Swing in the centralization pendulum slams into Miami-Dade

A memo from Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava underscores an almost 250-year tug of war between a centralized federal government on one end and state and local governments on the other.

At the same time, the memo carries a firm warning that local government is in for a very rough financial trip through darkness with no clear light at the end of the tunnel.

That implies a watershed shift from a county that prides itself on trying to meet every desire to a painful triage that will focus limited funds on fewer aims, allowing some services to slide and others to disappear.

Since the mayor first outlined the issue to commissioners in May, a new memo points to three fiscal threats. 

First, the state hit the county by eliminating the 2% business rent tax, creating sales tax breaks and cutting transit funding from documentary stamp taxes.

At the same time, the federal “One Big Beautiful Bill” shifted administrative and fiscal responsibilities to local governments without providing funds to handle those chores, continuing a trend of unfunded mandates from higher levels of government to the governments below.

In the third change, the federal Rescissions Act cancelled funding previously appropriated to the county.

Tallying up the magnitude of those costs is a work in progress, but the weight of what is happening in Washington and Tallahassee falls on counties and cities, forcing changes in approach. As Washington takes more power unto itself, it chokes off the flexibility of lower levels of government to meet their own needs in any way other than what is prescribed from above.

The mayor’s memo looks to what is coming as a result of tightened controls from Washington and Tallahassee.

“Although only 5% of the county’s revenue is derived directly from federal sources,” she warned commissioners, “nearly one-third of the state’s budget is federally funded, creating potential cascading impacts on county programs and services.”

While not every county department relies on federal money, the mayor noted, the “concentration of federal resources within certain departments means even modest reductions in agency and program funding can have disproportionate effects on operations and capital projects.”

While many potential impacts are Trump administration proposals, the mayor noted, “the final budget will be determined through the congressional appropriations process…. As Congress returns from recess and finalizes the … federal budget, the county should prepare for continued uncertainty and shortfalls. These national-level threats – alongside new and evolving challenges at the state level – amplify the fiscal pressures facing the county.”

While federal and state uses of fiscal power at the expense of counties and cities will force Miami-Dade to pivot to deemphasize what have been seen as untouchable necessities, those changes are being forced not only by policies of President Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis but by a swinging pendulum that has been in motion since this nation was formed.

While the U.S. Constitution is our bedrock, it wasn’t always there. From 1781 to 1789 we functioned under the Articles of Confederation, which provided no national authority to manage commerce or finance. The power was in state capitals, not in Washington, and it didn’t work well.

The Constitution balanced that power at a time sentiments were divided between the Federalists of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, who championed centralization for order and efficiency, and the anti-federalists of Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who feared a tyrannical central government that would threaten the rights of the states and individual liberties.

The passage of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution tried to balance competing interests by reserving to the people or the states any power not delegated by the Constitution to the federal government.

Still, the balance of power has shifted often. The national government added powers during the Civil War, the Depression, the New Deal of Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, and World War II. More authority and resources were returned to the states under Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

We are now in another period of centralization, only this time under a Republican administration, while it is the Democrats who tilt toward state and local powers.

As for needed cuts, all of us can point to something the county does that we don’t think is vital. But what is waste to you is necessity to me, hence the need for a triage in the county that can’t come without pain.

While we can personify centralization as belonging to President Trump nationally and Governor DeSantis in Florida, their enablers in Congress and the Legislature will not buck their policies. Local attempts to slow or reverse centralization would be pushing water uphill – just asking for change won’t work.

That leaves to the mayor and commission a distasteful triage to end some county services just as DOGE cuts have weakened key elements of the federal government. There is only so much do-more-with-less opportunity to ward off service cuts.

The mayor properly warned of what is coming. She averted big cuts in this year’s budget by tapping funds that won’t be there next year. The cupboard is bare. 

Chalk up service cuts that can’t all be avoided not to any local waste but to federal and state centralization that forces the county to do even more with less state and federal funding. Don’t wait until too late to begin that distasteful cutback process.