A Strong Mayor-County Manager Government for Miami-Dade

Alvarez’s plan for strong mayor clears a roadblock

Alvarez has argued for a strong-mayor form of government since he took office in 2004, saying it would make him more accountable to the public and rein in corruption. The proposal would give the county mayor the authority to hire and fire department heads and the county manager, and more control over the awarding of substantial county contracts.

There is no doubt that the County Commissioner-County Manager form of government needs to be changed in Miami-Dade. Miami-Dade County is the largest city that has this system in the U.S. and it is a system that has lost favor with local and city governments. By far the dominant system of small local government organization in the U.S. is the Council-City Manager system in which the City Manager is given wide authority to appoint and manager the city under supervision of the Council and Mayor. Moving to a strong mayor is more the model of large cities. One danger of the Alvarez proposal is that the County Manager will not have the authority to select the department heads, which continues a model of excessive politicization of management in this county.

MIA: Cost Overruns or Mismanagement?

MiamiHerald.com | 10/27/2006 | Expansion costs at MIA rise by $1 billion

Construction cost overruns at MIA, and in this case the nontrivial amount of $1 billion (how much affordable housing could have been financed in Miami for this amount of money), are always attributed by management and contractors to external factors outside of their control.

The main culprit is escalating costs for materials and labor at the North Terminal, to be used by American Airlines and its alliance partners. The terminal, which will be completed in 2010, will now cost $2.66 billion, up from $1.94 billion, airport projections presented to the county’s Regional Transportation Committee show.

What experience tells us is that the main culprit is the mismanagement of the project and the delays in the construction. If the project had been executed as planned, its construction would have been more advanced than it is now and thus the cost overruns would have been less or not ocurred at all. How much better would MIA have been it were run like a private business like many airports are being run in the developed world.

Time to Change Miami-Dade Government

MiamiHerald.com | 10/26/2006 | Two administrators fired in Dade water department case

Two top administrators at Miami-Dade’s Water and Sewer Department were fired Wednesday — fallout from the discovery of a $1 million fraud ring allegedly rooted in the department’s mailroom.

Mitchell, 47, was a 24-year county employee who was paid $157,600 a year. This summer, she was selected by County Manager George Burgess to help clean up the county’s scandal-ridden Housing Agency (emphasis added).

Mogel, 53, was a 16-year county employee whose salary was $110,000 a year. Neither Mitchell nor Mogel returned calls seeking comment on Wednesday.

This story suggests a number of questions for Miami-Dade County Manager, the County Commission and the good citizens of the county.

1. Do we not have a simple, functioning mechanism for supervising and auditing county spending? These were long-term senior employees that mismanaged these funds so who can we expect to trust in the present system.
2. After the experience with the Housing Authority, this million dollar employee personal slush fund, the corruption in contractor licensing, overpayment for lost cell phones, the unreasonable cost overruns at MIA and the Carnival Central for the Performing Arts, is anyone really in charge and fully accountable for maintaining vigilance over the use of the monies of our now heavily-taxed citizens of Miami-Dade?
3. Do you think that the citizen really care about mismanagement and corruption or do they think that this is part of a culture of the Commission-County Manager form of government?

Conclusion: Now is the time to change the form of government in Miami-Dade and to create a strong mayor and county manager each fully responsible and accountable for the future of the county and citizens’ taxes. Management-by-committee (Commission!) has lead to corruption, misuse of funds and the use of tax monies and projects for personal political gain that lead to misuse of funds (for example, the Housing Authority).

powered by performancing firefox