Was the county’s $402M budget gap just a drill?
Remember that $402 million budget hole Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said we were staring down back in July? The one that justified chopping arts funding, pulling the plug on charity grants, hiking transit fees and even grounding the county’s rescue helicopters?
Well, guess what. Most of it, somehow, went poof.
On Friday, a week and a day after a 12-hour budget hearing, Levine Cava rolled out a shiny new set of “short-term fixes” and surprise surpluses that let her walk back most of the doomsday cuts. Suddenly, MetroConnect is saved (though now it’ll cost $3.75 a ride, with fewer zones and capped trips), charities get their funding restored, the arts don’t get slashed, and the fire union gets its helicopters back in the countywide budget.
Funny how all that money turned up just days before the final vote, which is Thursday.
Read related: Madness marathon: Observations from the first Miami-Dade budget hearing
Levine Cava, of course, claimed a win. “Through hard work and hard choices, my administration presented a balanced budget that closed a significant gap without cutting core services or raising tax rates,” she wrote in her Sept. 12 memo. “After unprecedented community engagement and negotiations with our Board of County Commissioners, we identified additional savings and recovered unspent funds returned by the constitutional offices.”
Translation: the boogeyman is gone, thanks to some accounting acrobatics and departments freezing vacant jobs longer.
About $4.1 million is saved through attrition — or not filling jobs — at 14 departments (more on that later) and another $467,000 cut from marketing and $1.4 million cut from management consulting.
These savings will help put the $28 million air rescue cost back into the general fund. But that was not Levine Cava’s idea. Fire union president William “Billy” McAllister said at the first budget hearing that the move would go against what voters wanted when they passed the fire rescue taxing district in 1980. Not everybody pays into the Fire District tax because several cities have their own fire departments, including Miami, Coral Gables and Hialeah. They don’t pay into the fire district, but would get air rescue services nonetheless. Meaning that homeowners in Westchester would pay the bill when a Gables High football player is airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital.
“It’s illegal,” McAllister said. And the union willing to take the county to court for it.
La Alcaldesa and her new BFF, Commissioner Raquel Regaldo, worked hard into the 11th hour to negotiate what they thought was a compromise deal to smooth this out: Half the $28 million helicopter tab would go back to the countywide budget this year, another $7 million mid year and the final $7 million at the end of the fiscal year. So, a payment plan.
The union flat out rejected it. No half measures, gracias. They wanted all of it shifted off the Fire District and back onto the general fund — rápido.
Commissioner Eileen Higgins, at the last minute, told the mayor to come back to them with a new budget that funded the air rescue from the general fund. The majority agreed with herBut that means less money for equipment and staff — things that can bring down the response time from nine minutes, according to to the union leadership.
Nonprofits got a reprieve, too. Jewish Community Services, Farm Share, and dozens of others that provide services — from hot meals and teen jobs to eviction defense — were bracing for slashed grants until charity leaders and activists lined up at the first public hearing Sept. 4 to shame the mayor for targeting them. Levine Cava’s latest memo restores their funding at full 2025 levels.
And the arts? La Alcaldesa first proposed a $13 million hit to cultural programs, restored most of it last month, and on Friday threw the last $1.3 million back in. Crisis averted. Curtain call.
So who’s still paying the price? Riders. A 50-cent transit fare hike stays in the budget — the first since 2013 — along with higher shuttle costs for seniors and the disabled. But, hey, MetroMover is still free for the beautiful people.
Commissioners take the final vote this Thursday. Expect more speeches about “shared sacrifice.” Especially since the revised budget takes a whole $500,000 out of the commission’s budget. Because, you know, they can’t afford more than that if they want to keep giving gifts, er, grants to the people and organizations who drive votes on election years.
But Ladra can’t help but ask: if the hole wasn’t really $402 million deep, then what was all this drama about? A scare tactic? A political stress test? Or just the oldest trick in the book: cry crisis, then ride in as the hero when you “save” everyone from it.
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