Miami-Dade County employees overpaid? Investigation launched this week
MIAMI - The Miami-Dade County Clerk is launching an investigation this week into the system that pays the more than 30,000 county employees.
Juan Fernandez-Barquin said at least a thousand workers were overpaid, underpaid, or not paid at all throughout the last year. He himself was overpaid $3,000.
Fernandez-Barquin decided to pay it all back in one check, but he said other employees have the option to have it deducted in smaller increments out of their paycheck.
While the investigation is just getting started, he believes the county overpaid employees anywhere from a total of $3 to $5 million since June 2022, when the county switched to a new payroll software.
"I know that the old system was rather antiquated for many individuals I've spoken to and that a change was necessary," he said. "Then when this change happened, apparently, there were these issues."
But he doesn't put the blame on the system itself.
"I think this is something that potentially could have been avoided," he said. "I think that this is maybe a training error."
Fernandez-Barquin said he found out about the issue when the Miami Herald reported that a county commissioner was overpaid $34,000.
"Then the more I started asking around, the more I realized that this was a serious problem that was affecting at the very least hundreds," he said, "and then I've come to the conclusion that it's definitely more than than than 1,000 people are affected by this."
Why did it take a news article for the payroll department and employees to notice they were being overpaid?
"I don't know why it took so long for this to come to light," he said, "but this is something that that we need to figure out what exactly the issue is, and resolve it as soon as possible."
Miami Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava called for a county audit a few weeks ago when news broke of the commissioner getting overpaid, but Fernandez-Barquin wants an independent audit done as well.
"I trust them," he said, "But just to be on the safe side, I would also like to do an independent audit."
To add to all of this confusion, he said that people who were overpaid were taxed on that. Do individual employees ask for the money back from the IRS? Does the department do it on employees' behalf? Or do they do what Fernandez-Barquin did and hand in a check with the taxes deducted?
He hopes to answer all of these questions through the audit.
