Lies Multiply from County Commissioners: Our subsidized foreign travel/vacations brings jobs to Miami ... by gimleteye

The idea that county commissioners take foreign junkets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to generate jobs for Miami holds as much water as the boy in the balloon. Matt Haggman and Jack Dolan do a stellar job amplifying a subject we've noted frequently on Eyeonmiami: county commissioners taking trips worth hundreds of thousands of dollars under the fiction that these are "trade missions" that generate jobs. The worst offender: Natacha Seijas, de facto chair of the county commission. This nonsense could come to a halt, but it won't because it serves the great unstated purpose of local government. These trips are considered to be the perks of public service. They reward county commissioners who perform for campaign contributors from the Growth Machine. It is true that we, the public, elect the dunderheads who comprise the unreformable majority of the county commission, but we elect them because they have been able to raise enough money from private sources to build the modern campaign infrastructure that relies of costly advertisements including television. Who are those private sources? We wrote about one of them yesterday, Sergio Pino and the board of directors of US Century Bank and Century Home Builders and the projects to build outside the Urban Development Boundary in Miami Dade beyond Krome Avenue.

Most citizens have no idea that the purpose of local government is not to protect the health, welfare and safety of citizens. It is all about serving unsustainable growth. The best example is zoning changes in farmland or wetlands to accommodate suburban sprawl. The reward for commissioners who toe the line is the kind of preferential treatment, at great expense, documented by The Miami Herald today. These junkets are paid vacations, however much the participating commissioners tack on as their personal expense. They do it, because they can. It would take either of two things to change the county commission's behavior: one, for voters to rebel against the permanent incumbency, or two, for the campaign finance apparatus to order the junkets to stop.

That's unlikely. We witnessed how Natacha Seijas shut down the county charter review process, that might have instituted badly needed changes from within. We saw who came to the rescue of Seijas when a brave group of citizens mobilized a recall effort: Sergio Pino (Read the five part series in this blog, "Redland, the Wades, and the Army of Compassion"). Just look at what happened to the Herald reporters: one county commission hung up and another, Seijas, would not return calls. The county commission exists in a hermetic bubble. In fact, Miami New Times documented that Seijas lives a reclusive life outside of her trips downtown and abroad, including a no-show job at the YMCA supported, we have noted, by charitable contributions from the Growth Machine.