BY CHARLES RABIN
CRABIN@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Miami Budget Director Michael Boudreaux was fired Monday, only two weeks after a new city manager began an exhaustive analysis of the city's money woes.
City Manager Carlos Migoya said he decided to let Boudreaux go after studying a series of money transfers from capital accounts to the city's general fund that were used to balance the city's books in 2007 and 2008.
The transfers, Migoya said, were fine in themselves, but he held Boudreaux responsible for not stopping movement on the projects the funds were taken from.
Boudreaux claimed the money came from finished or long dead projects, though Migoya said his review found money was still being spent on many of the initiatives the money was taken from.
Migoya said that, although Chief Financial Officer Larry Spring, Finance Director Diana Gomez and former City Manager Pete Hernandez were aware and signed off on the moves, it was Boudreaux's responsibility to stop Capital Improvements from continuing with the projects.
``The people in Capital Improvements were not told to stop spending money against it,'' Migoya said.
Boudreaux's attorney, Michael Pizzi, called his client a ``convenient scapegoat,'' and said he won't rest until his name is cleared.
``We're considering a lawsuit for wrongful termination,'' said Pizzi. ``They're trying to make Mike a scapegoat for decisions that were not his, decisions that were made by other people who were fully briefed, including elected officials''.
The $26.4 million in questionable transfers that were outlined in a Miami Herald story last summer, have become a key piece of an investigation into the city's budget practices by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Migoya said Boudreaux, who earned $190,000 a year in salary and benefits, will receive no severance, but will collect any pension or benefits owed.
Spring, the city's chief financial officer, will fill in as budget director until Migoya names a permanent replacement.
Migoya, a career banker, was called on by Mayor Tomás Regalado to replace Hernandez after he resigned, and to turn around a city where finances are so dire the reserve fund could be empty within a year.
One of his bigger tasks will be the renegotiation of worker-friendly union contracts that are strangling city finances. Miami is expected to make a payment of $101 million to make the city's union agreements whole at the end of the budget year in September. That represents 20 percent of the city's entire budget.
The Miami Herald
