Who knew “public service” could be so profitable? (Apparently, Philippe Bien-Aime did.)

We’re old enough to remember when North Miami mayoral candidate Philippe Bien-Aime promised fiscal responsibility if he was elected.

As we all know, that promise went out the window before he was even sworn in on May 28, 2019.

In case you’re interested, the true cost of Philippe Bien-Aime’s ~~coronation~~ induction as ~~King~~ Mayor of North Miami came out to an absolutely obscene $43,580.28, broken down as follows:

Total cost of goods and services: $22,744.42
Police overtime: $11,805.87
Administration employee overtime: $7,229.24
Parks & Rec employee overtime: $1,770.75

This gargantuan expense doesn’t even include the additional price tag of Councilman Alix Desulme’s invitation-only “People’s Party,” which cost North Miami taxpayers a total of $17,513.47, and which was not open to the general public.

And let’s not forget the total cost of the second induction party held two weeks later for Councilwoman Mary Estimé-Irvin in the amount of $17,550.22, which includes:

Total cost of goods and services: $5,138.62
Police overtime: $7,991.33
Administration employee overtime: $2,408.86
Parks & Rec employee overtime: $2,011.41

Once all was said and done, North Miami residents were hit with a $78,643.97 bill so that four “public servants” could celebrate getting the most votes.

Absentee ballot fraud notwithstanding, of course.

As soon as Philippe Bien-Aime began occupying the Mayor’s seat, the spending spree kicked into high gear.

The first thing he made sure to do was increase his base salary by 20%, and more than double his expense account.

In fiscal year 2019, the Mayor’s package included a salary $59,880.00 and non-accountable expense allowance of $7,200.00.

In fiscal year 2020, which began October 1, 2019, the Mayor will earn $71,880.00 and he will have a non-accountable expense allowance of $15,000.00!

When we say “non-accountable expense allowance,” we are referring to a January 2018 report issued by the Miami-Dade County Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, which states, “As the Commission on Ethics noted in the last report, non-accountable expense allowances are objectionable for public employees. They do not provide the transparency and accountability that should exist in government because they do not require elected officials to account for how money is spent, or even if it is spent with a public purpose.”

In other words, we can make all the public records requests we want, but we are prohibited from obtaining any information about how Bien-Aime spends $15,000.00 of your tax dollars.

As you can see, on top of his exorbitant salary, Mayor Bien-Aime will also receive an annual payment of $9,000.00 for a car allowance and $1,440.00 for a cell phone allowance, neither of which he necessarily has to spend on a car or a cell phone since these are also non-accountable expense allowances.

North Miami taxpayers, many of whom are struggling to pay their own health insurance, shelled out $10,156.56 in fiscal year 2019 for Mayor Bien-Aime’s health insurance coverage. He also received dental, life, and accidental death & dismemberment insurance totaling annual premiums of $370.75. These policies will cost even more this year.

Even more outrageous is the fact that the City of North Miami – actually, the taxpayers – will contribute an unheard of 48.7% of his base salary to the Florida Retirement System (FRS), which literally adds another $35,005.56 to his annual income. Even if he won’t be able to get his hands on those funds until he officially retires, it’s still his money.

All courtesy of North Miami taxpayers.

The grand total of Philippe Bien-Aime’s annual compensation package is an unconscionable $142,852.87.

Which is over three and a half times more than North Miami’s median household income of $39,723.00.

Not bad part-time pay for someone who’s never held a real job in his life before running for office.

Unless, of course, you consider owning a string of failed used car dealerships a real job.

But, hey North Miami taxpayers, have pity on your new Mayor. After all, he needs the money.

No, really. He does!

Bien-Aime has already lost one home to foreclosure, and he almost lost his current home to a second foreclosure lawsuit. Besides, how else will he be able to pay $60,141.41 in Default Final Judgments and $46,121.67 in Federal Tax Liens. Then again, now that he has a regular salary, his creditors can always have his wages garnished once again for non-payment of his debts.

Seriously, though. North Miami taxpayers should be up in arms over the outrageous raises the Mayor and Council have voted for themselves. They should be storming City Hall at every single council meeting.

But, they don’t.

Unfortunately, North Miami is not the only American city where citizen apathy helped create a kleptocracy, which is defined as “a government in which corrupt leaders use their power to extend their personal wealth, usually involving the embezzlement of public funds.”

