We’ll safeguard transit funds, just put lipstick on that pig

A county committee agreed last week – some kicking and screaming – to resolve that Miami-Dade won’t again misspend the voter-approved half-penny sales tax for transit on uses that the 2002 ballot language ruled out of bounds.

The debate over keeping faith with voters showed commissioners running for cover from blame for 15 years of fund misuse by predecessors. It also revealed the disquieting fact that while we seek six new legs of mass transit, we don’t yet know how to pay to maintain and operate them if they’re ever finished.

The committee finally agreed to send the resolution of no more transit tax misuse to a full commission vote only if it paints the current commission as doing great things for transit since 2018 – none of the 13 commissioners was seated prior to that.

The debate was form over substance. If the commission can look good, it can agree to never again break faith with voters and to always use taxes for their stated purpose of building the vital rapid transit for which voters have taxed themselves for two decades.

In fairness, Transportation, Planning and Mobility Committee Chair Eileen Higgins was absolutely correct in frequent and fervent statements that current commissioners did nothing wrong and are trying to do the right thing on transit. All committee members agreed that transit tax monies had been misused but that misuse had ended by the time they took office.

Ms. Higgins led opposition along with Raquel Regalado, who moved to reject Kevin Marino Cabrera’s resolution to never again divert funds meant to build and operate new mass transit to instead keep our old transit running. That shifting was done for a decade starting with a 2008 resolution, as commissioners funneled to non-transit uses money they formerly had spent on transit operation and filled the gap with the transit tax funds.

That shuffling led to the public outcry of bait-and-switch, as money that voters approved for new transportation in effect funded non-transit use, and little was built for more than a decade other than a short Metrorail link to the airport. Six long corridors of promised mass transit were not touched – and none is yet done.

Yet a resolution that we don’t ever again want to bait-and-switch transit funds could pass only by agreeing to add before a full commission vote 10 to 15 paragraphs of preamble about what a great job the county has done with mass transit for four years.

Listen to some of that commission discussion:

“We are doing a fabulous job” on transportation, Ms. Higgins said at the outset. “I have grave reservations about misleading the public that this board has been doing anything wrong. This board is in compliance with state law” that outlaws the kind of transit tax bait-and-switch that had occurred. “This board has passed budgets that ensure that, and this board is poised to build a transportation system that our county needs, our residents deserve, and we need to be confident.”

She noted that the prior week she had met with US Rep. Sam Graves, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, “and expressed our confidence in how committed we are to using our half-penny properly to make sure we had a dedicated funding source for transit. We cannot have items that are out there that get in the press that make it seem we are not already in compliance with law. We’re doing the right thing…. We do not need to change one word in order to comply with law.”

Yes, today the county complies with law, but a measure passed during the Great Recession 15 years ago and still existing would allow the county to backslide. So, how about the future?
“Just because we’re doing it right now, we have a board that we all respect and we appreciate, that doesn’t mean that future boards or others will do the right things,” said Sen. René García in response. “I think what this [resolution] does, it just codifies current practice as to how dollars should be administered.”

Mr. García continued, “It was broke for many years and was a problem. Now it isn’t. But that’s because of the people that are here now. That’s not to say that the people who come after us are not going to do this, especially in a world of term limits,” which allow a commissioner to serve at most eight years.

Jimmy Morales, county chief operations officer, said his only concern is that in the future spending flexibility might be needed. State and federal transportation funders, he said, look not only at the capital funds available but the ability to pay for operations and maintenance of the new transit. “When you look at our pro forma [for new transit funding] the biggest unfunded piece right now is actually the operation of the system.”

“In a future date when we’ve built out these systems and they’re operating at a deficit, because all transit does,” Mr. Morales added later, the county might need transit tax spending flexibility, “but that could be added in the future.”

In fact, the resolution specifies that transit tax funds can be used to operate and maintain the new transit lines that they help to build. That wouldn’t be bait and switch, unlike in the past.
The main sticking point for some commissioners was not that operations and maintenance of new transit might be an issue but that putting on record that money was misused in the past might rub off on them. That record is in the resolution’s paragraphs of fact that explain why a measure is needed. Those paragraphs are termed “whereas clauses.”

“The whereas clauses don’t paint the picture of what we as a board are doing,” Commissioner Higgins complained. “There are a lot of ways that we could add whereas clauses that track the history of this board, and that is not done in this item. The way that this item is written is misleading to the residents. It’s letting them believe we’ve been doing the wrong thing, not the right thing, and we’ve been doing the right thing for over four years, and so there’s a way with these whereas clauses to tell a story that is positive, that in 2019 a unanimous vote for this and in 2020 on and the administration’s been doing a good job and successive boards and our commitment is to do transit and we’re just codifying what’s practice, and this item as written says to voters and to residents kind of that we suck and we can’t be trusted, and that is not true. We can all be trusted.”

Mr. Marino Cabrera, the item’s sponsor, said he’d be happy to work that language out with Ms. Higgins after the measure passed the committee and before it gets to the full commission for a vote. “The idea here is not to blow the system up,” he said. “The idea is to make sure the funds are used for the intended purpose.”

Mr. García agreed that the whereas clauses could tell the work that has been done. But, he noted. “We know there has been some ills in the past.”

In the end, Ms. Higgins agreed with the aims and form of the resolution to safeguard transit tax receipts for their intended purpose and that the measure could go forward as written to the full commission “with the expectation that we’ll jazz up the whereases.”

Nobody suggested that they simply apply a thick layer of lipstick to the pig – but that’s what they plan to do. They’ll do the right thing – just make it prettier.