It isn’t often that a position paying $223,000 per year opens up at the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority (HCAA), a public agency using public funds. Yet the HCAA didn’t post that highly paid opening for the job as Vice President of Communications on Taleo, where it normally posts jobs.
The HCAA, which operates Tampa Airport, then hired Bay News 9’s weekday evening newscast anchor Veronica Cintron for the position. Cintron is slated to start work this coming Monday, April 20th.
HCAA, which is a public agency, didn’t advertise this lucrative job. Did we mention that the job pays $223,000 per year? Plus benefits that most people in the private sector only can dream of.
According to Cintron’s offer letter, her job benefits include “Health, Dental and Vision Insurance offered through the Authority at generously discounted rates” and a “generous Uni-Leave plan which provides you paid time off of 184 hours in the first year [4 weeks and 3 days] and increases based on seniority.”
All that in addition to the “nine paid holidays observed by the Authority” and “onsite fitness facilities, free of charge.”
All in all, it sounds like a very desirable position. It makes you wonder what highly qualified candidates might have applied had the HCAA advertised the position.
According to the bio she submitted to HCAA, Cintron has been anchoring Bay News 9’s weekday evening newscasts for 10 years. Cintron is married to Preston Rudie, communications director for then Congressman David Jolly from 2014-2017.
Last weekend, the financially failing Tampa Bay Times published this puff-piece about the hiring of Cintron. The article didn’t report Cintron’s salary, but did report that “the airport approached Cintron with the job.” However, the HCAA claims to have no records (e-mails, phone logs, etc.) of that “approach.”
We asked Veronica Cintron via phone and text who had approached her. At the time of publication of this article, Cintron had not responded to that question and other questions we had asked.
The Tampa Bay Guardian is going to dig in to this matter further. We already have reason to expect that we will find many more irregularities. Stay tuned.
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Ok so here is my Under the old Civil Service rules agencies were NOT required to post what were considered unclassified or executive level positions and in fact were allowed (and still are) able to APPOINT a candidate into this type of position. There are NO rules that keep the Authority from this type of hiring and in fact isn’t illegal, shady or otherwise. There may be more “qualified” folks out there but clearly that is not who or what they wanted and I for one don’t see an issue with it. In fact, it’s a win for our minority community that they have chosen a diversity candidate with A TON of knowledge about the Bay area, is in touch with the community, a motivational speaker and active public figure…so what it wasn’t posted. Kudos to her for being noticed and