The show's climax came when Bishop Victor T. Curry, pastor of New Birth Baptist Church and former head of the Miami branch of the NAACP, chastised the board. The hearing, Curry said, was a pretense because everyone knew whom the board favored -- thanks to a lobbying effort that included, among others, Raul Martinez, the longtime Cuban-American mayor of Hialeah.
Martinez, sitting in the audience, was insulted by the suggestion that he had lobbied anyone; he had merely testified to one candidate's good character. As Curry left the podium, Martinez called after him. One word in particular got Curry's attention: "Liar."
Curry rejoined: "You -- let's go." Seats emptied as supporters and police separated the mayor and the clergyman. The two took their brawl-talk outside as choruses of supporters took sides along racial and ethnic lines.
In the end, nobody threw any punches. And the school board, by a 5-3 vote, chose the man whose front-runner status had so miffed Curry -- Merrett R. Stierheim. "Thank you so much for your confidence," Stierheim politely told the divided school board that chose him. "I'm sure we can work together."
Maybe. In the 43 years since he first became a public employee, most of those in Miami, Stierheim has successfully resolved a score of major and minor crises, including rescuing the city of Miami from fiscal meltdown in 1996. In the process, he's accrued a kind of status as the county's Last Honest Man, always keeping his shoes clean while walking in the gutter. He's never been fired.
But Stierheim, 69, is now wrestling with a school district that is one of Florida's largest employers in the nation's poorest major city. He succeeds Roger Cuevas, whose five-year tenure drew to an unhappy close with state audits critical of waste, mismanagement and questionable dealings -- "a cesspool," says Miami businessman Carlos Saladrigas.
The district is politicized and union-driven, with a $4.6-billion budget, 340 schools, 380,000 children to educate and a school board that needs Stierheim's integrity to build support for bond issues but is more than willing to ignore his advice.
"I've always thrived on a challenge and -- ha! -- this place has proved to be every bit of a challenge," he says. "I have a saying: I've always been an optimist because if you're not an optimist in public life, the job will kill you."
DOSSIERChildhood: Native of Long Island. Sent to military school at age 8 after his parents divorced. Says the school gave him a firm sense of the importance of obeying rules.Military: Air Force, navigator on C47s.Education: Undergraduate degree at Bucknell; graduate degree (third in his class) in government administration at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.Politics: A registered independent "out of professional choice." Doesn't socialize with his elected bosses. "I've always maintained a certain distance, if you will, respectful."How never to be fired: "I like to think I'm professional and I do a good job and I treat everybody fairly and I communicate and I don't lie. I don't make deals with anyone."Management style: As described by protégé Steve Spratt, now Pinellas County administrator: "Surround yourself with high-caliber people, talented people -- heavy-lifters is the term he uses. Once you have talented people ... you delegate down to the lowest level of competency."Financial: As superintendent, he makes $210,000 a year; his Pinecrest home, which he purchased for $160,000 in 1982, has a market value of at least $329,000.Personal style: Wears a suit jacket while alone in his office; lapel features a gold palm tree pin from his stint as head of the tourism bureau.Personal: Chose to come to Florida initially because he likes fishing. Says his fishing tackle -- and home office -- are disorganized. Plays tennis. Can't speak Spanish.Family: Thrice-married, father of four, grandfather of nine, great-grandfather of two.
Career in crisis
Crisis and Stierheim have been close companions throughout his career. As a rookie administrator with Miami city government in 1959, one of his early duties was integrating the city's swimming pools. Later, as he stepped up from being Clearwater's city manager to become county administrator of Pinellas County in 1973, a zoning scandal broke. Three of the commissioners who hired him were eventually jailed. Stierheim, untarnished, won praises.
Moving back to Miami-Dade as county manager three years later, Stierheim spent a decade at a job in which he had to deal with the consequences of the Mariel boatlift, the immigration of tens of thousands of Haitians into the county and the 1980 race riots. Crisis and Stierheim pursued each other even after he left government. In 1990, he became president and CEO of the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau just in time to be the industry's point person during the tourist murders of 1993 and the African-American boycott of Miami over its snub of Nelson Mandela.
