The meek and the hamstrung, by gimleteye

I’m not sure which I appreciate more: “House of Lies” or “Poverty Peddler” but I sure wish the Miami Herald would cop to miserable reporting leading up to the debacle of the Carnivorous Center for the Performing Arts.

Close readers of this blog probably wonder, why is it that I keep yammering on the PAC which is, after all, simply a $500 million dollar mistake.

The Herald did a kick-ass job, including bad decisions by prominent African American leaders in the now-fallen scheme, on “Poverty Peddler”, the series by Jason Grotto and yesterday’s “Miami Dade kills biotech park venture”.

But you had to read through the entire “Miami Performing Arts Center gets a bailout—this time” for the salient feature in the account of disgruntled county commissioners shelling out another $4 million to cover operating costs.

County Commissioner Dennis Moss “questioned whether county staff had overlooked errors in the budget planning before the center opened. Jennifer Glazer-Moon, the county's budget director, said county staff questioned the figures but ultimately relied on the expertise of the trust and its consultants. ''We had questions about the ability to generate the revenues that were anticipated through ticket sales. We also had questions about . . . the occupancy costs associated with the facility,'' she said.”

Good questions, Commissioner Moss.

At the time the PAC was commissioned, the Miami Herald should have interrogated the data and the projections. It didn’t because the Herald wanted the PAC to be built right where it is, at the edge of its property.

If the Miami Herald wants to get on the right side of this story, the editors would insist on accountability now: interview, now, the “trust and its consultants”. Who are they? What did they promise? How did the numbers add up?

The Herald has been marginal on the PAC story for a simple reason: the underlying story stepped on its own toes at a time when Knight Ridder was ginning up its own value, first to maximize shareholder value and later, in anticipation of the sale of the newspaper.

Whether the PAC was needed or not, whether projections vetted by non-profit boards populated by insiders were accurate or not, whether Miami and Miami Herald readers would be better served by building audiences for culture first, through investment in arts programming in the public schools for instance: none of these questions were ever raised by the Miami Herald when raising these questions could have made a difference.

Now we have to read about what a fiscal hole in the ground the PAC is, without ever having had an honest accounting of how we got to this place: the paradigm I'll get to soon enough.

The reason the PAC, which I refer to as the Carnivorous Center for the Performing Arts, is such an irritation is that it continues to swallow all logic.

Now that there are a thousand empty condominiums nearby, and the downtown core empty as a robin’s nest abandoned decades ago, the party line is that we should all just calm down and wait a decade or so until the audience grows… like Lincoln Center in Manhattan.

The reason I continue harping on the PAC is my hope that if the Miami Herald can get on the right side of disclosing the history—of how we got to this burnt place—then maybe the Herald will see its way to the biggest story of 2007: what is going to happen to Florida in a time of crashing housing markets.


The reluctance to connect the dots by Herald executives, is maddeningly reflected in two of today’s top stories: first, the emerging budget crisis because falling revenues that will probably blow apart the tons of ink wasted on Florida legislators struggling to cope with tax reform and, second, the infuriating story of Homestead—where the Growth Machine has throttled common sense like a chicken destined for the soup pot.

The Miami Herald lost its way, on reporting the costs of the building boom to ordinary citizens—a long time ago. There is no discernable opinion on the editorial board about the costs of development, although there are slight, paragraph-long detectable improvements since McClatchy bought the paper.

In the Homestead story, Florida City Mayor Otis Wallace is “jubilant”—but what South Dade turned into in the last decade is the worst example of excesses of the building boom anywhere in Florida. But the Herald hasn’t told that story: even in today’s report, there is no mention of facts related to vacancies or houses for sale or city budgets that are going to be busted because of falling tax revenues.

The Growth Machine has fraudulently advertised the benefits of sprawl for such a long period of time that even the city’s only daily newspaper is totally blind. Maybe if the Herald can get the story on the PAC straight, it can find its way back to reporting on the unfolding economic mess in Florida.

‘House of Lies’ and ‘Poverty Peddler’ show that the Herald knows exactly how to let its reporters work: but don’t just assign your reporters to expose fraud committed on behalf of “improving” poor people. Do the same for fraud committed on all of us, which is the story of the Growth Machine.

The news continually reminds me of this. The other day, it was the report of Lennar’s quarterly loss of nearly $250 million, bleeding its way downward.

Lennar is the Miami production homebuilders with the deepest pockets. Because it has the deepest pockets, its Miami operation has lead the way in trying to move the Urban Development Boundary and plotted with County Commissioner Barbara Jordan to create an “affordable” housing ordinance which was merely a fig leaf to provide cover for the county commission to push out the UDB in Florida City, where Jordan’s brother, Otis Wallace, is jubiliant mayor for the Growth Machine.

Former Congresswoman Carrie Meek has also turned up on Lennar’s payroll as a lobbyist.

Which reminds me of the flurry, a few weeks back, about the timing of Kendrick Meek’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

Before the Meek roles in “Poverty Peddlers” hit the street, Kendrick Meek was well positioned on the Clinton launch pad. He appeared regularly at Miami Dade functions featuring the Clintons on their frequent visits.

