Endless roadblocks stall a vital county aim that all agree on

An old friend called to tell me he’d gone to see our county government in action on a vital civic issue and witnessed instead county inaction.

He didn’t have to say more. I knew he meant that a committee last week had again kicked down the road a can filled with plans for a mental health center that is already built but stands empty as commissioners think up more reasons why our $51 million building investment can’t be opened. 

All five on the committee said they love the concept of a mental health center to remove mentally ill inmates warehoused in our jail and get as many as possible out of the long-term cycle of jail, hospitals and homelessness – a pattern repeated over and over, just as the words of the five commissioners were repeated over and over.

“I think that this project is not only a good one but I think that it’s a possible standard for the future,” said Roberto Gonzalez, a spirit the others echoed before they individually offered their own reasons why it won’t see the light of day anytime soon as the county spends millions to keep the never-used center from rotting physically – if not mentally.

Mr. Gonzalez and the other four all echoed the concern that the county didn’t have proof that the money would be there to keep the center operating for the next five years. Without proof, they don’t want to go ahead and open the center, even though the first two years will be absolutely free for taxpayers, funded completely by part of a $77 million national opioid settlement.

But for none of them was such knowledge nearly good enough. Data in the 213-page legislative package on the table last week indeed stated that the county is $36 million short of being fully covered now for the third, fourth and fifth years of the mental health center’s operation. They all want full financial coverage for five years before the doors open.

I applaud the fiscally conservative approach. I’d love to see everything government does fully covered for the next five years. Unfortunately, I doubt anything in county government is fully covered for the next five years. 

“I don’t think you can predict the future,” said the newest commissioner, Vicki Lopez, who noted that she previously was the state budget chairman in the legislature. “I think we can only operate on what we know presently.”

What’s known, as all agree, is that the first two years of the mental health center’s operation are fully paid for, that they would be used as a pilot to show that the center is working as planned, and that the county would have two years to fill in the $36 million budget gap for the subsequent three years. 

There seems to be no disagreement about that – but nobody wants to go farther without the proof today that the center will get that $36 million based on its future performance. As Ms. Lopez said correctly, you can’t predict the future and the commission needs to operate on what it knows now. But that reasoning means that the center can’t open, because it can never show that it works until it opens.

Lack of proof, however, didn’t stop even larger county spending, as it seldom does.

Ahead of the mental health center on last week’s Intergovernmental and Economic Impact Committee agenda was a discussion of the FIFA World Cup 2026 funding. The county last year gave the cup’s host committee $46 million in cash and in-kind services based on unprovable forecasts of how well the cup’s seven games will do in this community to build tourism. 

The host committee CEO told the committee last week how hard it is to get the private sector to kick in the remaining funds to meet projections and commitments to the global FIFA organization. Yet the county had given $46 million in a tough budget year for seven soccer matches but is balking at $36 million for five years of what everyone agrees is groundbreaking mental health treatment.

That’s a difference between sports and the rest of the world. This is a county, after all, that tossed in $3 billion for a baseball stadium that it doesn’t control or get paid for with only a handful of commissioners even being interested enough at the time to ask the ballpark’s ultimate cost – a question county administrators ducked until two days after the final vote.

Beyond asking for proof of the unprovable future, committee members last week each had their own barriers to voting to open the mental health center.

Mr. Gonzalez, in demanding a firm funding source, said “the suggestion I’d like to make is looking at that food and beverage tax,” a new detour for the center debate into robbing Peter to pay Paul.

A pair of revenue streams could be tapped. The 1% Homeless and Domestic Violence Tax on restaurants, bars and caterers everywhere but in Miami Beach, Surfside and Bal Harbour goes 85% to the county’s Homeless Trust and 15% to domestic violence centers. A 2% hotel and motel tax on food and beverage sales helps the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau build the visitor industry. Mr. Gonzalez didn’t offer details of this new tussle over who should get those tax receipts now. 

René García took a different route to delay. He offered to put an unseen amendment to the plan on the floor “to make sure we have a true public-private partnership and bring some private providers to try to fill some of the other beds [beyond 75 in the pilot program] that we have, other floors that can treat not only the severely mentally ill population but also have access to individuals in the community and work with these other providers in our communities.” 

As for the people already chosen to run the seven-story center, Mr. García said, “I’m not necessarily sure that they’re the right fit for it.”

While Mr. García never got to offer his amendment, it seemingly would eat up the space in the 200-bed center that would allow it to grow beyond its pilot use of 75 beds and would deter the center from its original purpose. That’s still another debate.

