In a normal city, public records requests are made through the Clerk’s office, which serves as a conduit between the requester and the departmental custodian of the records.

In North Miami, however, former City Manager Larry Spring cut the Clerk out of the pipeline and decided that all public records requests must go through his office.  As a result, he had sole discretion over which documents were suitable for the public to receive and which ones would never see the light of day.

Ever since Arthur “Duke” Sorey was appointed as interim City Manager of North Miami, getting records from the city has become even more of a nightmare.  On more than one occasion we’ve had to ask Miami-Dade County Ethics Commission Executive Director Jose Arrojo for his help in reminding city officials that refusing to comply with Chapter 119 of the Florida Statutes is against the law.

Yesterday, we asked for Mr. Arrojo’s help once again by sending him the following email:

Good evening, Mr. Arrojo.  I hope all is well with you.

As you know, requests for public records are customarily directed to the municipal clerk of cities in Miami-Dade County, as well as cities all over Florida and the entire country.  In North Miami, however, former City Manager Larry Spring decided to relieve the North Miami City Clerk’s Office of this responsibility and move this function to his office.  Despite that unusual change in policy, public records were still obtained within a reasonable amount of time from his office.

When Arthur H. Sorey III was appointed as interim City Manager on February 1, 2020, he retained that policy; however, he has been less than cooperative in fulfilling public records requests.  I still have several requests made as far back as February 28, 2020 that have still not been fulfilled.

This email, however, refers specifically to Public Records Request #4089 made on May 8, 2020 for “a copy of the correspondence from Joseph Roglieri to Richard M. Weiner, PA dated May 5, 2020 and any responses thereto.”  Please refer to the attached copy of same which was printed out from the North Miami public portal, northmiamifl.justfoia.com. It has now been over two weeks since I made this request and I have yet to receive a response.

To compound the problem, Miami Herald reporter Aaron Leibowitz was apparently able to receive a copy of this letter within a day or two of making his request, as evidenced by his May 20, 2020 article, a copy of which is attached hereto, in which he references said letter.

Mr. Leibowitz reported:

‘In a May 5 letter to the union’s lawyer, Personnel Administration Director Joseph Roglieri said that if the union rejects the plan, “layoffs will commence effective June 1.”

To generate the same cost savings as the two-day-a-month furloughs, Roglieri said the city would need to lay off eight blue collar and seven white collar employees.

“This is not our preferred method,” he wrote.’

Mr. Arrojo, I realize I am not a reporter for a major newspaper.  However, there is still no excuse for my public records requests to be completely ignored by the public records custodian of a Miami-Dade County municipality, who in this instance happens to be the interim City Manager of North Miami, Arthur H. Sorey III.

By copy of this email, I am requesting your assistance in obtaining this particular public record, as well as any and all other outstanding public records requests that have still not been fulfilled.

Thank you in advance for your help as always.

Stephanie Kienzle

While we wait for Mr. Arrojo to do his thing, let’s discuss North Miami’s looming fiscal disaster, which led to the furlough debacle.

Even before COVID-19 forced an economic shutdown of our entire country, the City of North Miami was already in dire financial straits.

On February 4, 2020, Interim City Manager Arthur “Duke” Sorey was forced to implement a “hiring freeze across all funds, including grants,” according to a Memorandum he sent to the Mayor and Council, City Clerk, City Attorney, and Department Heads.

Duke apparently had to take immediate drastic action because, according to North Miami’s Real-Time Debt Clock™, on February 9, 2020, the city’s deficit was already in the red for $5,042,281.76.

The following month, things did not improve.  In fact, they got worse.

On March 17, 2020, the deficit grew to $5,053,361.91.

In mid-March, North Miami and other cities around the country began shutting down in an attempt to stop the spread of coronavirus, but that didn’t keep your city officials from spending money as if it were North Miami business as usual.

What they were forced to stop spending on their weekly parties they’re more than making up for in food, rent, water and utility giveaways.

