MAYOR ALVAREZ: WHY IS GEORGE BURGESS STILL EMPLOYED?

"I will get back to you with an incredibly well written 'Cover-Your-Ass' memorandum Commissioner..."

Beginning with Miami for Change, and now with Take Back Miami, we have spent the last few years uncovering the otherwise covered underbelly of Miami-Dade politics.

If there is a single story, a single person, that captures everything that is wrong with Miami-Dade County politics, and why Miami-Dade residents should have no confidence in their government, that dubious distinction would go to Bureaucrat in Chief, County Manager George Burgess.

Burgess, who takes $422,000 a year in taxpayer salary, (incidentally MORE than President Barack Obama's $400,000 salary) continues to oversee the complete meltdown of Miami-Dade County government.

Some recent examples:

Federal audit blasts Miami-Date Transit for shoddy oversight.

A federal audit made public late Monday sharply criticizes Miami-Dade Transit for shoddy financial management and weak internal controls -- including improper accounting for bus fare boxes and a failure to document how federal grant money has been spent.

The audit comes two months after the Federal Transit Administration took the extraordinary step of suspending grant payments totaling about $182 million to the county-run transit agency.

Miami-Dade must repay $3.6 million in Housing and Urban Development funds.

In the latest sign of weak financial controls in Miami-Dade government, the county must pay back $3.6 million in federal grant funds received from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development after a federal audit found that county officials couldn't show the money was properly used.

The county's latest problems with HUD -- which administrators unveiled at a County Commission meeting Thursday -- come just two years after the federal agency returned control of the troubled Miami-Dade Housing Agency to county hands after 15 months under HUD supervision.

Work on Lyric Theater Halted by fraud probe. 

The county has spent $6.2 million to renovate the historic Lyric Theater, but its completion is on hold while prosecutors investigate alleged fraud by the project's construction manager.

The renovation of Overtown's historic Lyric Theater has been halted as Miami-Dade prosecutors investigate allegations that the project's construction manager pilfered hundreds of thousands of county dollars.

Individually, any one of these disasters would be enough to place any public official in some hot water, never mind the private sector where such a person would join the rank of the 13% County unemployed.

And yet, Burgess continues to survive, explaining away the mess.

“We’re well on our way to correcting things; it’s a work in progress.”

George, it's been a work in progress since the minute you took over the reigns at the County!

For this "work in progress," we the taxpayers shell out $422,000 to Mr.Burgess.

Granted, Mr. Burgess is no fool.  In his nearly three decades in County government, Burgess has surrounded himself with a cadre of acolytes, all richly rewarded in the six figures, who form a protective shield of bureaucracy around him.  In this tangled web, he with the most knowledge wins, and Burgess sure knows how to play the game.

And so, Miami-Dade County residents must continue to put up and pay for complete and total incompetence, while Burgess and his army of bureaucrats, with our money, laugh all the way to the bank. 

But there is one person who can stop all this, and he faces an election March 15.

So the question becomes:

Mayor Alvarez: why is George Burgess still employed?