The art of hiding big maladies under short-term band-aids

We may complain that elected officials ignore big problems, but we must credit them with one thing: they are adept at kicking the can down the road. Rather than confront the real concern, they hide it with a short-term patch.

It seems to be human nature to shy away from big problems. Maybe they are truly unsolvable. But our elected leaders need to try rather than duck.

Instead, when major issues surface they produce band-aids that might or might not be worthwhile in themselves but avoid the real issue, leaving it for future presidents and congressmen and legislators and mayors and commissioners to deal with – or keep kicking the can down the road.

How else would you explain our ever-ballooning national debt? Instead of dealing with the root causes, we battle over how much and how long we can keep growing – not freezing or reducing – the debt as a burden for future generations.

Locally, when the Marlins wanted a stadium 15 years ago and the county didn’t have $500 million to build it, the county didn’t deal directly with the issue. Instead, it put almost $3 billion in debt on future taxpayers’ backs knowing that nobody then in office would be around to deal with the huge balloon payments that await us still.

When the county raided library reserves in 2013 to cover a budget shortfall while another $20 million deficit was forecast for the following year, the can-kicker’s mantra emerged: let someone else deal with it later. “Let’s worry about next year next year,” said then-Commissioner Barbara Jordan, “and deal with this year this year.” 

Just last week Miami Today reported that Mayor Daniella Levine Cava had asked commissioners not to raise fees in a $39 million waste collection shortfall but borrow instead because customers this year must deal with a rising cost of living and can’t afford the full cost of their service – as though the cost of living will miraculously fall in the years ahead enough to repay the $39 million. The decision is pending.

That do-it-later strategy is the same one that led Miami-Dade officials for years to ignore crumbling water and sewer infrastructure – after all, it’s hidden under the streets and nobody complains about it. That worked until federal officials pulled into the open a leaky mess that led to a consent order that will cost about $12 billion just to serve today’s needs, let alone growth.

Can-kicking is typified by monetary issues, but there are other kinds.

Because governments have for 40 years bypassed transit to link Miami and Miami Beach, and because the City of Miami Beach has rejected the latest plan to build that transit, the city commission calls for staggered work shifts to deal with road gridlock. Staggered shifts are a fine idea, but the idea just puts off the needed long-term solution.

More can-kicking that we reported last week: because the state won’t deal with low pay for state attorneys and public defenders, the county jury-rigged a way for 26 of those attorneys to pay below-market rents in Brickell. That’s a very pretty patch to deal with a totally unrelated issue, in which the state will probably keep kicking the can down the road.

Miami-Dade is patching another state malady when it tries to unveil where communications companies are erecting 5G poles. The state created the hunt for where poles are to rise when it removed site control from communities and took it to Tallahassee. That’s one piece of the problems caused by preempting many local matters that once were handled here.

In most of these cases, the patches have little to nothing to do with the problems. The real pole issue is state control against local wishes. Workforce housing has nothing to do with state pay of its attorney. Staggered shifts have little to do with adding mass transit. And so on.

Governments are adept at these workarounds. They are much less willing to dig to the roots of major issues.

As we’ve said before, the can-kicker’s thinking is “worry about it all later. Maybe something will turn up. If not, maybe someone else will take the blame. Besides, I may be out of office before it all blows up.”