Stierheim's finest hour as crisis manager may have come in 1996. City Manager Cesar Odio had quit amid a scandal and was ultimately jailed along with a city commissioner, finance director and a lobbyist. At Miami Mayor Joe Carollo's request, Stierheim stepped in -- pro bono -- as interim city manager on Friday the 13th. By Saturday night he discovered that the city's budget was a fraud that hid a $68-million shortfall.
Working 16- to 18-hour days, seven days a week, Stierheim brought in 43 executives from the private sector and nearby governments to work for free to plumb the problem and engineer a rescue plan. After two months, he was able to return to the visitors bureau and say he had drawn a map for the city to follow out of trouble.
Two years later, Stierheim reprised that fireman's role for the county, then simmering in its own scandal-of-the-week. Called in as county manager by Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas, Stierheim initiated a "ton of investigations" to excise corruption; he built a police public corruption unit from four part-time officers to 32 officers with eight forensic auditors and other professionals. He required 28,000 employees to take ethics training.
As in his previous departures from government, he managed a graceful exit. After crossing swords with Penelas over who should run the Miami airport and Penelas' desire for a strong-mayor system, Stierheim resigned quietly. "I had a choice as to whether to stay there and duke it out with him or take the high road."
CRISIS MANAGERImmigration Issues and Riots
During his first stint as Miami-Dade County manager, Stierheim had to deal with the consequences of the Mariel boatlift, the immigration of tens of thousands of Haitians and the 1980 race riots.
Tourist Murders and African-American Boycott
As president and CEO of the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, Stierheim was the industry's point person during the tourist murders of 1993 and the African-American boycott of Miami over its snub of Nelson Mandela.
Financial Collapse
In 1996, Stierheim steered the city of Miami through a financial crisis, discovering a fraudulent budget that hid a $68-million shortfall.
Scandals
In 1998, Stierheim stepped in as county manager at the request of Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas. His mission: Help the county recover from a series of scandals.
Ability and ego
What motivates and sustains Stierheim appears to be sizable quantities of both ability and ego. Steve Spratt, a protégé of Stierheim who's now Pinellas County administrator, worked for Stierheim during Stierheim's first term as Miami-Dade County manager. Then, he says, there were jokes about Stierheim's eruptions over unfavorable media coverage and having to widen office doors to accommodate his ego.
Stierheim moderated, however, to the point that by his second term employees were referring to him as "mellow Merrett." And Stierheim's integrity or ability is no joke, Spratt says. "He led by example, leads by example. Incredible work ethic."
Stierheim says he believes people with strong egos, whether athletes or business people, can accomplish much and still can have humility and heed advice from subordinates. On core values, he says he doesn't bend. Once in Clearwater -- one of the "very few occasions'' on which it's happened, Stierheim says -- a businessman with a major zoning case sounded as if he were trying to compromise him. Stierheim says he told the man they should continue their discussion in front of the local prosecutor. "You never saw anybody back off so fast," he says. "I don't want to sound like I'm talking goody-goody and holier-than-thou, but I do put integrity and honesty as two virtues you never compromise."
Stierheim will likely finish his career with his cherished virtue intact. Whether he also can keep his never-fired status and leave with another problem solved is a good question given the dynamics of the nine-member school board.
Stierheim was able to muster votes from seven of nine board members when he sought a contract extension until 2004, but he would be foolish to think his hold on the job is secure. Board members' views of Stierheim can vary based on some combination of the member's race, ethnicity, attitude toward unions and the issue of the moment. A couple of members even grouse about having to stand in the shadow of Stierheim's Snow White reputation.
And while some pressure him to protect union power and jobs, others on and outside the board want him to be more of a change-agent: "Merrett's very truthful" and competent, says Miami real estate developer Ed Easton, chairman of a state oversight board critical of Miami-Dade district spending, but he's also "extremely political and very bureaucratic."