Especially generous are Mayor Philippe Bien-Aime and Councilwoman Mary Estimé-Irvin, who are both in campaign mode and hoping voters will remember who gave them all the “free” stuff when re-election day comes next year.

We’re still not sure what planet the Mayor and Council live on, but they’re either completely oblivious to the city’s dire financial straits or they simply don’t care.

We suspect it’s a little bit of both.

While Duke Sorey is using COVID-19 as an excuse for the budget shortfalls, the truth is with the exception of March and April, 2020, the city has been operating at astronomical monthly deficits as far back as October 1, 2019.

We downloaded the monthly Revenues-Expenses from October 1, 2019 through May 14, 2020 (the most recent date posted on the city’s check register) from the city’s very own OpenGov transparency portal, and discovered that so far North Miami has a spending deficit of $2,443,522 for this Fiscal Year 2019-20.

You will note that this deficit includes the $693,190 that Duke Sorey spent on his Red Garden Super Bowl party, even though only $200,000 was budgeted for this event.

But, we digress.

The current fiscal year’s money problems are nothing new.

According to the city’s very own calculations, North Miami ended Fiscal Year 2017-18 with a deficit of $21,219,815, and Fiscal Year 2018-19 with a deficit of $24,700,404.

It should be noted that the total deficits for the most recent two full fiscal years and the seven and a half months of the current fiscal year totals a whopping $48,363,741.

Even so, the problems started way before then.

Prior to FY 2017-18, the City of North Miami had been running multi-million dollar deficits in FY 2013-14, FY 2014-15 and FY 2016-17.

Folks, we can’t make this up!

We also can’t believe that Duke Sorey still has a job.

Duke Sorey would have you believe that he’s not responsible for the mess he created, but keep in mind he has been a Deputy City Manager and Interim City Manager continuously since July, 2015.

Also keep in mind that, although the resume he submitted with his application for permanent City Manager lists his job history with North Miami from July, 2015 through the present date, Duke conveniently omitted his full employment history with the City of North Miami.

According to his personnel file, which we obtained by public records request in May, 2016, Arthur “Duke” Sorey III was hired as the Budget Analyst for Parks & Rec on November 17, 2003, transferred to the Budget Office on October 1, 2005, and promoted to Budget Manager/Director in March, 2013.

As Budget Director, he had direct impact on the city’s FY 2013-14 Adopted Budget, the first year the multi-million dollar deficit trend began.

It’s no surprise that former City Manager Larry Spring was only too happy to get the hell out of North Miami before the city’s FY 2018-19 Comprehensive Annual Report (CAFR) was completed.

But not before he grabbed a golden parachute consisting of 32 week’s pay and an SUV worth approximately $50,000.

Make no mistake, as his Deputy City Manager, Arthur “Duke” Sorey knew full well what a mess the city was in, which explains why he was so desperate to blame, discredit, and then fire former Assistant Budget Director Terry Henley for blowing the whistle.

And yet, Duke somehow managed to bamboozle the Mayor and Council into appointing him as Interim City Manager after Larry Spring left.

It’s almost as if the elected officials have absolutely no clue what they’re doing.

In the meantime, Duke Sorey is scrambling to get out of the financial hole by imposing furloughs on city employees, none of whom had anything to do with his own fiscal irresponsibility.

The Mayor and Council, however, have not been asked to give up one dime of their already bloated salaries.

Duke also made sure to include TAB M on the Agenda for tomorrow’s council meeting calling for “DISCUSSION REGARDING CITY MANAGER SELECTION / APPOINTMENT.”

He has been desperately lobbying the Mayor and Council to be appointed to the position.

Not only does Duke Sorey NOT deserve to be City Manager, he is directly responsible for the financial disaster the city is now facing.

He is the problem.

If the elected officials had any common sense whatsoever, they should take the opportunity to get rid of this walking train wreck while he is one of their charter employees and can be fired at will, with or without cause.

We can only hope they do the right thing.

North Miami employees and residents deserve better!

Stephanie