A charter review sounds dull, but it could change your life

Rules for how Miami-Dade functions face a revamp that will affect us all for decades. What that means to each of us depends on the process, who gets to play, and what vital changes are ignored.

Make no mistake: details put under the microscope and what is neglected are vital. Unfortunately, they will be as dull as dishwater – until the impact smacks you in the face.

What is about to kick off is a review of the Home Rule Charter of Miami-Dade, which is the county’s equivalent of a constitution. A deal with the state in the early 1950s gave Miami-Dade more power to control its own fate than any of the other 66 counties.

Stay with us as we set the stage. It’s important.

The charter itself requires a review every five years, but it doesn’t specify how or by whom. Changes that a review team seeks were in the past vetted by the county commission, which alone decides which ones voters get to approve or reject. 

In the end, you’re likely to get a choice of some ideas, but commissioners usually squash most of them before they can reach you. What you get to vote on is as vital as how you will vote. That process of picking issues and solutions for vetting is about to begin.

Debate among commissioners about how the charter review will function began last week with a pivotal gulf: will the county as usual name a public review team, or will commissioners themselves make all the decisions with no public members at all?

A resolution by Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins before the Chairman’s Policy Council offered a review team in the spirit of the past, with each commissioner naming an outsider, the mayor naming one and the 15th named by the chair of the Miami-Dade Legislative Delegation.

Immediately Commissioner Raquel Regalado suggested that rather than allow outsiders, the commission chair name a group of commissioners able to do the job. She cited time pressures and public ignorance of what commissioners need.

Ms. Regalado emphasized that in November the county for the first time will elect five officials who won’t be under commission control. She wants to divvy up county assets and powers before the new independent sheriff, property appraiser, tax collector, supervisor of elections and clerk of the circuit court can put in their bids for what they want to control. She wants the commission itself to make all the rules first.

But having commissioners as deciders raises a serious question for Vice Chairman Anthony Rodriguez. “I just know that I might be making recommendations to our charter that govern us ourselves,” he said. He’s spot on. Putting commissioners in charge of their own fate leaves out the most important group: the public.

Putting the commission in absolute control as Ms. Regalado suggested is the equivalent of the fox guarding the henhouse. She may be a very benevolent fox, but clearly every commissioner’s self-interest would skew perspective not only on decisions but on what a charter review may even consider. 

Because the commission next month might exclude public members entirely from a review structure – “It’s difficult to get the public to participate in these things,” Ms. Regalado offered as an excuse – let me throw out for public pressure some key issues that the commission, focused on preserving its own domain, is likely to ignore:

■The county’s setup is flawed with the mayor both the elected political leader and the chief administrator who must carry out the orders of commissioners but act as the county’s top official. We have argued that a professional manager carrying out orders of both the commission and the mayor and running a staff of 29,000 is still necessary, as a 2001 charter review concluded before the manager’s role was later merged with the mayor’s.

■Since 1957 we have paid county commissioners only $6,000 yearly to legislate for a county now spending $11 billion a year. Every other Florida county pays a scale, which today is $120,164 in big counties. We should by charter pay that scale, but allow no outside jobs for commissioners, who now must earn a living while having a full-time commission role. We are pennywise but pound foolish. 

■Commissioners today vote on county contracts. State and federal governments exclude elected officials from those awards. Commissioners would never suggest separation from contracts because campaign contributions directly correlate to power over contracts. But the public would benefit from removing any elected official, including the mayor, from contract approvals.

■Today much of the county is in cities, villages and towns, which govern purely local matters. But hundreds of thousands of residents live in areas where the county itself is their “city” for local issues. If the whole county were divided into cities and towns, county officials could concentrate on issues that concern everyone and leave local matters to local councils.

■Our commissioners now are elected from a district by vote only of residents of the district, which leads to parochialism. They used to be chosen from districts but elected by all county voters, so commissioners had to have a broad view of big issues. That needs a second look in a charter review, but commissioners themselves will never suggest it.

■The charter review should also demand that all issues that a review team recommends go straight to voters with no commission censorship to keep some out of public hands.

You probably have reforms you’d like a review team to study, like whether the Urban Development Boundary should be a firm line or subject to commission votes. Many important issues might fly below the radar if commissioners are the ones to decide what changes are worth even considering. 

The immediate question is who gets to vote on which charter changes to consider. Last time around the county attorney chaired the review and only one commissioner, Daniella Levine Cava, was on the team.

Question: How can all of the wisdom about the county be sitting today on the commission? 

Answer: It can’t.

Vice Chairman Rodriguez is right: limiting who serves to commissioners themselves smacks of self-interest.