Manager: Feud Won't Hurt Miami
After winning a court ruling temporarily barring his firing by the mayor, Miami's embattled manager vowed to keep the city running as state officials looked into his claims that the mayor broke the law.
"This is America. We don't go after people. We do things by law, and the law is you go through the process," City Manager Donald Warshaw said Wednesday.
Mayor Joe Carollo denied any wrongdoing and said Warshaw's actions show the city manager was following through with threats to attack him.
"This mayor has not done anything illegal," Carollo said at a news conference late Wednesday. "Mr. Warshaw wants to hang on to power, no matter what."
Tensions between Warshaw and Carollo have flared since the April 22 federal raid to remove Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives to return him to his Cuban father. The public tug-of-war between the two officials has sparked criticism that city government is out of control.
The mayor fired Warshaw for not dismissing Police Chief William O'Brien, who did not notify the mayor of plans for the raid. O'Brien has since resigned, and Warshaw has given Circuit Judge Philip Bloom documents alleging that his firing by Carollo violated the city's charter.
Bloom issued a temporary restraining order that barred Warshaw's firing for the time being. Carollo said attorneys would seek to overturn the order by the end of the week.
Last week, a member of the state's Oversight Board -- appointed by the governor in 1996 to oversee Miami's financial recovery from a $68 million budget shortfall -- wrote to Carollo and the City Commission with concerns over the loss of high-ranking officials like O'Brien and Warshaw.
"Already the Oversight Board has learned that certain financial rating agencies have expressed concern over what appears to be an imminent void in the city's professional management," wrote board member Maria Camila-Leiva. "These combined actions may serve to undermine Miami's continued financial recovery."
Meanwhile, Susan M. Ley, a Spanish-speaking social worker with 23 years experience and extensive work with children was chosen Wednesday to help monitor Elian Gonzalez while an appeals court weighs the 6-year-old Cuban boy's fate.
Ley and Paulina F. Kernberg, a child psychiatrist from Cornell University Medical College, will report on Elian every other week to the government and to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
Elian is staying at the secluded Wye River Plantation on Maryland's Eastern Shore with his father, Juan Miguel, stepmother and 6-month-old half brother, Hianny.
Juan Miguel Gonzalez asked the court Monday to reject the asylum claims, saying in a brief filed by is lawyer that after a five-month legal tangle in the United States, Elian "craves the familiarity of his own bedroom" in Cuba.
The Miami relatives want Elian to be granted political asylum so that e can decide whether to go back to Cuba or stay in the U.S.
In March, a District Judge in Miami ruled that the court has no right to second guess the government on matters of asylum. The Miami relatives appealed the ruling to the Atlanta court.
The court and the government have ordered, and Juan Miguel Gonzalez has agreed, that Elian will not leave the United States until the 11th Circuit rules on the appeal by the Miami relatives. A hearing is set for May 11.
Attorneys for the boy's great-uncle in Miami, Lazaro Gonzalez, filed a 40-page brief Monday, arguing the Immigration and Naturalization Service subverted Elian's right to apply for asylum.
The government removed Elian from the Miami home of his great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez on April 22 after the family defied orders to turn him over to his father, who came from Cuba to retrieve him.