In his first year, Stierheim has gone about the superintendent's job in his usual dogged style. When revenue from the state fell, he lopped some $81 million in gassy bureaucratic expenses -- cellphones and cars for administrators and salaries for lieutenants of his sacked predecessor -- and in summer school and other programs.
The first superintendent from outside the district in 44 years, Stierheim also has set to work on building professionalism in a district he found "insular, inbred and paranoid," rife with cronyism and nepotism. Of the last 79 principals appointed, Stierheim discovered 71 were "direct appointments" -- essentially political
appointments in which regional superintendents named favorites to jobs without giving all eligible assistant principals a chance to compete.
Parochial politics
Budget cuts and basic professionalism, however, don't work miracles in a system ruled by parochial politics, as other scenes from his first year show:
Stierheim took a beating in May when the school board took a tentative step toward fixing its wasteful maintenance department by privatizing maintenance work at 27 schools. Angry union members shut down a board meeting and heckled Stierheim. The board backed down.
The same month, Stierheim worked out a deal with the teachers union to save the cash-strapped district $12.8 million by cutting two days of workers' pay. Rank-and-file teachers erupted, and the union about-faced and called for Stierheim's firing. The board, against Stierheim's recommendation, returned the money, calling it a payment for "future services" to paper over its violation of the budgetary principle that liabilities should be expensed in the year they occur.
About-facing again, the union supported Stierheim's contract extension, even as Spanish-language radio and the Latin Builders Association railed against it. Joe Arriola, a businessman whom Stierheim had picked as a pro bono chief business officer, came to see Stierheim as too accommodating to unions and the bureaucracy and took the occasion to tell the Miami Herald his boss was "a horrible leader" who had "absolutely no respect for women, for Cubans or for blacks." Stierheim, who actually has a good record on race and ethnic issues and hiring, survived the charge. Arriola apologized and resigned.
Having to cut another $41 million to balance the district's budget, Stierheim advocated job cuts at a meeting in July. The unions threatened to erupt again. Stierheim, retreating, instead recommended cutting funding to community groups that put on shows for students, eliminating 106 "career specialist" jobs through attrition, reassigning 31 driver's ed employees and scaling 520 aides back to five hours per day.
The modest cuts, combined with increasing class sizes an average of one child in second through sixth grade and two children in sixth through 12th, would have balanced the budget and built a small reserve to cope with soaring health insurance costs.
Even that scaled-down proposal filled the auditorium with partisans: Aides, driver's ed teachers, a representative of the philharmonic, the American Automobile Association and state Rep. Irv Slosberg, D-Boca Raton, who lost a teenage daughter in a driving accident.
Teachers union chief Pat Tornillo proposed upping the student-teacher ratio even higher than Stierheim wanted rather than eliminate jobs. "Does one less student or one more or half a student make a significant difference? The answer is no," says Tornillo, who stood near the podium like a 10th board member as the board deliberated.
After listening and talking past midnight, the board sought to please everyone with a liberal use of its scarce resources. It raised class sizes by one child -- less than Stierheim recommended -- made small cuts to driver's ed and kept the aides at regular pay for the first semester and kept the career specialists. At the behest of board member Manty Sabates Morse, who was up for re-election, even unfilled career specialist jobs representing $500,000 in savings were preserved. "If we're giving away the bank, why not?" said Morse, who later lost her re-election bid.
Stierheim warned his board that it would have to cut four jobs at midyear to get the savings that would come with cutting three before it began. "You're going to be dealing with layoffs," he said. "Be forewarned." Thus forewarned, the board ignored him.
Stierheim went home and unwound with a crossword puzzle until 2 a.m. By 8 a.m. -- "I had to be a real masochist" -- he was taking hard questions on a Spanish-language radio program and then put in a full day in his office.
The pace would tire a much younger man, and Stierheim's gait reflects his nearly 70 years. But as he stares out of a ninth-floor conference room window at Biscayne Bay, he is adamant that his enthusiasm is intact.
"It gets a little discouraging, but you get up in the morning and it's a new day and it's a beautiful day and let's go take another whack at it."