Shed light on looming crucial county needs, don’t hide them

Miami-Dade commissioners last week deliberately hid reports of crucial public needs that could trigger major crises. Both looming crises and all solutions are to be kept under wraps, with only the 13 commissioners in the know.

If that secrecy makes you uncomfortable, it should. Read on.

What the commission did by a 12-1 vote is order Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to analyze “all properties that are critical to county infrastructure” that the county doesn’t own and privately brief each commissioner on findings within 90 days.

The original resolution was laudable in intent. It asked for written alerts before a crisis looms like the one triggered when the only site that fuels our cruise ships was sold for condos and everyone claimed to be blindsided. An early warning could have helped.

But a new warning process was corrupted when some commissioners in December decided not to seek a written report because it could have alerted owners that lands were valuable to the county. Instead, there would be nothing in writing, no public discussion, just secret talks about who knows whose property.

That could indeed save money, maybe big money, if the county decided privately it needed to buy someone’s land or just take it in an eminent domain sale.

But look at the cost of that veil of secrecy to all of us.

First, the public won’t be alerted to dangers serious enough to force the county to buy or look at eminent domain of land and buildings “to ensure such properties adequately meet the county’s present and future needs.” Those “present and future needs” are to be known to commissioners alone wherever those sites may be, Greenland or Iceland or anywhere.

Second, while commissioners are to be briefed, they get eight years in the job at most and needs linger on. The seaport fuel peril, for example, was known for decades but was anecdotal – it wasn’t in documents or plans. Commissioners left, but the danger of having no fueling site remained and eventually flared up. That belonged in written port planning.

Third, the secrecy is no accident. The resolution was crafted specifically to hide all land and property needs that could cause a taking. “I want to be clear that conversations are not public records,” Commissioner Oliver Gilbert III said, and they are not subject to Florida’s Government in the Sunshine laws that are meant to make public what our governments do.

Fourth, this intent to cover up disrespects the public. It’s what we don’t know can’t hurt us – until it does. “I think now more than ever government needs to be more transparent, not less transparent,” said Raquel Regalado, who argued against the secrecy aspect and cast the only no vote.

Fifth, the measure scares property owners. “Really, it does concern me about what conversations are going to be happening about people’s private property,” Ms. Regalado argued. “What establishes our government as being dramatically different from every other is our belief in private property and our upholding those rights.” The fact that commissioners don’t want us to know the demand for our properties so the county can buy them cheap is distressing.

Sixth, it’s not just private property owners who will be kept in the dark. The resolution, said Ms. Regalado, “calls into question is this about the incinerator? Is this about trash locations? Does this include municipalities?” She said several municipalities and the school board had asked her.

“It opens a door to [a] very slippery slope, and I think we’re going to lose a lot more credibility and not gain opportunities but actually pay a lot more” for properties, Ms. Regalado said.

“This is a very broad item that covers a tremendous amount of ground,” she said. “It does not exempt municipalities. It does not exempt the school board. It does not exempt the State of Florida. It is very broad. And I think that doesn’t help us with our relationships.”

And while sponsor Danielle Cohen Higgins argued that “it’s just a report – the spirit of the item is simply to prepare us for any critical county infrastructure that we may need in order to provide services to our residents,” all of that could in fact be done in the sunshine, not in private huddles that may enlighten commissioners but blind the other 2.8 million of us.

Who knows what county discussions may begin soon about property you own? Secrecy creates suspicions.

Ms. Cohen Higgins had the right target: prepare now for big needs coming down the road. But a coverup of what perils the public might face, coupled with secret looks at wangling property from owners at below true value, has no place in preparedness.

The commission should strip away the secrecy with a new resolution requiring that the major future needs for properties to avert crises be made crystal clear in writing, both to ensure an institutional memory at the county and to ease concerns by property owners and the public. 

Better to know what’s coming down the road at us than to meet it in a nasty collision.