Spending based on fiefdoms a recipe for government waste

Miami commissioners just split equally $177 million to battle sea rise and flooding district by district. Every commissioner thus became a lone ranger to decide where and how to protect residents and property.

It’s hard to conceive less effective fund use than battling climate change as each commissioner spends about $35 million with no overall plan. It’s possible to fill potholes district by district. But battle global climate change? No way.

The move to spread bond funds that voters approved in 2017 among five commissioners is unthinkable. But several themes underlie the city’s action.

The first is the song “Money Burns a Hole in My Pocket” – the urge of elected officials to spend. The city set aside $192 million to borrow for climate control and has spent only $10 million. Why not spend it? Each commissioner surely can find something to use it for.

The second theme is that the district commissioner should spend public money because he or she is closest to the people. Just take the money, split it up and let each commissioner go to it. That’s what the Miami legislation explains – see page 8 of this edition.

That theme is insidious because it seems logical. After all, each commissioner does know his or her own district well, so why not let them spend the money? 

Because it’s not that simple.

Commissioners weren’t elected for managerial ability; they were chosen to vote on policy for an entire city that professional administrators execute. 

Miami has a professional manager and officials. They include climate experts, yet commissioners will do that work instead, within their own districts. Think about building a road network that ends at district lines and you see how impractical that would be.

Yet elected officials in recent years have set aside bonanzas to spend in their own areas, just as the city has now done. Miami is just doing it at a far higher price tag. 

Miami-Dade County took the $135 million that a cryptocurrency exchange is paying for naming rights to the downtown arena where the Miami Heat plays and divided 30% of those funds equally for 13 commissioners to allocate bit by bit.

That so bothered Commissioner Eileen Higgins that she directed her $363,000 a year for the county to spend in a broader program because “we’re starting to create 13 mini governments.”

That arena district-by-district slush fund wasn’t the first. A month earlier county commissioners split equally a pittance from former Miami Marlins owners who sold rights to a stadium that the county funded. Each commissioner would decide how to spend one-thirteenth of that sum. 

There are eight reasons to avoid the quagmire of each commissioner spending funds at will.

1. Public money is not divisible district by district but taxpayer by taxpayer. It’s the public’s money, not the commission’s piggybank.

2. Needs are unequal district by district. Smart custodians of public funds put them to the public’s best use, not their own. That takes collective decision-making – the kind governments do at budget time – and involves the mayor, who unlike the commissioners is elected by all voters.

3. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Spreading $177 million across district lines in major projects will yield more bang for the buck than the equivalent of filling potholes in each district. If commissioners can’t find projects to battle climate change and flooding, they shouldn’t borrow and spend. Surely, thinking taxpayers didn’t vote to spread $177 million ineffectively.

4. Working at commissioners’ discretion makes staff redundant, yet they are the ones chosen for expertise. With an asterisk for Miami’s Joe Carollo, who worked as Doral city manager, commissioners aren’t vetted for expertise in municipal administration. It’s likely experts would do better. Why not lean on them? If you don’t trust them, replace them, but don’t do their jobs for them.

5. No matter who does it, expert or amateur, spending should be in the context of how the whole community gets the most bang for the buck. It’s not everyone for himself.

6. Expending public funds unchecked is a temptation no honest official should face. Miami commissioners just got lots of cash to spread among people who could be backers and fund donors. Why risk appearing to play favorites when cash is on the table and you’re the decision-maker? As a former city manager, Mr. Carollo can speak to the need for a paid manager to control spending and take the heat as commissioners jockey for funds in their own districts.

7. Handing commissioners money creates slush funds, an apt term for a water and flood control bonanza. Future commissioners might yield to temptations.

8. Flood and climate control need capital spending, but of what sort? There is no one right answer, but certainly wrong is to let each commissioner do something different. Lack of coordination would yield utter failure at high cost.

It’s not too late for Miami to rethink use of 177 million scarce dollars. Nor is it too late for local governments to realize that divvying up resources creates more problems than it resolves. 

There is a reason the United States has a national government rather than the loose confederation of states we envisioned hundreds of years ago – it’s because united we are stronger. The same is true of local governments – fiefdoms of individual commissioners are a recipe for failure.