I don’t have anything against automated leaderboards, but I don’t like peer-voted “user of the month”. They are often no more than a popularity contest and an ego stroke for an already standing-out user while overshadowing other valuable contributors.
As for staff of the month, I’d say it’s even worse. Most are not active on meta, and do great job. It would be the same as “user of the month”, but ignoring most of their activity outside the public forum.
So the votes would be restricted to “staff of the month active on meta”.
Having been both staff and very active on meta at the same time, if such a vote happened at the time, I sure would have disliked it.