Three municipalities in Miami-Dade are possibly signing up to be inspected by the Florida State Department of Governmental Efficiency, the state’s own Elon Musk group — let’s just call it Baby DOGE — to find and root out waste, inefficiency and fraud.
Last week, the city of Miami Commission voted to ask Baby DOGE “to come to the city of Miami and look for government waste and fraud.” And in Coral Gables, a commissioner wants the state’s DOGE to review the city’s budget “to make recommendations on elimination of government waste” before this year’s budget process begins. They’ll discuss it next month.
They join Hialeah, whose council last month approved a resolution supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ establishment of Baby DOGE and Mayor Esteban “Steve” Bovo invited the governor to come check out the city’s books. What does he care? He was already on his way out to go work in D.C. as a lobbyist, anyway.
DeSantis announced he had established the task force in February to, among other things, “look into local government expenditures by utilizing publicly available county and municipal spending records to expose bloat within local governance.” But, of course, he has asked municipalities to cooperate.
Gables Commissioner Ariel Fernandez has asked the city clerk to put a resolution on the agenda for the May 20 commission meeting to discuss a possible Baby DOGE review with his colleagues. “There may be things that we have not noticed,” he told Political Cortadito.
In Miami, it was Commissioner Joe Carollo‘s pocket item at Thursday’s meeting. Even though Miami’s Chief Financial Officer Larry Spring said that the city did not meet the threshold for DOGE intervention, Carollo said it would be a good idea anyway.
Commissioner Miguel Gabela asked if not meeting the threshold means the city is in good financial health. Um, Spring said, don’t get carried away.
“I’m not gonna use the words ‘good financial health,’” Spring said. “We affirmed what they asked us, which is… have we met any of the criteria [to trigger a review]. And the answer was no.”
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Two speakers from the public were also in favor.
Brenda Betancourt, president of the Calle Ocho Inter-American Chamber of Commerce and a candidate for commission in District 3, dared the commissioners to do it.
“This would be a good way to make sure that every single dollar that is collected from the city of Miami residents are actually invested in the best interest of the residents.” Betancourt, a frequent speaker at public comment, said. “If the city, in the way it has been managed for years, doesn’t have any problems, I don’t see why they can’t have the department of efficiency that can actually prove to the city of Miami residents that we are spending our money correctly.”
And Downtown Neighbors Association President James Torres, who has been on a social media tear against the Downtown Development Authority, was also supportive — and it gave him another opportunity to hit the agency.
“This is an important issue that should be taken up. We do have government waste, especially with the Downtown Development Authority,” he said. “If this agency moves forward, it’s going to do what we’ve been asking for.”
But a third woman said it could wreak havoc, like it’s done at the federal level.
“It concerns me. We need a certain number of employees and we need a certain number of procedures to function as a government,” she said. “This is again move fast and breakl things that’s what scares me. I have a computer science degree. I am a systems thinker. I understand hs concepts,” she said about Musk. “Again, I worry about applying software mentality to people.
“Consider the health of our functioning democracy.”
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It almost seemed like Commission Chairwoman Christine King and Commissioner Damian Pardo were going to do just that.
“I don’t want there to come in and be a swift sweep of whole departments and people are out of work,” King said. “Efficiency? Yes. But just a broad stroke of… and whole departments are gone? I am not in support of that.
“I am always in support of looking at our processes. We should do that just regularly every so couple of years,” King added. “But I will not support a broad stroke of getting rid of whole departments.”
Pardo said he wanted to “remind everyone that we have an inspector general’s office that is kicking in and we do have audits, I believe in forensic audits. if we want to invite further oversight, great,” he said. “But like you, madame chair, if it’s something that’s fast and let’s break things, I will not support it.”
All Carollo had to say, though, was that it was just to identify efficiencies, and that an ultimate decision would come back to the city commission.
“This is an additional set of eyes,” Carollo said, “so the we can truly live on that word that is thrown around so often — transparency.”
At the end of the discussion, it passed unanimously.
Nobody wants to be seen as defending waste and fraud.
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