County Commission Chair Dim Bruno Barreiro and Commissioner Barbara Jordan (sister of both a crooked lobbyist and Mayor for Life in Florida City) are pushing an increase in sales tax to help transit. I say: “What? Are you both crazy, what did you do with our other half penny?” Apparently, according to the Miami Herald, auto man, Norman Braman, agrees with me:"Braman said an efficient mass transit system is critical for Miami-Dade's future, but commissioners cannot be trusted to manage more money."
"They're admitting they squandered" the first half-cent, said Braman, who financed the 1999 campaign to defeat an earlier transit-tax proposal. "And now they're asking the public to trust them and pass another half cent? Unbelievable. Do they think people are stupid?"
Well, yes, Norman, they do think that. After all, didn’t we elect them?
What is the County Commission’s defense:
"We know we over-promised what the half-cent could do," said Jordan.
19 comments:
I think there are two Commissioners, and probably more that agree with Braman:
- Commissioner Carlos Gimenez
''I can't vote for that. No way,'' said Commissioner Carlos Gimenez, one of seven commissioners facing reelection in August. ``How can we go and ask the people to give us another half-penny when we haven't given them what we promised the first time?''
- Commissioner Joe Martinez
Commissioner Joe Martinez, facing challengers this summer, said he is unwilling to gamble the mass-transit system on the notoriously unstable sales tax.
`I'LL BE AGAINST IT'
''I was against the half-penny [in 2002] and I'll be against it this time,'' he said.
I am against anything that give the crooks more of our money to play with.
The fact of the matter is that Norman Braman is against anything that gets you out of your car and into a bus or train; he's a car salesman. We must take anything that Braman says on this subject with a grain of salt.
While we should question where the funds from the first half penny are going, we should also consider if the Commission could have or should have known that our economy was going into the tank and would render all their planned budgets meaningless.
AS for me, I support anything that improves mass transit. And since Braman's against it, it's probably the right thing to do.
Martinez and Barreiro seem at odds lately -- they also didn't agree about the mega deal. Martinez wanted it on the Agenda for a revote and Barreiro took it off (exercising his bullyhood as the chair). They usually agree on everything. However, Martinez is up against two challengers and no one else on the Commission has two (Edmonson has one, Val Screen) -- so you can't exactly trust his positions at this time. They are "popular" motivated, wait till after the election. Always fiscally motivated and responsible, Gimenez's position is no surprise.
Hi CLJ
Thanks for writing. The high end kinds of cars Braman sells -- those people -- who buy high end cars -- would NEVER use mass transit - EVER. I don't think he would lose much money with mass transit. I think the guy hates waste. I heard him speak at the first sales tax debates years ago.
He gives away enormous amounts of money... I think he has a conscience -- maybe he does have selfish motives sometimes but at least he puts his money where his mouth is.
I want mass transit to work too but throwing good money at these commissioners is a waste.
You know all those traffic circles, spiffy curves and nicely landscaped medians you see all over the county -- that is where a lot of the mass transit money went.
Genius:
You make a great point about Martinez. Just look at the Stadium Deal. He voted for that initially, and it is only now that he has begun railing against it, I think mostly motivated by the poll that Dario Moreno ran on the Mega Deal, Alvarez, Stadium, etc., that indicated strong opposition to the Global CRA, Stadium, Museum Park, etc.
I say, if you have convictions, stick to them, whether or not I agree with you, unless you have good, justifiable reasons to change your mind, and that does not extend to polls!!!
your right Gimenez seems to be the only one with sense and responsibilty on that board...
While watching the CITT meeting, I thought to myself:
"Those of you who fought the Kendall Corridor portion which runs along the CSX tracks because you thought it was going to be used to shove the Parkland Developement Through, what if Parkland gets built anyway? Now you won't even have a mass transit option to get out of the parkinglots known as 88th street and 104th street."
blah, blah, blah, you'll get all the development and none of the transportation help.
m
"Braman said an efficient mass transit system is critical for Miami-Dade's future, but commissioners cannot be trusted to manage more money."
Is he suggesting someone else build and manage the thing? Because SOMEONE has to. We can't simply do nothing (which is what Braman is really suggesting). No one wants to give the commission more money to play with less than me but we really have no other choice (electing BETTER commissioners would be one nice step forward).
The BCC does approve these outlandish spending episodes but some blame has to go to county staff. How many times does the county have zero alternative options available due to incompetence of staff? Metro-rail cars come to mind. I really don't want to defend the BCC they don't deserve it but Burgess is a wheeler-dealer and comes up with a myriad of schemes designed to loot different accounts.
I agree with everyone on Giminez, he is logical, sees through the B.S. and is determined not to waste financial resources, he is alone most of the time, okay?
Last anon:
Great point on staff. One true point is that while the BCC sets policy, staff is supposed to efficiently and effectively implement policy. Time and time again, staff has proven that it is not up to task. Housing Crisis, WASD Scandal, Horrible Stadium Agreement, just a plain mess!!!
Gimenez is alone most of the time, but, I think there is some hope in the future. At the end of the day, if he was the one directing staff, lets say, as County Mayor, we might have a chance in this County afterall....
So if we vote for another half penny tax, do we get another CITT? And would it really be independent?
Please tell me I misread the part of the deal where commissioner barreiro would like to eliminate all transit fares. is commissioner barreiro serious?
if we elected them? can we un-elect them?
i would like to make a motion to un-elect commissioner barreiro ASAP.
eliminate transit fares...what world do you live in?
please...please tell me i misread something.
