Employee salaries will remain online

Miami-Dade County added an online database of employees" salaries in August 2012 as part of Mayor Carlos Gimenez's 2011 campaign promise to make "most records available online.”

The salary database allows viewers to look up the paychecks of individual employees, departments or, for example, everyone who earns more than a particular amount.

The database didn't sit well with County Commissioner Barbara Jordan, who proposed that the county take it down. (Since it is public information, it would remain available upon request.)

The Miami Herald reported Dec. 1 that Jordan was concerned some viewers could use the salary information to target employees. However, the database doesn't include addresses or Social Security numbers.

From the Herald's report:

"Salary information is also ‘misleading,' Jordan said, because it doesn't include an employee's qualifications or years of service. Some employees have found out their colleagues' salaries online and realized they do not get paid the same for a comparable job title — because one employee may have different duties or experience, Jordan said.”

But on Dec. 4, county commissioners rejected Jordan's proposal which means that the employees' salaries will remain online.

Gimenez and Miami-Dade officials have taken several additional steps toward the goal of adding more documents online.

We gave Gimenez an In The Works early in his first term because he quickly posted a transparency website that had several financial documents including an an online checkbook showing disbursements.  (In a separate promise, Gimenez also earned a Promise Kept for posting his calendar online.)

The checkbook shows amounts disbursed to various individuals and companies but doesn't provide an explanation of the expenditures. In January 2013, the county plans to add invoices.

In January 2012, Commissioner Bruno Barreiro proposed that Gimenez expand county records. Gimenez unveiled a plan in August 2012 that included several goals for expanding public records, such as automatically posting "hot topics” records requests; researching how to post e-mails (no small feat since the county gets about 300,000 a day); and forming a committee that will convene quarterly to review and recommend potential additions to the website.

But the county has yet to identify how it will pay for the expansion, which will cost about a half-million to implement -- plus ongoing costs.

Miami-Dade doesn't appear to be following Broward's lead in posting two types of public information often sought by reporters: financial disclosures and a county commission visitors' log which reveals, among other things, the names of lobbyists schmoozing commissioners on  behalf of specific clients.

In Miami-Dade, a list of who has filed financial disclosures is available online, and then the documents can be obtained by request. Visitor logs are kept by individual offices, departments and agencies and are available upon request, Gimenez's spokeswoman Suzy Trutie told PolitiFact Florida. (Gimenez did post his own calendar online, but that doesn't include commissioners' calendars.)

Measuring Gimenez's progress on this promise is tricky because he said that he wanted to place "most” records online and that is difficult to quantify. Gimenez has taken important steps toward transparency by placing more records online and organizing them together. We are going to watch to see if he adds more, so for now we keep this promise at In The Works.