On June 8th, one day after he was poised to endorse Hillary, he refuted claims that he was ready to endorse her. It was either a) real hesitation, or b) a ploy to push a news cycle, or c) that Kendrick wanted assurances on title in the campaign or a future appointment in a Clinton administration.

At any rate, on June 14th Senator Clinton announced his endorsement, saying that Kendrick would be a Senior Advisor to the campaign, calling him “a rising star and the future of our party… I look forward to working together as we tackle the challenges facing America at home and abroad."

Well, “Poverty Peddler” certainly raised an unexpected challenge at home.

No wonder Kendrick tried to put as much distance between himself and the fraudulent biotech project as quickly as possible, and good for Mayor Carlos Alvarez for pulling him back instantly.

The Miami Herald reported: “Stackhouse diverted more than $500,000 from the biotech park through doubling billings and dubious expenses while paying a host of political insiders to drum up support for the project Among them: former U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek, who received at least $40,000, a leased car and a free office for her foundation while her son, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, moved to secure federal dollars for the biotech park Kendrick Meek wrote a letter to the mayor Monday questioning the county's oversight of the project and demanding an end to federal funds for the developer. That prompted a strongly worded response on Tuesday from Alvarez, who pointed to the congressman's two-year role in the biotech park, including his involvement in an organization that provided Stackhouse's companies with millions of dollars.”
''As the former chair of the Task Force on Urban Economic Revitalization between 2002-2005 . . . you are undoubtedly aware of the loan review process and how funding is allocated,'' the mayor wrote. With Meek as chairman, the economic task force approved two loans to Stackhouse companies totaling more than $5 million. Those companies now owe more than $200,000 in late payments, The Miami Herald found.”
For the past several years, Kendrick Meek has been grooming to represent something more than a sinecure district in Miami-Dade County.

Kendrick is smart, well-spoken, and ambitious. He earned his stripes supporting registration of minority voters in 2000 and fighting for the class-size amendment.

But so was Daryl Jones in 1996, when the state senator from South Dade promoting the LBA / HABDI plan for the Homestead Air Force Base was being considered to be Secretary of the Air Force by President Clinton.

When it surfaced that Jones had a very spotty record in his own Guard service at the Base, and failed the confidence test of his own Air Force commander, the White House reversed gears on the budding relationship.

From Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters, you can hear the air hissing out of the Meek aura.

If anything good comes out of this misfortune, it would be to elevate the glum fact that the formula for political success in predominantly African American districts in Miami Dade County is welded to the most abject version of a failed campaign finance system: the Growth Machine provides funds in return for “hands-off” support for zoning and permitting of big projects in other single-member districts.

It is a shame that in her ninth decade, as a “lobbyist”, Carrie Meek found herself deep in the thickets of a huckster’s grip.

Daryl Jones was nimble enough to be vetted by Jim Davis’ failed 2006 governor’s race in Florida. The mainstream media gave him a pass, for1996.

Kendrick gave himself some very, very heavy baggage to carry.

After working so hard to be part of a new wave, it is sad to see the undertow from an old wave pulling him back.

What is the nature of that undertow?

“Facing the downturn, Lennar launched a strategy last year to build and sell homes already in its development pipeline at whatever price the market would bear while pairing down landholdings and slowing housing starts.” That’s also from the Miami Herald, this week.

In other words, what Miamians have sacrificed in terms of quality of life through the blasting of suburban sprawl as the operative principle of local government, has dissolved into a competition to sell “at whatever price the market would bear”.

“We continue to see weak, deteriorating market conditions,” said Stuart Miller, Lennar CEO.

Mr. Miller is being honest.

But who among the elected city and county officials will admit to their role in facilitating the dreadful economic reality unfolding right now, in Miami?

I read, just yesterday, the ruminations of Bill Gross, the highly successful manager of Pimco Funds, on the collapse of the subprime mortgage sector and the instability to the US economy—which is, in my opinion, the result of the Growth Machine run amok and unchallenged in the past decade. “The problem lies not in a Bear Stearns hedge fund that can be papered over with 100 cents on the dollar marks. The flaw resides in the Summerlin suburbs of Las Vegas, Nevada, in the extended city limits of Chicago headed west towards Rockford, and yes, the naked (and empty) rows of multistoried condos in Miami, Florida. The flaw, dear readers, lies in the homes that were financed with cheap and in some cases gratuitous money in 2004, 2005, and 2006. Because while the Bear hedge funds are now primarily history, those millions and millions of homes are not.”

I’m a lot more bearish than Bill Gross. He’s a lot more successful than I am, managing money. But Bill Gross is insulated by his success. Those of us who live on the ground here, in Miami, we feel the the depth and scale of infestation of bad logic in the Decision Trees that pass for good judgment by the Growth Machine.

Anyhow, before leaving this rumination of odds and ends, here’s a last question for Eyeonmiami readers: guess where the editors of the city’s only daily newspaper are more likely to focus their attention: a rip-off and political casualties in Liberty City or the hoi-polloi and the Carnivorous Center for the Performing Arts?