Carlos Gimenez cut his office budget -- but he didn't backfill Gov. Rick Scott's veto

As part of his plan to save Miami-Dade County money while keeping alive a meal program for senior citizens, Carlos Gimenez promised to slash his own office's budget if elected mayor.

Gimenez made the promise on his campaign website June 1, 2011: "We are all disappointed by the recent veto of state funding for meal programs at two senior citizens' centers in Miami-Dade County. I know firsthand the good and important work these centers do and have steadfastly supported these programs. ... First, I will immediately reduce the Office of the Mayor, currently budgeted at $7.3 million, by 10 percent in order to fill the $730,298 gap created by the veto."

Note that's a two-part promise: that he would reduce the office of the mayor by 10 percent in order to fill a gap created by a veto for funding for senior meals programs.

On July 13 about two weeks after he won, Gimenez released his proposed budget. The executive summary showed the mayor's office shrinking from about $7.3 million to $5.9 million -- a 20 percent reduction, or double the 10 percent he promised. It also shows that his office's staff would shrink from 55 positions to 44. (The 11 positions being cut are vacant, according to county spokeswoman Suzy Trutie.)

At a meeting that started Sept. 22 and stretched into the next day, Miami-Dade county commissioners voted in favor of the budget. Trutie said that the $5.9 million budget remains the same as Gimenez's proposal.

Trutie said in a Sept. 23 interview that the office of the mayor currently has 43 workers -- including Gimenez.

That part of Gimenez's promise was kept. But it's more complicated to track the second part of his promise that he would use the money to fill a gap created by Gov. Rick Scott's budget veto.

On May 26, Scott vetoed money for two Miami-Dade organizations to serve meals to the elderly: $300,000 for Little Havana Activities and Nutrition Centers of Dade County and $430,298 for Allapattah Community Center Hot Meals Program. 

But that doesn't mean that the state erased all funding for those two organizations. Both programs received the same amount of money as the prior year -- what Scott vetoed was additional money.

"There wasn't a reduction in any (funding)," said Ashley Marshall, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Elder Affairs. The Little Havana organization received about $125,480 for meal programs while Allapattah received about $361,543, according to the department's list of reoccurring allocations in the local services program on page 116.

Though there wasn't a reduction, Gimenez's promise was to fill-in the $730,000 Scott vetoed.

His office said he tried to fulfill the promise to cover the vetoed amount by proposing an $850,000 Seniors First Trust Fund, but the county commission, which approved the annual budget Sept. 23, voted to move that money back into the general fund. You can see the vote in this video of the budget meeting starting around the 9-hour, 20-minute mark. The Carlos-O-Meter has a separate promise by Gimenez to create that fund.

Trutie then pointed us to other parts of the budget, which provide money for senior meals: 

This document on page 338 lists money for seniors, the disabled and veterans and includes:

* $1,711,000 high risk elderly meals served at senior centers;
* $2,417,000 elderly meals at congregate dining;
* $487,000 meals on wheels delivered to isolated seniors.

In those three categories, the amount of funding remained either virtually the same or dropped slightly although the same number of seniors are expected to be served.

Trutie also pointed us to a separate budget document that shows how much money various community agencies will receive -- including some that provide meals to the elderly. That showed:

* Allapattah Community Action (The community center is the site where the meals are served -- Community Action is the corporation): $93,300 for senior meals congregate and home bound;

* Little Havana Activites and Nutrition Centers of Dade County: home delivered meals and congregate meals: About $406,938. 

Again, the money for both agencies is the same as last year.

(A note about our earlier update on this promise in July: We gave Gimenez an In the Works ratings after he announced his plan to reduce the Office of the Mayor. At the time, Trutie pointed us to a part of Gimenez's proposed budget about human services, which listed $656,000 to provide meals to an "additional 385 high-risk elders receiving in-home services." But when we interviewed Trutie about that item again on Oct. 7, she said that section of the budget was essentially a wish list of unmet needs and was never intended for this year's budget and wasn't funded.) 

Which brings us back to this promise update. Gimenez vowed to reduce the Office of the Mayor "by 10 percent in order to fill the $730,298 gap created by the veto." He has fulfilled the first half of his promise by reducing the office of the mayor. But Gimenez's budget does not replace the additional dollars for meal programs that were vetoed by Scott, although it continued funding of existing meal programs. Since Gimenez met half of his goal here, we rate this a Compromise.