In 2010, in the small city of Bell, California, seven public officials were convicted on graft and corruption charges after a Los Angeles Times series of investigative reports uncovered that they had stolen “more than $5.5 million from one of the county’s poorest municipalities.” Among those arrested were the former mayor, former administrator, assistant administrator and four city council members.

The Times’ article, How Bell hit bottom, described how the the trouble started.

It was 1993, a bleak, recession-bit year, and Robert Rizzo arrived in Bell trailing the vague whiff of scandal. His last city administrator job, in the high desert city of Hesperia, had ended badly, with accusations that he’d steered city improvement funds toward salaries.

But the Bell officials who hired him did not dig deeply into his past. They needed someone fast, and Rizzo, then 39, came cheap. His starting salary was $78,000, which was $7,000 less than his predecessor had made.

Under Rizzo’s management, in 2005 the Bell City Council was able to exempt themselves from state salary limits by “by placing a city charter on the ballot in a little-noticed special election that attracted fewer than 400 voters.”

It was also later discovered that massive absentee ballot fraud took place in that election.

In It All Starts with Vote Fraud, the Wall Street Journal reported, “One resident of Bell, on condition of anonymity, told the Los Angeles Times that he was assigned the chore of retrieving absentee ballots: ‘Our objective was to collect absentee ballots, and if they were not filled out, instruct them how to fill it out, and if not, fill it out for them’, he said. It is estimated that less than 1% of registered voters actually showed up to cast their ballot. It has been reported that some residents went to the polling place, only to find that their votes had already been cast.”

In the end, the Bell scandal “spawned seven federal, state and county investigations and transformed a forgotten suburb into a synonym for rogue governance.”

The story of Bell, California should serve as a cautionary tale to North Miami residents who are not paying attention to the actions of their elected officials and, especially, the city manager, who arrived in North Miami trailing the vague whiff of scandal.

As an aside, according to North Miami’s Citizen Transparency portal, the city was able to stay within its budget until fiscal year 2017, which just happened to be the first budget prepared by City Manager Larry Spring.

Although expenses remained under budget for the last three years, the city ended in the red at the end of each and every year because Larry Spring grossly underestimated projected revenue. He was especially way off the mark in fiscal year 2019, when he budgeted for $73,798,086 in revenue, yet the city only took in $56,228,860 – or $17,569,226 less than Spring projected.

But this story isn’t necessarily about North Miami City Manager Larry Spring.

Nor is it even all about Mayor Philippe Bien-Aime to the degree that he and his colleagues were able to increase their own salaries by 20%, and more than double their own non-accountable expense accounts.

This is more about an apathetic electorate, most of whom don’t even bother to vote in their own municipal elections.

Worse, after the Mayor and Council are installed in office, the vast majority of North Miami residents fail to attend council meetings or hold their elected officials accountable for their actions.

In the City Journal Magazine article, How the Road to Bell Was Paved, which is subtitled, Not with good intentions but with the avarice of professional government bureaucrats, contributor William Voegeli further detailed how the Los Angeles Times reporters “uncovered extravagant pay packages for other city employees, outlandish fringe benefits, and loans of public funds to city workers and favored businesses.”

Hey, North Miami residents, does that sound familiar?

The author continued, “Bell’s all-you-can-eat personnel policies are outrageous but not surprising. The abuse of power, after all, is an endemic political problem, one so old that it’s often rendered in Juvenal’s Latin: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guardians themselves?”

Unfortunately, Vogeli concluded that because “time, attention, and affinities are not limitless … guarding the guardians has become harder everywhere.”

He warned that public officials “may employ their professional training and specialized technical knowledge to solve problems, but they’re not above using such know-how to stifle criticism or impede scrutiny. Having chosen careers devoted to the public welfare, they lose the ability to distinguish what’s good for the public from what’s good for their own careers.”

“Even as we cannot count on the guardians to guard themselves, however, we cannot rest assured that the professionals will professionalize themselves. Neither advanced degrees nor mid-career training programs that include ethics refresher courses will banish the danger that power will be abused.”

Corruptocrats like Philippe Bien-Aime, who abuse their power and get rich at taxpayer expense, are only able to get elected because apathetic voters don’t do their own research before choosing their elected officials.

We here at VotersOpinion did that research for you and exposed Philippe Bien-Aime as a cheat, a liar, and a fraud.

We cautioned you time and time again about the dangers of electing him as the Mayor of North Miami.

Unfortunately, you ignored all the warning signs.

Unless residents finally wake up, storm City Hall with a vengeance, and demand accountability from your Mayor and Council, North Miami will continue being the 25th most Miserable City in America.