Chairman wants to replace mayor as Miami-Dade’s top lobbyist
Miami-Dade County’s new mayor could lose her status as the county’s official lobbyist.
Legislation proposed by the County Commission’s chairman, Jose “Pepe” Diaz, would change county law to make him Miami-Dade’s “official spokesperson” for legislative priorities in Tallahassee and in Washington. Those priorities are set throughout the year by commission vote and subject to vetoes by the mayor.
Diaz minimized the legislation as a housekeeping measure that’s part of a larger streamlining of county offices already under the authority of the commission, including Legislative Affairs. “The mayor has all the power in the world,” Diaz said during a legislative committee hearing Friday. “This is not a power grab, or anything like it.”
Levine Cava, who was the county’s District 8 commissioner before winning November’s mayoral election, said Monday night she wouldn’t take a public position on the Diaz proposal unless it advances intact. The bill passed a preliminary vote on Tuesday. Next up is a committee hearing, and then a second and final vote before the full board.
“I’m going to wait and see what happens to this legislation. ... There are definitely going to be efforts to amend it from my conversations with commissioners,” she said. “I will always speak as the mayor, and I will always speak on policies consistent with the guidance of the commission. I don’t see this legislation preventing me from doing so.”
The question of who gets to represent MiamiDade’s official legislative agenda is the latest example of commissioners nipping at Levine Cava’s authority after a November of historic political churn at County Hall.
Six of the county’s 13 commissioners are newcomers, largely the result of a term-limit law that voters approved in 2012 and forced its first wave of exits in 2020. A second is coming in 2022, when Diaz and other veterans are required to leave office.
The first move came less than 48 hours into the new mayor’s term when the county’s veteran budget director, Jennifer Moon, accepted a commission offer to launch the board’s own budget office rather than serve under Levine Cava.
On March 3, Moon sent a memo to Diaz outlining plans to launch a budget process parallel to the one traditionally run out of the mayor’s 29th Floor offices, where Moon did double duty as a deputy mayor under Levine Cava’s predecessor, Carlos Gimenez.
Moon wrote that her office would work with each commissioner to review revenue projections, departmental requests and the use of federal COVID-19 relief dollars to produce the board’s own budget document ahead of final adoption of the 2022 spending plan in September.
The process is set to include a review of the mayor’s budget proposal in July to “determine adherence to Board’s priorities ... and present to the Board necessary changes.”
JENNIFER MOON’S NEW BUDGET PLAN
In an interview, Moon predicted budget talks into the public sphere as commissioners try to rewrite parts of the mayor’s spending plan outside of one-on-one meetings with the administration. While Florida’s open-meetings laws allow a mayor and department heads to meet privately with a commissioner, any budget discussion with Moon and multiple commissioners would need to happen in public.
“I think this could lead to more transparency in the way decisions are made as the board considers the proposed budget,” she said. “Those meetings will occur in the sunshine.”
Commissioners also granted Diaz’s request in February to let him negotiate with former Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria’s legal team to extract a higher settlement of a county suit than Levine Cava proposed. Levine Cava said Diaz’s request took her by surprise but described the extra $1 million offered by Loria as the result of a “one-two punch” by her and the chairman.
On Tuesday, commissioners voted to divvy up the $4.7 million among themselves, with each getting $366,000 to
spend in their district. Levine Cava had proposed using the money to fill revenue gaps caused by the COVID-19 economic downturn. Voting against letting individual commissioners decide how to spend the Marlins money were Rene Garcia, Sally Heyman, Eileen Higgins, Joe Martinez and Javier Souto.
Diaz joined the eightvote majority in approving the plan.
On the legislative front, the tussle to be MiamiDade’s leading voice in Tallahassee is playing out regardless of what happens to Diaz’s proposal Tuesday.
Levine Cava, the first Democrat elected county mayor in 20 years, visited the Republican-controlled state capital in early
March.
Diaz, a Republican who greeted then-President Donald Trump during his
Miami visits last year, made his own trip days later. That included a meeting with fellow Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who didn’t meet with Levine Cava during her Tallahassee trip.
Even so, Diaz said his trip focused on an issue that’s also a priority for Levine Cava: converting Miami-Dade’s private septic systems to government-provided sewer services. The sewage tanks are an increasing problem for pollution as sea-level rise sets up more to fail.
DIAZ AND LEVINE CAVA’S SHARED PRIORITY: SEPTIC-TANK FIX
Diaz said he pressed lawmakers during the trip for significant state funding for a fix estimated to cost $4 billion.
“Instead of getting lollipop money, I’m trying to get steak money,’ he said. “If we don’t fix the problem that’s been created underneath us, we’ve got bigger problems.”
The Diaz Tallahassee trip is helping fuel another potential challenge for Levine Cava. He’s come out against the countywide curfew first established by Gimenez during a COVID surge in July, and continued by Levine Cava under the mayor’s authority to issue emergency orders that are subject to commission vetoes.
Now set at midnight, Levine Cava said the curfew will end April 5 if hospitalization numbers hold steady and the average portion of positive COVID-19 test results falls below 5.5% through the end of March — the peak of spring break season. “We can’t let our guard down when we are so close to the finish line,” she told commissioners in a March 5 memo announcing her plan.
Diaz said legislators warned him that MiamiDade’s status as the lone Florida county with a curfew in place was fueling support for a bill to restrict emergency powers of all mayors statewide. “I’m not the mayor,” he said during last week’s committee meeting. “But I know how important that power is.”
Douglas Hanks: 305-376-3605, @doug_hanks