chairman of the Super Bowl 54 host committee and comments from the embattled city manager — who had survived an attempt to fire him in December.

But this deviated from the order requested by Carollo and new Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, approved by Manolo Reyes. They challenged Hardemon.

That’s when the three-ring circus began, leading to a 3-2 vote to end the meeting. Hardemon and Commissioner Ken Russell voted against the adjournment.

Obviously, there’s bad blood here. In December, Carollo, Diaz de la Portilla and Reyes voted to fire González, one vote short of the four needed. Later, all five commissioners voted to send the allegations to the city’s auditor general.

The mayor attempted to veto that vote, but City Attorney Victoria Mendez issued an opinion that he could not do that. So Carollo and his two commission supporters came loaded for bear on Thursday.

Of course, in Miami it does not take long to realize that this bad behavior is the manifestation of a City Hall power struggle, among the manager, the mayor and factions of commissioners.

We don’t care.

The outcome was that no city business got done. Nothing short of a public apology, from the combatants, from the dais, at the next meeting will do.