Mayor Manny Diaz, Shangri-La and billionaires helping billionaires... by gimleteye

“The overall message here is about the city and county working together to create a milestone agreement that transforms the future of the region, the city and the county,” was the scripted response of Mayor Manny Diaz to the Miami Herald on the few details surrounding a multi-billion dollar plan to use tax increment financing as a funding source a baseball stadium, a museum, a soccer stadium, money for the Carniverous Center for the Performing Arts, and a new street car—everything but Miami’s kitchen sink and the water to fill it.

If you hear guffaws bleeding through the mayor’s verbiage, that would be Arthur Teele, piping from the far side. But more of Art, later.

This is a story to clip from the Herald and put away to re-read in ten years ("Miami's big plan took 3 years to hatch', Sunday A1, Dec 16, 2007) . I'd file it under 'promises by ambitious politicians incompletely investigated by mainstream media': an incomplete list would include the American Airlines stadium, Bayside Marketplace on Biscayne Blvd., the shrinking of access to the Miami River, and the Homestead Air Force Base.

Interestingly, what these sites have in common is access to Biscayne Bay—owned by the public but from which the public has virtually been shut out, except for sightlines, a few points of entry--overcrowded and underfunded-- and private, armored coastline. But there is too much turnover at the Miami Herald, and too little interest in local political history for editors to dredge up the past.

The bold and dramatic plan by Mayor Diaz to fund billions of dollars of new construction ignores the billions of dollars of infrastructure deficits that Miami and the county have piled up--the trash heap behind the mansion. Last I checked it was $7 billion and growing-- a backlog (and phenomenon like the closure of Biscayne Bay to the public) that is a strong brake on Miami's ambitions.

The imminent source of incremental tax base increase for the CRA would be new construction planned for Watson Island—reported to be a luxury hotel by Asia Pacific, called Shangri-La, and a megayacht basin by a Turkish billionaire.

Unless I'm wrong, the prospective tax base would be used to fund projects of interest to other billionaires: the PAC, the Marlin's stadium, the new art museum and a few centimillionaires at the port.

Only CRA’s are not meant to benefit megaprojects and the wealthy. They are supposed to help the disadvantaged.

When the African American political leader Teele,—former county commissioner and then-city commissioner, walked into the lobby of the Miami Herald and blew his brains out (July 25, 2005), he had the unreported contents of a backpack and one card in his political back pocket: the Omni and Overtown CRA’s (Community Redevelopment Agencies) which he guarded like Jabba the Hud.

What is tax increment financing? The short answer is that additional revenues from a baseline of assessed values within the CRA district may be dedicated to specific projects within the area, controlled by the CRA board. Teele's district encompassed the area of Overtown adjacent to the downtown center.

The big plan that “took 3 years to hatch” (Miami Herald, December 16, 2007) could not happen so long as Teele, the most flawed and brilliant political mind of his Miami generation, held control of the CRA. It was, according to the Herald, Teele who first proposed expanding the borders of the CRA.

In the end Teele lost grip on reality and power, but he was not wrong about its essential points: that the political elite in Miami—whom he had battled his entire life—were after him. He felt they were using every tool at their disposal to bring him down—including law enforcement to harass him and his family.

To be sure, many people were frustrated that Teele was CRA land banking and waiting as billions of dollars of development poured into the central downtown and Brickell area.

The Herald writes, “At the time, the CRA was dogged by allegations of corruption and unchecked spending. Teele’s vision attracted little support. ‘I just don’t see compelling reason for it,’ said (Miami mayor Manny Diaz) in 2002.

That scarcely does justice to explaining how the last political gem in Teele’s political purse, the CRA, is now the center jewel in Manny Diaz’ crown.

Joe Arriola, then city manager, set on Teele with the intent of a pitbull. Miami’s economic elite were hungry for what then seemed to be the inevitable wave of billions in construction and development that would wash over Teele’s political turf and the CRA he zealously controlled. He was not their friend.

The Miami Herald reports that the idea to expand the CRA to include Watson Island was Teele's. One of the more galling features of the Herald story is Arriola's attribution of "genius" to county manager George Burgess' idea to expand the CRA, from serving the purpose of protecting the debt obligations of Parrot Jungle to other necessities like the bottomless hole of costs associated with the Carniverous Performing Arts Center.

It reminds me of then county commissioner Larry Hawkins deciding to give the whole Homestead Air Force Base in a long-term lease to insiders organizing a private commercial airport because it was so easy to get the commission to vote for giving just a small portion of the base to them, first. By such pathways, "genius" turns into a public fiasco for taxpayers.

As Teele was contemplating suicide, I imagine that he must have felt that everyone in a position of politics to get rich from the building boom had succeeded but him. It is sad and ironic that the fierce condo mania and speculation of 2005, that seemed to lift all ships but his, was falling even as he did.

Only three months after he killed himself, the Turkish billionaire went public with his plan for Watson Island. It does make you wonder.

The losers in Mayor Diaz’ deal would be those who are supposed to benefit from the CRA in the first place, and, the reason for which the CRA’s were created: the poor and disadvantaged who aren’t likely to spend their free time, money and energy at places like the Parrot Jungle or the Performing Arts Center or a new Marlin’s stadium.

But the aggrieved also include taxpayers outside the proposed boundaries of the CRA, who would otherwise benefit from the incremental growth of tax base within the city, and, specifically with respect to revenue generated by the proposed development at Watson Island.

The ministers of local and state government are not anxious—and the media is not eager to explore and inform the public—exactly how government budgets are likely to be impacted by the housing market crash in 2008 and 2009.

So what is it all about, the three years of silence as the plotting and hatching and planning was going on?

Perhaps Mayor Diaz grew tired and frustrated with the plodding pace of reforming the zoning code of Miami: “I’m not going through that again!”

Although objections to Miami 21 were periodically charged to the Not in My Backyard (NIMBY’s), closer to reality is how property rights advocates—on behalf of land speculators and powerful developers, screeched against anything that would cost them their “rights” to future density.

You can’t lay off the current round of secrecy, either, to the property rights community. The massive investment projects embraced by Diaz and, one expects, the county commission next week are all in the favor of big developers, engineering companies, and assorted hangers-on.

In a time of crashing housing markets, the Diaz plan is a full-employment act for the lobbying class.

That a multi-billion dollar construction and development plan would be brought to light, from under so much darkness, at the incipient phase of an economic downturn is the kind of bright spot in the news that greeted newspaper audiences yearning for information about Shangri-La: a fictional land with a passing connection to reality.