Opa-locka just fired its city manager. He’s seeking whistleblower protections.
The Opa-locka City Commission voted Friday evening to fire City Manager John Pate “without cause” less than three years after he was hired to bring stability to a city with a history of corruption and financial woes.
The move comes just two months after Mayor Matthew Pigatt resigned, citing unspecified corruption allegations. Pigatt had feuded with Pate and tried multiple times, unsuccessfully, to have him fired.
Vice Mayor John Taylor made the proposal to terminate Pate’s four-year contract Friday and received support from new Mayor Veronica Williams and Commissioners Sherelean Bass and Audrey Dominguez. Commissioner Chris Davis was the lone no vote.
“The job performance has been lackluster,” Williams said during Friday’s meeting, noting that there have been times when the manager was “non-responsive” to commissioners’ questions.
Dominguez, who was recently appointed to fill the gap on the commission left by Pigatt’s resignation, said Pate showed a “lack of leadership” in his handling of an investigation into allegations that an Opa-locka police captain fired a Taser stun gun at a fellow cop. Miami-Dade prosecutors announced criminal charges against the officer, Sergio Perez, on Wednesday.
Pate was placed on administrative leave Friday. The commission voted to appoint James Wright, Opa-locka’s police chief from 2005 to 2008, as “deputy city manager” — a position that didn’t previously exist — until Feb. 1, and then to make Wright interim city manager after that. Wright was fired in 2008 amid complaints of sexual harassment against him in 2007, claims he denied, according to the Miami New Times.
Pate did not speak during Friday’s meeting and declined to comment afterward to the Miami Herald.
But earlier in the day, an attorney for Pate sent a memo to the city’s elected officials and the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics requesting protection from retaliation under Florida’s whistleblower statute.
In the memo, Pate made claims of malfeasance against Taylor, the vice mayor, saying Taylor had “threatened to terminate” Pate if Pate did not “provide favorable treatment” to a relative of Taylor who is also a police officer.
“In recent days, Vice Mayor Taylor and others have attempted to coerce and improperly influence Mr. Pate with regard to an ongoing police and personnel matter relating to an investigation and personnel decisions involving the relative of the Vice Mayor and police officer,” the memo says.
Multiple sources familiar with the matter said that Taylor’s brother, an Opa-locka police officer, was involved in a car accident in Broward County on Tuesday while driving a city-owned vehicle. A report obtained by the Herald via a public records request showed that a detective named Johane Taylor was “found at fault” for a “rear end crash involving a city vehicle” Tuesday in Hollywood, with no injuries reported.
A report by Johane Taylor’s supervisor said the detective would be “verbally counseled” and that an Opa-locka police investigation had been opened into the incident.
John Taylor, who was elected in 2020, is the son of former Opa-locka Mayor Myra Taylor. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Opa-locka, which has been under state financial oversight for five years and was the subject of a sweeping FBI investigation into public corruption, has a history of burning through city managers after their relationships with the city commission sour.
Davis, the longest-tenured city commissioner and the lone dissenting vote on Pate’s termination, told the Herald before Friday’s meeting that he was troubled by the proposal. He noted that the commission has not completed a formal evaluation of Pate’s performance.
“I’ve never been a fan of the revolving door of managers,” Davis said. “I’m more inclined to work with the manager.”
