MDX toll board plans to fight back if state passes law to do away with it

MDX plans to sue the state to block a proposed Florida law that would dissolve the Miami-Dade toll agency and replace it with a new agency. The House has passed legislation, which is up for a final vote in the Senate today.

If Florida passes legislation to dissolve the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, the toll agency plans to challenge the law in court and fight a legal battle of survival, according to a report from a credit-ratings firm.

Moody’s, which is in regular contact with MDX leadership while analyzing the agency’s ability to repay debt, stated on April 25 that the toll board plans to “immediately” sue to block enactment of bills that are on the verge of passing the Florida Legislature. Sponsored by Miami-Dade Republicans and tacitly endorsed by the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis, legislation has already passed the House and is up for a final vote in the Senate on Thursday.

The bills would dissolve the MDX and replace it with the Greater Miami Expressway Agency, a new entity that would take over the MDX’s five existing expressways and bar current MDX board members from joining the new board. The legislation freezes toll rates until 2029 and

requests a more generous rebate program than MDX currently offers drivers. But the bills also require a study to see how much toll relief the “GMX” can afford to provide, so the rebate offerings aren’t a sure thing.

With toll givebacks not locked down and the new board serving the same role as the old one, MDX defenders cast the legislation as personal payback from Miami-Dade politicians who have made MDX a target. That includes Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, who passed legislation while in the Florida House demanding MDX toll cuts. On Sunday, she called the antiMDX bills by Rep. Bryan Avila, R-Miami Springs, and Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., RHialeah Gardens, examples of “real reform.”

“What you see here is the culmination of many years’ levels of frustration of MDX being tone deaf, arrogant, and ignorant to the plight of individuals traversing their expressways,” she told WPLG’s “This Week in South Florida.”

Wall Street has begun giving thumbs down to the bills. On Wednesday, Standard and Poor’s, a Moody’s competitor, downgraded MDX’s credit rating, citing the lack of political independence and the “high degree of uncertainty regarding operations” presented by the legislation.

On Wednesday evening, MDX director Javier Rodriguez confirmed plans to take Florida to court if the bills become law. “We believe we will challenge it,” he said. Rodriguez said the downgrades, and warnings by S&P that a successor agency to the MDX could be downgraded further, have already cost the expressway authority up to $200 million in higher borrowing costs over the next few decades.

“In my opinion, the damage is done,” he said. “Our tollpayers will end up paying more. It’s just a fact.”

MDX board member Louis Martinez, a lawyer, said, “If the governor signs it, then the current board will ... decide if we want to go through with a legal challenge.”

MDX is already suing Florida over laws that Nuñez and others got passed in 2017 and 2018 to force changes by the agency. MDX claims Florida violated the 1994 agreement creating the toll agency and granting it autonomy to manage toll rates and expressway finances.

In its April 25 report, Moody’s revealed MDX has privately stated its plan to challenge the latest antiMDX legislation if it becomes law. The firm’s report declared the legislation a “negative” factor for MDX’s credit rating but cited a number of “legal obstacles” before the bills could take effect.

“Should a bill be signed into law,” Moody’s wrote, “MDX plans to move immediately to seek an injunction upon passage in order to provide for a judicial review of several legal issues it views as contrary to law.” The report cites a 1996 agreement, signed two years after MDX was created by state and county laws, that had the new toll agency pay $91 million for the former state roads that now make up the 33-mile MDX system: the Airport, Dolphin, Don Shula, Gratigny, and Snapper Creek expressways.

“It’s unclear that the state can take assets of a locally created authority who purchased them pursuant to a contract,” Moody’s wrote. “It’s also unclear if the state has the authority to dissolve an entity created by the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners as an entity under home rule charter.”

State Sen. Annette Taddeo, D-Kendall, almost managed to foil the upper chamber’s bill Wednesday with an amendment requiring an independent study to review the potential legal and financial pitfalls of the legislation. “Let’s make sure we don’t make a mistake. I believe we do this, we end up in court,” Taddeo said. “There are going to be lawsuits. Lawsuits are going to be costly.”

Taddeo’s amendment would have blocked dissolution of the MDX until the University of South Florida study was completed, with a deadline of Oct. 1. The amendment was rejected, 20-19.

Before the vote, Diaz cited 2014 legislation replacing Central Florida’s toll agency, tarnished by scandal, as an example of the state disbanding an entity like MDX. “The sky didn’t fall,” he said. “I would never propose something that would hurt my own county.”