Jesse Scheckner
The Miami-Dade Clerk and Comptroller’s Office is finalizing talks with an unnamed person who will serve as the county’s first Chief Auditor, leading a new Department tasked with delving into the finances and operational efficiency of local government agencies.
Clerk Juan Fernandez-Barquin confirmed that his Office has selected a top candidate for the job. He expects to identify the person soon.
“He hasn’t accepted yet. We should be offering it today or tomorrow,” he told Florida Politics at a Miami’s Community News event Thursday, adding that the Clerk’s Office is likely to announce the hire soon.
“The job, it’s going to basically be auditing different county Departments. Wherever county funds go, we’ll be able to take a look and make sure they’re being used to their full potential.”
Miami-Dade’s new Chief Auditor will come amid notable power shifts at the federal and county levels with significant bearings on funding and financial oversight.
At the national level, President-elect Donald Trump has tasked billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) aimed at slashing government spending and possibly shutting down entire agencies they deem unnecessary or duplicative.
Locally, the Miami-Dade Commission approved a $12.7 billion spending plan in September for Fiscal Year 2025 — $1 billion more than the year prior — before voters elected several new constitutional officers with powers that could impact county coffers.
Fernandez-Barquin, who last month comfortably won election to the position Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him to in June 2023, began searching for a Chief Auditor before voters decided whether to keep him on the county payroll.
The Clerk’s Office published a position brief on the Chief Auditor position in August. Among other things, the 11-page document by head-hunting firm Odgers Berndtson said, the Chief Auditor will be responsible for auditing the operations and finances of Miami-Dade, its various Departments, companies that do business with the county and the Clerk’s Office itself.
That includes examining how the county’s Departments and the many vendors it has contracts with manage resources and comply with contract terms, regulations and laws. The Chief Auditor is to oversee a staff of some 30 people, the brief said, whose priority will be to “enhance the efficiency of governance, risk management, and control processes for the Clerk’s Office and the agencies it serves.”
Essential qualifications the brief lists include a bachelor’s degree in accounting, finance, management, business administration, public administration or a related field. Candidates must also have had professional certification as an accountant or internal auditor and a decade minimum of “recent and relevant” experience in professional auditing or accounting, including at least three years of “related supervisory experience.”
