The smell of rotting democracy by gimleteye

In the temple of Miami Dade County government, the front rows are reserved for the Latin Builders Association, the Builders Association of South Florida, and the consultants, lobbyists, and lawyers who lubricate the system.

That is because the principal business of government is to facilitate zoning and permitting and to erase any ancilliary matters that increase their costs, like water supply and infrastructure or manatees that get in the way of more development and expanded tax base. On the other hand, putting off costs or causing infrastructure costs to pile up for future taxpayers--that is just "good business".

Over the past decade, Natacha Seijas, whose district includes Hialeah—the political Bethlehem of powerful developers who live in wealthy gated communities in Pinecrest and Coral Gables—has been the most reliable servant of the respected order of the temple and its majority.

Until the first of this year, Seijas chaired the Infrastructure and Land Use Subcommittee where most of these matters are reviewed, ensuring the smooth operation of special interests and regularly taking pot shots at citizens with the temerity to offer different points of view. (One of her favorite tactics is simply to get up and leave the Chamber when she dislikes a point of view from the public.)

At the first of the year, when committees were reassigned and a new chairman of the county commission elected by commissioners, Seijas—who had been subject to a recall campaign by citizens—agreed to the appointment of Bruno Barreiro to replace Joe Martinez as chair and that she would again control the subcommittee, renamed so that the county rule prohibiting consecutive terms as committee chair could be avoided in her favor.

Today, she is chair of the newly named Government Operations and Environment Subcommittee, with a portfolio that now includes elections.

But if you think that Natacha Seijas is capable of being fair to the public, think again.

On April 10, there was a long and extended meeting of the Seijas subcommittee at County Hall. First, lobbyists—including Jose Cancela and Raul Martinez—carved up districts for a new permitting system for building “murals”—those massive silk screened symbols of Nike, for instance. Who knew these murals were yet another annuity for lobbyists?

Then came a matter of considerably greater public import: the South Miami Dade Watershed Study.

The Study arose out of the Homestead Air Force Base controversy a decade ago, in which plans for a major private commercial airport—that Seijas spearheaded on the county commission—were rejected by the federal government partly on the basis of impacts to adjacent Biscayne National Park.

At the Seijas subcommittee meeting, Susan Stabley, South Florida Business Journal, was the only reporter to cover the issue. As far as we can tell, there was no Miami Herald report of the meeting at all.

On April 13th, the Business Journal reported, “Recommendations in the controversial South Miami-Dade Watershed Study, which included a plan to freeze an urban development boundary until 2025, were killed in a County Commission subcommittee April 10.. County commissioners Jose Diaz, Audrey Edmonson, Carlos Gimenez and Dorrin Rolle unanimously approved a resolution by subcommittee Chairwoman Natasha Seijas that the study and its recommendations were "not satisfactory or appropriate for approval. While the plan will still get a full County Commission vote, the strong rejection by the governmental operations and environment subcommittee indicates that approval is highly unlikely.”

At a time of historic drought and disappearing farmland, one would think that a watershed study is exactly what Miami-Dade County needs, but zero lot line housing in farmland trumps just about any value that is imaginable in the scale of human achievement for the Miami power elite.

The $3 million study is the most comprehensive ever undertaken in a limited regional watershed, but the farmers and developers quickly concluded that it had to be put down.

Stabley’s report gets a lot right. She notes, for instance, that builders contributed nearly $500K to the defense of Seijas district, in a recall where Seijas’ opponents scarcely amassed a tenth of that number.

But there is a piece that deserves further investigation: Seijas’ elves inserted a “whereas” clause in the resolution approved by the subcommittee, without any comment or any notice to members of the public who took the time to attend—and to be denied any opportunity for comment by Seijas: “in such form the Watershed Study and Plan is not satisfactory or appropriate for approval by this Board”.

That the Study would be forwarded to the full Board of the County Commission, was not in question. How the toxic "whereas" clause was inserted without note or comment, is.

Something happened on the way to that forum: they, and the public, got sandbagged by Natacha Seijas and her subcommittee. The Study is too important to be killed. For sure, the State of Florida should put the behavior of the subcommittee under a microscope.

With that kind of attention to detail, just imagine how fair elections will be in Miami-Dade County.