Next to object was Danielle Cohen Higgins, who had asked at the prior mental health center hearing on Dec. 10 for “30 pages on how we’re actually going to pay for the services” and was properly distressed that the 213-page revised document before her in February did not answer her December questions.

She had another valid objection that other commissioners shared: “I didn’t receive these amendments until two minutes before the hearing commenced, and that is of great concern to me because, again, the item was advanced out of the Dec. 10 committee. It’s now Feb. 4… I don’t know what the amendment said.” Shades of a baseball stadium vote without the vital details.

“Every commissioner deserves to have the facts before we make decisions,” Ms. Lopez said later in the discussion. “In my very short tenure here I often see us make decisions without the facts, and that’s dangerous.”

That lack of vital knowledge comes in two forms. 

One is last-minute amended legislation from Commissioner Raquel Regalado, the item’s sponsor, arriving too late for other commissioners to study before a vote. Mr. Gonzalez noted that he hadn’t yet read the whole amendment before it was debated. That, as Ms. Lopez said, is dangerous.

The other issue is that proposed legislation from the administration sometimes comes minus key facts. While none is as egregious as a baseball stadium financial package that never hinted at the word ‘billion’ in a $3 billion commitment, legislative backup is frequently long on generalities and short on specifics. The spending pills are sugar-coated, without the printed warnings about overdoses.

Ms. Lopez had one other concern. Ms. Cohen Higgins was demanding written agreements from the City of Miami and Miami Beach that they would fund a specific share of the center’s operations in the years ahead the way they had kicked in $5 million for the FIFA host committee as her condition to approve the center’s opening. But Ms. Lopez, who represents parts of both cities, said neither city could responsibly comply with the demand.

Because of coming property tax changes from the state that as of now are unspecific, Ms. Lopez said, “it is impossible for them to take a vote today and say ‘we will commit to a certain number of dollars for this project’… They’re trying to figure out how they will provide essential services to their cities, and it’s coming. It’s not ‘if’ property tax reform is coming, it’s ‘when it hits’ – and that will hit, unfortunately, in years three and four [of the center’s proposed operations] and every year thereafter.”

Even if the cities commit to fund the center, Ms. Lopez said, in future years they may not have the money to meet their commitments.

Beyond all these roadblocks to opening the center, several commissioners had another concern: they want to not just be able to open it but to prove in advance that it would actually save the county money to provide mental health services that now don’t exist. Ms. Cohen Higgins cited her need for center supporters to prove a cost savings in advance of opening. 

In fact, it’s going to be hard to spend less while offering comprehensive mental health services that now don’t exist in order to break the inhumane cycle of jail-hospital-homelessness. How in Heaven’s name could providing all those needed services ever cut the county’s spending below what it is today without the services?

Ms. Cohen Higgins had another pivotal concern: she doesn’t want the commission itself to look bad to the public for not opening a completed mental health center that all agree would provide a great service not only to the mentally ill but to the entire community as it becomes safer and a better place to live. If it doesn’t work, she said, “then the headlines when things go south fall on our shoulders.”

“I do not want the rhetoric coming out of this committee to be anything other than a depth of care and concern that is reflective, which is why we are saying time and time again that we want this project to advance but we do not want to create a trap for ourselves and the residents that may be receiving care in this facility,” she emphasized.

We’d like to accept as real the goodwill and concern for all that Ms. Cohen Higgins outlined as her headline for this report, even though the committee refused to hear Ms. Regalado, who’s not a committee member, explain her amended legislation. My friend and caller who had been at the hearing said that he hadn’t realized how much the commissioners hated one another. Or maybe, he reflected, it’s just politics.

In the end, after an hour-long debate committee members unanimously deferred a vote until their next meeting and refused to commit to supporters’ suggestion of a long meeting just to answer all their concerns. Maybe the lack of that commitment is correct: would an explanation make any real difference? 

There’s plenty of blame to spread around for delay in doing what everyone says is vital. 

We can blame the state for seeking to choke the county’s main source of taxes and thus constrict everything local governments do. 

We can blame the county administration for not finding a path forward and for not fully laying out the economic facts. 

We can blame the commissioners for obstructionism in a classic manner and for not playing well together in the sandbox. 

We can blame proponents for overstating county economic gains from a mental health center. 

We can make a good case for all of these, but that’s not very helpful.

As the great philosopher Yogi Berra famously said (if he really said it), “it’s déjà vu all over again.” 

We can look for the county to keep kicking this can of community service down the road to everyone’s detriment until commissioners stop blaming and decide to do the right thing to get the center open. 

Trust me, they all know what it is.