Dade has an uphill fight to grab a ‘cash cow’ stretch of Turnpike
Local mayors would control a new toll board that would run the Dolphin, Don Shula, part of the Florida Turnpike, and other toll roads under a plan by Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez to stop a state takeover of the MDX.
Miami-Dade’s mayor has a long road ahead of him in his bid for a local takeover that would let county elected officials use revenue from a Florida Turnpike segment to cut tolls across the Miami area and fund new transit projects.
Mayor Carlos Gimenez unveiled the sweeping proposal Thursday as a counter to bills advancing in Tallahassee to dissolve the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, a board that runs five of the county’s busiest toll roads.
Gimenez, who oversees the MDX as its appointed chairman, now has his own plan to dissolve the MDX. He would let a new board of county office holders take over the five MDX expressways and a 48-mile Turnpike stretch that last year generated about $170 million in toll revenue for a
system that runs from Homestead to Orlando.
“We are the cash cow. Make no mistake about it,” Gimenez said at a morning press conference near his 29th floor offices in County Hall in downtown Miami. “If they want toll relief, let’s give all the people in Miami-Dade County toll relief. Let’s go much, much further.”
Gimenez also said he doesn’t have a lawmaker signed on to sponsor his proposed legislation and hopes the anti-MDX lawmakers will adopt his language instead. Florida’s Transportation secretary has already said he doesn’t like the plan, Gimenez said Thursday.
Tallahassee watchers said they couldn’t imagine the state giving up such a lucrative stretch of pavement.
“Based on my experience, I would expect this is dead on arrival,” said Carlos Lopez-Cantera, a former state lawmaker and lieutenant governor who is considering a run to succeed Gimenez as mayor in 2020.
Juan Zapata, another former legislator who is already running for county mayor, tried to push through a similar plan 10 years ago, but fellow lawmakers rejected the proposed Turnpike takeover. “You think the state is going to give up that kind of money?” Zapata asked. “Are you kidding me?”
The heart of Gimenez’s plan is a long-term gripe in Miami-Dade: Drivers in Florida’s most populous county pay more in tolls than is needed to maintain the local stretch of the Turnpike that’s known as the Homestead extension. His plan would use spare Turnpike dollars to pay some of the existing debt and operation expenses on the MDX roads, which currently generate about $250 million a year in tolls.
Shifting Turnpike money to the MDX system would let the new Miami-Dade authority enact an immediate 20 percent toll cut in both systems, according to the Gimenez plan. On top of that, Gimenez’s financial team forecasts $1.8 billion in spare cash over 30 years that could be used for road and transit projects.
When Orlando’s toll board, the Central Florida Expressway Authority, tried to take over a portion of the Turnpike two years ago, the administration of Gov. Rick Scott demanded $5 billion in the deal. That effort never gained traction. The Gimenez plan calls for no cash to exchange hands, but the new county authority would pay off about $300 million of the Turnpike system’s debt.
The MDX sparked a backlash in 2014 when it eliminated free rides along stretches of the Airport and Dolphin expressways, an expansion of tolling that saw revenues surge 80 percent over two years. Republican Miami-Dade lawmakers, then led by Jeanette Nuñez before she became Gov. Ron DeSantis’ running mate, passed legislation requiring toll cuts on the MDX — laws that the agency resisted before agreeing to a 5 percent cut last year.
State Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., R-Hialeah Gardens, sponsored the Senate bill that would dissolve the MDX and let Florida take over its expressways and eventually end tolling on the roads decades from now when the existing debt is retired. He stopped short of criticizing Gimenez’s counterproposal, saying state experts have to review the numbers “to see if it can even be done.”
Diaz also said he was wary of letting MDX help create an even more powerful toll board. “Is the reason we’re in this situation because we have an agency that hasn’t done its job properly, and now wants to take over a Turnpike system that is actually working?” Diaz asked.
Part of the Gimenez plan would shift control of more than $340 million a year in toll dollars from a state agency and the MDX board of mostly privatesector appointees to a political body consisting solely of elected office holders from Miami-Dade.
Gimenez proposed permanent seats for the mayors of Miami-Dade, Doral, Hialeah, Miami, and Miami Gardens, and give Florida’s governor four board seats that he or she must fill with local elected officials. Currently, the governor and the Miami-Dade commission appoint members of the MDX board, while the state Transportation Department oversees the Turnpike.
In his presentation, Gimenez said truckers would pay less under the new authority by eliminating extra state fees for multiple axles. He also criticized state plans for express lanes on the Turnpike, which require motorists who already paid a toll to use the road to pay even more to use a portion of it with fewer of the exits that can clog traffic. Derided as “Lexus Lanes” for favoring more affluent drivers, those lanes have no place in his plan, Gimenez said.
“They’re going to charge you an extra toll within a toll road,” Gimenez said. “Our new merged authority would eliminate the state’s double-dipping on the Turnpike.”
His presentation touted $9 billion in toll “savings,” largely by scrapping the state’s policy of adjusting toll rates each year for inflation. The flat rates through 2053 assume the MDX will finish its existing five-year, $1.2 billion improvement plan for its five expressways: the Airport, Dolphin, Don Shula, Gratigny and Snapper Creek. It also would pay for a roughly $1 billion extension of the Dolphin into West Kendall, a top Gimenez priority as he prepares to exit the mayor’s office in 2020.
The mayor’s plan does not contemplate major expansion or improvement projects for either toll system in future decades. Randy Topel, an MDX financial consultant who helped create the Gimenez plan, said the forecasts predict the toll roads will generate about $2 billion over 30 years for improvements.
“You can’t build everything you want,” Topel said during an afternoon meeting with the Miami Herald Editorial Board. He noted that elected officials on the new toll board could decide whether to raise tolls and pay for more ambitious projects that would be supported by constituents. “They can make the decision if something needs to be funded in the future with [a] claw back of those tolls” that were cut by 20 percent.
The other Miami-Dade lawmaker pushing the anti-MDX bills, Rep. Bryan Avila, R-Hialeah, has not responded to the mayor’s plan while the legislator’s mother deals with a health scare. Both the Avila and Diaz bills have passed committee votes but aren’t yet ready for floor votes. Gimenez said his counterproposal was not designed only to muddy the waters in Tallahassee enough to let the MDX endure.
“It’s not a blocking tactic,” Gimenez said. “I am going for this.”