Devilish Details

Years of government waste, fraud and mismanagement give little cause for confidence in future mega-deals

By Rebecca Wakefield

A rendering of the proposed stadium.

I’ve never thought of Chuck Rabin as a funny guy, but the opening line of his Miami Herald story about the stadium deal last week had me in stitches. “In the end, the decision by Miami-Dade County commissioners to move forward on a new ballpark for the Florida Marlins won approval on the basis of a single word: trust.”

How can you read that sentence knowing anything about local government and not laugh? The same week both the county and city of Miami commissions voted to approve this back-room deal, the county airport opened its new $1.1 billion terminal years late and hundreds of millions over budget. It’s also, incidentally, a piece of crap that will require millions more to fix. This fiasco makes the bloated and ill-managed construction of the performing arts center look, well, like slightly less of a boondoggle.

Meanwhile, County Mayor Carlos Alvarez indicated there would be more belt-tightening in his State of the County address. “Our government must strive to live within its means,” he said. Then he went on to justify the stadium deal because “baseball is for families.”

If that’s true, why is attendance at Marlins games so uniformly abysmal? Could it be because families, and taxpayers, are tired of being treated like a cuckolded husband? Despite a recent foray into chubby-chasing their way to actual fan appeal (by hiring big, sweaty men to dance at games as a volunteer brigade of Marlins Manatees, a more formalized version of the Washington Redskins’ beloved Hogettes), the Marlins have screwed us over too many times.

It’s not like they are the Dolphins. We’ll let that gold digger jerk us around forever because Miami is a football town (also, the pain distracts us from thinking about local government). We the people clearly don’t care that much about hometown baseball or we would support it already.

But we have a handful of people with their hands on the public purse who believe in this thing, based on “trust” and whatever piece of the action or glory each was told he or she would get. So they approved a complicated, nebulous deal for $619 million without caring to understand the pitfalls hidden within it.

For instance, the agreement fails to address where the millions for infrastructure improvement around the stadium will come from. There’s also an unresolved turf war between city and county cops over who gets the gravy of working stadium events off-duty. Not to mention the many ways in which the Marlins assume very little risk in making this venture successful.

The devil is always in the details and it’s just astounding that both the city and county commissions would approve it with so little nailed down. County Commissioner Carlos Gimenez, who along with Sally Heyman and Javier Souto cast minority votes against the deal, summed it up nicely. “My heart would love to vote for this but my head just can’t,” he said. On the city side, only Tomas Regalado voted against the stadium.

The only real hero in this tale is car dealer Norm Braman, exercising his rights as a cranky old man with deep pockets to question not only the stadium deal, but Miami Mayor Manny Diaz’s mega shell game, which includes (besides the stadium) a truck tunnel to the Port of Miami, a streetcar system and some other goodies for an estimated $2.9 billion. It’s hilarious that a good part of this plan rests on the idea of expanding the CRA boundaries and siphoning off the highly theoretical taxes generated by growth within it. I remember how well that went at Parrot Jungle.

Instead of auctioning off the nostalgia of the venerable Orange Bowl, toilet seat by toilet seat, we should have renovated it as a multiuse facility to attract a broad mix of athletic and cultural events. We should lower I-395 to the ground and create a dedicated truck lane on it. It would be much cheaper and serve to reconnect Overtown with downtown in a redeveloped corridor stretching nearly from the medical complex around Jackson Memorial Hospital to Biscayne Bay.

Meanwhile, over in the city of Miami, the argument for letting Diaz and the commission handle the broad visioning of downtown’s revitalization continues to implode. The Downtown Development Authority, the city agency which for years has accomplished so little its name is a cruel joke, finally axed (or accepted his resignation, however they put it) its executive director, after giving him a year’s severance.

The city department responsible for fixing up downtown infrastructure was rocked by scandal and has done a generally shoddy job of overseeing the legions of contractors doing the work.

The city attorney, Jorge Fernandez, was very lucky to get a deal recently from the State Attorney’s Office to resign from his post, plead no contest to two misdemeanors and pay back the money he inappropriately siphoned from his expense account for personal use. He should have been indicted on felony charges. While I’m on a roll, where was Regalado on the issue of Fernandez’s generous contract, which allows him a nice severance even in disgrace? When that contract was voted on, if I remember correctly, only Linda Haskins and Michelle Spence-Jones voted against it. And now we pay the price.

And Miami 21, Manny Diaz’s big showpiece fix for the city’s haphazard zoning, is stuck in endless delays that will likely mean it won’t be implemented until he’s left office, if ever. By the way, whatever happened to all those poverty initiatives he was touting back when that was cool? The problem’s all fixed, is it? Or is the real cause of Miami’s woes a lack of energy-efficient buildings?

Also, a note to Marc Sarnoff: Several local media outlets of late have been hammering you for the conduct of your staff. The staffer who took it upon himself to build a fence in a city park without approvals, then ask for reimbursement, has a history of do now, ask later. Last year, I’m told by a reliable source with documentation, he had a tree removed from his property without getting the necessary permission — until after the fact. I didn’t write about it then because it seemed such a petty affair.

Another source told me that yet another staffer has taken to using his city tag as a license to park anywhere at anytime, whether legal or not. And there are rumors swirling about that still another advisor of yours may not be too clear on the concept of separating city and personal interests. So far, these are small matters in and of themselves, but they could easily add up to trouble if not dealt with now.

If you (and your elected colleagues) want us to trust you with billion-dollar deals, at least give us respect on the small stuff.

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com

Comments? E-mail letters@miamisunpost.com.