Miami Commissioner Christine King is standing by comments she made earlier this week when she described constituents as “mean and miserable” during a controversial vote by city commissioners to approve lifetime pensions for themselves .
On Tuesday, the Miami City Commission voted 3-2 to bring back pensions for elected officials, reviving a program that was frozen in 2009 during the financial crisis. The commission’s approval provoked the ire of residents, as well as the former city manager and the incoming speaker of the Florida House.
King and Commissioner Miguel Angel Gabela were co-sponsors on the proposal.
During the discussion, the commission briefly considered sending the question to voters for approval — an option that Gabela said he was in support of. Then King, who is chairwoman of the commission, weighed in.
“I’m definitely not in favor of that,” she said of a ballot referendum, “and let me tell you why I’m not in favor of it. Because people are M&M’s: mean and miserable.”
She went on to explain how she recently received an email from a resident criticizing the fact that the city and county mayors declared a state of emergency ahead of Hurricane Milton, followed by an email from the same person criticizing a hat she had worn.
“I would not leave my livelihood up to voters like that,” King said.
The City Commission vote outraged residents, including some who were upset about King’s explanation for why she didn’t want to send the question to voters.
One user on X quoted King’s comments and said: “This is [the] level of contempt your elected officials have for you.”
“What a ‘MEAN & MISERABLE thing to say,” another user wrote to King, adding: “You have no respect for your voters!!!”
In a statement to the Miami Herald on Friday, King defended her comments, although she noted that mean and miserable people are not limited to Miami.
“My constituents, colleagues, and community appreciate my honesty,” King said. “It is an undisputed truth that there are mean and miserable people in this world, not only in Miami, whose agenda is solely to be contrary.”
King went on to defend the reasoning for supporting pensions, noting that seven former elected officials currently collect a pension from the city. Those officials were in office on or before 2009 when the City Commission at the time voted to freeze the program for future elected officials, but not for themselves.
“Our vote to reinstate pensions addresses the issue of fairness,” King continued. “If the Commission never had the benefit, I would not take issue with not having it. The original conditions that prompted suspension of the benefit are no longer at issue. It is unconscionable that the Commissioners who voted to suspend the benefit, suspended it for everyone but themselves, and intended their action to stand indefinitely for all of their successors. I appreciate everyone’s advocacy on this issue and as always, I shall respect the will of my commission.”
Under the pension plan approved Tuesday, King would stand to earn $4,813 per month, or $57,756 per year, according to an actuarial report prepared for the city earlier this year. She would need to be elected to a second term in order to have the minimum seven years of service required for elected officials to be eligible for the pension.
The fate of the pension plan is currently up in the air. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has remained silent on the issue, with his office ignoring multiple requests from the Herald this week about whether he plans to hand down a veto.
And on Thursday evening, Gabela announced that he planned to ask his colleagues to reconsider the vote at the upcoming Oct. 24 meeting.
From there, Gabela said he would ask his fellow commissioners to repeal the vote and to send the question to voters in a ballot referendum.
“If they’re not willing to send it to voters, it dies right there,” Gabela said.
Asked about his thoughts on King’s comments regarding voters, Gabela said: “I would not have used those words.”
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