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As Miami-Dade commissioners last week debated land use around airports, a tense exchange exposed a pivotal divide over their role in serving us all.
Discussion saw Chairman Oliver Gilbert III berate Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez because fiefdom mentalities erode government.
It began when Mr. Gonzalez asked to exempt West Kendall’s Miami Executive Airport from legislation to expand large-scale housing within a mile of all five airports.
“I think this is a tremendous idea,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “I just don’t think that this is a tremendous idea for my airport right now.”
He went on, “I think that in five to 10 years you are absolutely right, it is something that will be needed. What I don’t want is to open the floodgates before it is properly thought out, in my particular airport. As far as Opa-Locka is concerned, as far as MIA is concerned, I think this is really cooked and ready to go.”
As Mr. Gonzalez continued to cite “my airport,” Mr. Gilbert chastised him for the terminology and a fiefdom concept that, we agree, has long been harmful to the county by divvying up assets by 13 districts as opposed to a team concern for the county’s biggest needs.
“For far too long county commissioners have seen their districts as fiefdoms and we don’t make countywide decisions,” Mr. Gilbert snapped at him. “You don’t have an airport.”
The tone was harsh but the point was spot on: commissioners don’t own or control county assets. They belong to all citizens, not the government and certainly not the commissioner in whose district they sit.
After Mr. Gonzalez tried to explain that residents in his district are “not ready for this right now,” Mr. Gilbert continued his lecture.
“Opa-Locka is in the district that I represent, but it’s not mine. MIA is in your district – he pointed at Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera – it’s not his. That’s a dangerous paradigm to even allow to fester.”
Mr. Gilbert is right: a county of 13 fiefdoms is the road to waste and potential corruption – and it doesn’t let the county fulfill its intended role of utilizing all assets in a regional approach to meet major needs ranging from transportation to housing to environmental concerns.
District-by-district governance leaves overriding concerns unmet. A structure of fiefdoms doesn’t act on all districts’ major needs like homelessness, social services and other cross-county-border issues.
Just one example: would we face billions of dollars of federal consent order requirements to plug water and sewer gaps if the county had paid proper attention years ago to a responsibility that clearly cannot be divided district by district but requires holistic solutions?
Another case: the county’s solid waste system is broken, and badly. That’s not just the burden of Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez, who represents the City of Doral where the burned-out and abandoned solid waste plant sits. It affects all 13 districts.
For years, Miami Today has been decrying the pernicious impact of a fiefdom approach, the concept that each commissioner controls an empire of assets and funds to be used independently of needs of the county as a whole.
For instance, commissioners split 13 ways a minuscule payment from ex-Miami Marlins owners for profits they made on the team’s sale based on the stadium that taxpayers by commission vote funded to the tune of almost $3 billion in county debt. Each commissioner got a jackpot to spread around to benefit whomever rather than use the money to either pay down our stadium debt or meet some community-wide good chosen by all.
Each fiefdom’s private spending was funded by what is still taxpayer debt. It’s a powerful lever for each commissioner to make personal decisions and get the cash to enact them. But it’s inefficient, wasteful, and a temptation to spend for all the wrong reasons.
The scourge of fiefdoms isn’t limited to the county. The five Miami commissioners in 2022 split equally $177 million to battle sea level rise and flooding, as if city district lines can contain floods or rising seas. That menace demands joint action among all districts and all governments. Spending district by district is wasteful.
As for “my airport,” Miami last year made a towering mistake handing “my theater,” the Tower Theater, which had been a famed art cinema well run by Miami Dade College, to Commissioner Joe Carollo to run independently. Other than power politics, how do you describe that division of city assets?
In 2019, the city divvied up $2.89 million in park impact fees among the five commissioners to spend in their own districts, bypassing parks professionals and needs of the city as a whole.
Division of a county by 13 or a city by five is, as we’ve said often, the worst possible math.
Kudos to Mr. Gilbert for finally focusing on the issue. As commission chairman, we trust he will find a more formal way to unify a splintered governing mentality.
Michael Lewis
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