Firms pump money into Broward sales tax campaign

A political action committee with strong union ties is the biggest supporter of Broward County’s sales tax increase referendum.

The group has raised $284,000 since July, largely from engineering, construction and other firms likely to benefit from the $15.6 billion transportation spending plan.

Broward voters will decide Nov. 6 whether to increase the sales tax from 6 cents per dollar to 7 cents. The extra money collected over the next 30 years would pay for more buses and bus routes, light rail, improved traffic signal coordination, wider and repaved roads, new bridges and hundreds of other city and county road projects. About a third of the money would come from tourists and nonresidents.

The political action committee, Transportation is the Future, is separate from another one promoting the sales tax increase: Go Broward, which has raised $44,000, with more than 80 percent coming from local and in-state engineering firms.

“We’re cooperating, making sure we educate and advocate about all of the economic benefits that surtax would bring to the community,” said Go Broward spokesman Dana Pollitt. He described Go Broward as a “group of small [and] minority Broward County business owners.”

The chairwoman for Transportation is the Future is listed as Jacqui Carmona, political director for AFSCME Florida, one of the unions that represents Port Everglades employees. Two others listed with the organization — its treasurer, Jason Heard, and its registered agent, Andre Madtes — are also with Metropolitan Public Strategies, a New York consulting firm that has been paid more than $233,000 by the committee.

Metropolitan Public Strategies has ties to labor and the Democratic Party. Madtes, its Florida director, is the state’s former executive director of AFSCME and former president of the South Florida Central Labor Council, who also spent decades as a top Democratic Party operative in the state, according to his online biography.

Kasra Moshkani, Uber’s general manager for the Southeast, said the company believes the tax will “revitalize Broward’s transportation infrastructure” and provide “new transit options.” Uber doesn’t see improved bus service and the possibility of light rail as competition. Many of its customers in other cities use Uber to get to and from their homes to transit stations, Moshkani said.

Uber has supported similar transportation ballot items in the past in Seattle and Atlanta, spokesman Javi Correoso said.

Dan Lindblade, president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce, said it’s not unusual for companies to be the main financial backing behind such major transportation plans.

“If it passes, there’s a lot of money to put in new transportation solutions,” Lindblade said. “Engineering firms, construction firms, that’s all in their wheelhouse.”

Go Broward has been using its dollars to get the protax message out digitally, Pollitt said.

“We’re trying to do the best for our community,” Pollitt said. “Everyone is kind of tired of commuting and red lights.”