Miami makes a towering mistake in splintering its assets

Handing a theater to one commissioner to run under his private team of city-paid workers expands a perilous trend that goes beyond the Miami City Commission’s 3-2 vote to let Joe Carollo control the Tower Theater.

In both the city and Miami-Dade County, districts where commissioners are elected are morphing into fiefdoms in which each commissioner is a mini-mayor, more parochial and less responsive to the wider community.

That perverts the intended structure of a government staffed by impartial civil servants, reporting to an elected mayor or hired manager, who follow policies voted on by an elected commission.

Handing a citywide cultural hub to the commissioner in whose district it sits with hiring power for a staff and city funds to run it is another step toward balkanization. A county equivalent would be to hand the Arsht Center’s buildings to the area commissioner rather than the current expert CEO and countywide board of arts-oriented leaders.

Think of the harm to cultural assets: we elect commissioners to vote on policy ranging from transportation to housing to climate to finances and would never expect them to individually choose cultural presentations, replacing impartial expertise with the political interests of a generalist.

Instead of the diverse cultural interests that public arts hubs must serve, politicians would base programming on, at best, their own aims or, at worst, the desires of campaign donors, voters, and political action groups. Elected bodies here have banned many cultural presentations that don’t match their political concerns. Why hand that power to a single commissioner as cultural czar? It’s tying culture to a ball and chain.

But the issue is far bigger than culture. It is a repeated pulling away of the parts of a community from broad oversight, to the detriment of the whole.

When the Miami Marlins were sold, the county got a sliver of the profits. But though the stadium belongs to the county – hence all taxpayers – commissioners divvied up proceeds so each could spend one-thirteenth, $366,385 apiece. Rather than voting as a group on county priorities for that money, each decided how to spend a chunk. Any potential impact was diluted in parochialism.

As a parallel, think about subdividing county taxes to let each commissioner spend one-thirteenth of them. Nobody would consider all the needs of a diverse county, just personal aims. That is fiefdoms in action.

The city in 2019 divvied up $2.89 million in park impact fees among five commissioners, with each setting his own spending goals rather than have parks professionals working under the manager target the biggest impact for all.

In 2020, three of the five Miami commissioners brought into their own offices the neighborhood teams in their districts, excluding City Manager Art Noriega from control of those city employees, while the other two commissioners left the manager in charge in their districts.

How to run a city that way? “You’ll figure it out,” Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla told Mr. Noriega in a meeting. “That’s why you get the big bucks.”

So in two districts we have the manager system and in three we have the spoils system, where each commissioner, not the manager, decides how a personal section of the city is run.

One more example: last fall the city subdivided $52 million in parks and culture bond funds to give each commissioner total control of a share. The rationale, as always, is that each knows her or his district better than anyone else, so put them in charge rather than coordinating efforts.

But city parks have no outsider-keep-out signs: they are for all residents. The same is true in cultural facilities. So, coordination to serve the entire community disappears.

Commissioners aren’t managers. That’s why there is a manager. If you don’t trust him, fire him. But local government is not a case of every man a king.

Obvious dangers when one person runs a mini-government range from favoritism to graft to just plain incompetence. Commissioners who may be great on policy were not elected to also make part of the city run, independently of one another. Broader citizen needs can easily be dismissed. And it’s almost impossible for employees who work for a single elected commissioner to serve everyone without favoritism.

The division of a county by 13 or a city by five is the worst possible structure.

Commissioner Manolo Reyes pinpointed the issue in debate this month over handing the Tower Theater to a single commissioner.

“I don’t believe that I or any commissioner should be administering any city assets because it is a very dangerous mixture of having the power to say who is going to do what,” he pointed out. “You have the power of veto over who is going to be a participant, who is going to come in, and politics will take place in it.”

Amen.