Wowzers --Bruno is running...get someone to run against him...you have a couple of weeks ---deadline is fast approaching. Single member districts...we can't vote him out...we can only throw darts at his picture.
The Miami Herald talks tough on this one:
Another half-cent for transit? Ridiculous
OUR OPINION: TRANSIT MORASS NEEDS ANSWERS; START WITH NO FREE RIDES
Posted on Thu, May. 29, 2008
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Miami-Dade County's mass-transit system is in trouble, despite the fact that in 2002 voters approved a half-cent increase in the sales tax to expand Metrorail and bus service. Unfortunately, the tax proceeds have been mismanaged from the beginning. Now the County Commission must somehow find a way to put its mass-transit house in order. Floating a hare-brained scheme to throw good dollars after bad policy is not the answer.
More taxes for transit
The proposal from Commissioners Bruno Barreiro and Barbara Jordan to ask voters to approve another half-cent of sales tax for transit is simply unbelievable. In exchange, everybody rides free on buses and trains. Did they really say this with straight faces?
Here is their logic: The county has botched how it used the transit dollars so badly that the only solution is to get voters to agree to give the county more dollars to fix the problem.
This wild scheme should get zero traction. The commission tried to use tax proceeds to pay for the transit agency's deficits, caused by years of under-budgeting the agency. Who made those budget decisions? The commission, of course. Those deficits hindered needed maintenance on the Metrorail and Metromover systems. So the commission sought to use the tax to pay for delayed maintenance work, too. The tax wasn't sold to voters as a bailout for transit, but as the local source for matching funds to attract federal dollars to expand Metrorail. But the feds recently backed out of funding the North Metrorail line because the county doesn't have enough money to maintain its current Metrorail route, much less tend to additional routes.
Making everyone pay a fair share for using the system would be the beginning of a solution. Consider this startling statistic: 75 percent of all riders of the transit system are either riding free or at reduced fares, leaving just one-fourth of the ridership to pay full-fare freight.
This is no way to run a transit system, unless the intent is to run it into the ground. This shocking number helps to explain why the system is so deep in the hole.
Bait and switch
This cheap-or-free-ride policy is the doing of the County Commission. Commissioners, to pander to one constituency or another, have approved transit breaks for the elderly, students, disabled, etc. This is great for commissioners' images but terrible for the agency. So it is no surprise that the commission is just as wrongheaded in managing the transit-tax proceeds. One bad policy often begets others, unfortunately.
What it boils down to is that the commission has been playing bait and switch with voters on the transit tax. The tragedy is that now more than ever Miami-Dade residents need a comprehensive, efficient transit system.
To Not-a-moderate's comments above (signed m):
Really? You are going to blame the community for a transit-free parkland mega development? I know you like to be contrarian, but that's pushing it.
The community did a really good job examining the options, evaluating the data and seeing through the crap. Community leaders (the unelected ones) even offered working alternatives of their own, like a BRT route up 137 Avenue that staff didn't even consider at first but eventually included in the plans.
They fought that stupid choo-choo to nowhere because IT DIDN'T FIX ANYTHING. The ridership projections were pitifully low and the traffic snarls it would cause were stunningly bad. Yet, in opposition to the trainload of FACTS that said this was STUPID, Joe Martinez threw his usual temper tantrum and tried to ram a really bad idea through. Why? Because it was his idea, therefore it can't be bad.
Now you're going to blame the COMMUNITY for the proposed city of Parkland too?
As to the idea of an extra 1/2 penny. I agree that it's a stupid idea. Not because it isn't needed, but because it will never pass.
There's plenty of blame to go around on this one too. County staff running Transit should have come clean and told people that the agency was millions in the hole and had screwed up the books so bad that they were risking funds from the Feds and State just to keep the current system going.
The Commission should have given our Transit system more scrutiny, and a hell of a lot more money. Instead they starved it of funds for decades, which forced staff to get "creative" with the funds they had. Now county staff isn't a deep pool of Mensa candidates, so their idea of "creative" was to gut maintenance budgets.
The Commission now insists that the current 1/2 penny be used only for shiny new things since that was the promise to voters. That's great, but they aren't making up the funds by boosting the funding from any other source either. That leaves the populous with the weird contradiction of broken elevators, malfunctioning escalators, and rotting stairwells leading to brand-new metro mover cars. New buses run on routes with tattered shelters and broken bus benches.
It's the worst of both worlds. Miami-style.
By the way, I ride the train with lots of lawyers and bankers, accountants and doctors. And that was the case well before $4 a gallon gas.
Braman is correct. With the cost of gas continually going up, the need for transit will also increase. As gas approaches $10, $20, $30 a gallon most of us will only be riding public transit and using bicycles. The time to prepare for this eventual reality is now. To insure we get on track, we need a seperate transit entity to make it happen. . . A transit authority. It needs to go to the voters as soon as possible. But it takes leadership, vision, and a will to relinquish control to make it happen. Otherwise our economy will come to a standstill. The clock is ticking . . .
Oh yeah, all this proposed development in the everglades, has got to stop. There are major land use implications when millions of people are transit-dependent.
pants on fire: you have a pretty good grasp of the issue
last anon: watch out what you wish for. next thing you know, you'll have an unelected Transit Authority that will be beholden to the same politics, except you won't be able to vote them out of office.
P.S. - I just bought a ford F-350 dually with a 50 gallon tank. I love it baby. It allows me to pull my boat around everywhere. Sometimes, I just pull my boat around even when I'm not going to put it in the water, just to waste gas and clog up the roads.
m
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