County jails get big share of the property taxes
In Miami-Dade, about 22 cents of every dollar paid in countywide property taxes go to the jail system, which costs about $384 million a year to run. Miami-Dade could spend $400 million or more on a new jail.
Where do your Miami-Dade County property taxes go? Often, they go to jail.
For every dollar in countywide property taxes paid by someone in MiamiDade, about 13 cents funds the public hospital system, 3 cents go to parks, and 2 cents pay for social services. Add them up, and that’s still less than the 22 cents of every property-tax dollar that pays for the county’s $384 million-per-year jail system.
Miami-Dade’s Corrections Department receives the largest slice of funding from the $1.7 billion general fund, the pool of dollars that funds core government services including police, transportation and parks. In 2021, about $378 million of the general fund is paying for county jails, accounting for 99% of the Corrections Department’s budget.
The figures highlight the high cost of detention for local governments across
the country as Miami-Dade pursues a controversial jail construction project while expanding civil citations and other programs designed to reduce jail populations.
Always a top cost for the county’s budget, MiamiDade’s detention dollars became a leading controversy this year when a proposed $400 million replacement jail overlapped with a social-justice movement against overpolicing that reached a peak after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The backlash against building a 1,956-bed jail to replace one opened in the 1950s follows years of a declining jail population in Miami-Dade to the point that the county was able to shutter entire facilities.
The most recent closing came in 2016, when Corrections mothballed the 800-bed jail known as the Training and Treatment Center, next to the Turner Guilford Knight jail outside Virginia Gardens.
“When I started we had seven jails,” said Corrections Director
Daniel Junior, who now presides over a jail system with three facilities: PreTrial jail in Miami, the “TGK” complex and the Metro West jail outside of Doral. “It’s a huge reduction.”
Miami-Dade last built a new jail in 1991, when Metro West opened. The new jail would replace the Pre-Trial facility, a 1,400bed jail built in 1959 on Northwest 13th Street near the criminal courthouse in Miami.
In October, Miami-Dade commissioners accepted a report advancing the plan to build a replacement jail next to the Metro West facility. Then a commissioner running for mayor, Daniella Levine Cava was the board’s top critic of the plan, though she did join the unanimous vote accepting the report. As mayor, she said she’ll support pursuing construction of the new jail while pushing for more efforts to lower the population of inmates charged with nonviolent offenses.
“Lots of innovative things have happened that allow us to reduce the jail population,” Levine Cava said in an interview two days before she took office on Nov. 17. “There are things we can do still.”
Recent years saw a reversal in the long-term decline of Miami-Dade’s jail population, though the COVID-19 pandemic saw the numbers shrink again. In 2010, the jails reported a population of 5,743. That was down 32% by 2016 to 3,895. Each year after that saw increases, with a growth of about 10% by the start of 2020 to roughly 4,300, according to Corrections statistics provided to the County Commission’s auditor in July.
The COVID crisis hit Miami-Dade jails hard, with hundreds of inmates contracting the disease and almost one in two testing positive weeks into the spring spike in cases. Miami-Dade cut the inmate population this year in an effort to reduce crowding, with home detentions and other diversionary programs on the rise. The population drop between January and April was about 18%, with the average daily population dropping well below 3,500.
This year also saw a major expansion of a county program to reduce arrests for minor crimes by encouraging police to issue civil citations. Those offenses include possession of marijuana, having an open container of alcohol in public, loitering and shopping-cart theft.
CIVIL CITATIONS FOR MARIJUANA IN MIAMI-DADE
Miami-Dade commissioners adopted the civil option for marijuana charges in 2015. One challenge has been getting cities to adopt the alternative for their police forces. In 2020, that campaign got a dramatic boost, with the citation program growing from 11 cities to 27.
“It was an opportune time,” Commissioner Sally Heyman, a top advocate of the citation program, said in a statement. With budget pressures rising, the citation program appealed to cities, because it can reduce police expenses tied to criminal proceedings.
While violent crime is up 7% this year countywide, less serious offenses are down about 16%. Heyman said the reduction in minor offenses helped bolster the county effort to shift resources away from minor arrests. “Since crime was down, we wanted to bring the bookings down as well,” she said.
Miami-Dade already has a diversion program championed by Judge Steven Leifman that steers wouldbe inmates needing psychiatric help from jails to mental-health facilities if they’ve been booked for non-violent offenses. He’s also a primary advocate for a residential treatment center under construction in Miami that can accommodate more diversion candidates.
Junior leads a countywide task force studying bail reform for MiamiDade, with an eye on reducing the number of inmates behind bars unable to post a court-required bond. Bonds are dollar amounts set by a court that an accused forfeits after failing to appear in court. In a “cashless” bail system, courts weigh a person’s risk to public safety and other factors in determining who can go home to await trial. “There are quite a lot of folks sitting in jail who, if they had the money, they wouldn’t be here,” Junior said.
RISING COSTS FOR DETENTION IN MIAMI-DADE
The expenses give Corrections the largest slice of dollars from the countywide General Fund, at
22%. That $378 million allocation is followed by $235 million for Transportation and Public Works (14% of the 2021 budget for the General Fund) and $228 million for Police (13%). Most of the countywide general fund comes from taxes charged property owners, with property taxes accounting for 83 cents of every general-fund dollar in Miami-Dade’s 2021 budget.
There are actually two general funds in MiamiDade’s $9 billion budget. The smaller $517 million general fund comes largely from a property tax charged on land outside of city limits, where residents and businesses depend on county government for municipal services like trash pick-up and neighborhood police patrols. Jails, considered a countywide function, don’t draw money from the unincorporated property taxes but the Miami-Dade police department does.
Combine the two general funds, and police get the largest share: 28 cents for every general-fund dollar, compared to 17 cents for jails.
The general fund isn’t the only source of tax dollars for agencies.
A half-percent sales tax dedicated to transportation generates about $285 million for road projects and transit systems in the county and in cities across Miami-Dade.
The Jackson hospital system also has its own half-percent sales tax expected to generate $285 million in the budget approved in September, though the COVID economic fallout may depress those totals.
MIAMI-DADE TAXES AND BUDGETS
Two county departments have their own dedicated property taxes that aren’t part of the general fund: the fire department and libraries.
The property tax for the county fire department is forecast to generate about $420 million in 2021 for a rescue service that covers county land outside city limits as well as 29 municipalities with Miami-Dade contracts. While more property taxes go into firefighting than go into jails in Miami-Dade, that’s not the case with libraries. The $78 million generated by the county’s library tax would be enough to run MiamiDade’s jails for about three months.
The prior county administration, under then-mayor Carlos Gimenez, maintained Miami-Dade could build a replacement jail without requiring an infusion of new tax dollars for construction.
The Gimenez administration estimated development could cost up to $500 million. That money would be borrowed, and Corrections plans to cover an estimated $29 million in yearly debt payments with operational savings that come with a modern detention facility.
A big portion of that savings would come from a smaller payroll: a June financial plan projected the long-term elimination of 330 positions in Corrections, with a yearly savings in regular wages and overtime of $31 million.
Miami-Dade has a history of issues with its jails, and remains under federal court monitoring for a 2011 settlement regarding inadequate mental-health services for inmates.
Levine Cava, a commissioner since 2014 before winning the mayoral race, said she supports spending big to replace the pre-trial jail, which she said is too old and outdated to properly house inmates.
“Do we need a new facility? Yes, the facility we have is inhumane,” she said. “I did tell them I wasn’t satisfied with their projections. And I’m not... We’ve been innovative [but] we’ve got to keep looking.”