Too bad The Miami Herald update on Miami International Airport briefly focuses on alternative schemes for raising money to fund airport debt-- like oil drilling or rock mining in the historic Everglades-- rather than taking space to note the incumbent county commissioners like Natacha Seijas who made decisions that led to the exorbitant costs of the airport renovation.
For decades, Miami airport contracts served to organize political order in Florida's most populous and politically influential county. That point is MIA in the Herald report. Thankfully, another point is captured in the Herald story: "The expansion morphed by fits and starts into a $6.3 billion overhaul that will attract perhaps 34 million passengers this year, 21 million fewer then envisioned." Only 21 million?
I became conversant with airport skullduggery during the Homestead Air Force Base fiasco. At the same time -- in the mid-1990's-- the same cast of characters, led by Seijas as the local political prod, tried to scam the US military into handing over the air base to insiders who fund political campaigns for a privatized commercial airport. A large part of the rationale for the no-bid deal to Ramon Rasco (chairman of US Century Bank) and his partners at HABDI/ Latin Builders Association was that Miami International Airport was about to be saturated with millions and millions of additional visitors. Remind me sometime and I'll put up the projections on the blog. They still make entertaining reading.
The county commissioners and Seijas approved MIA cost increases, entrusting the work-out to key political operatives. There has never been a complete, published accounting of how much money rained into the pockets of contractors, lobbyists and insiders from the Engineering Cartel. The Herald tried, with Dade Aviation Consultants and its key principals: Chris Korge and Rodney Barreto but only scratched the surface. Too bad because there is no understanding what the future holds, without knowing the past.
Any Miami International Airport update has to be punctuated by its infamous baggage handling delays. This much is true: the airport could not have found a better director than Jose Abreu. But Abreu wasn't there on my arrival recently after two domestic flights on American Airlines-- the lynchpin airport tenant at MIA. I try to never, ever to check bags for domestic flights into MIA. These occasions were unavoidable. Both times I waited nearly an hour for my baggage to be delivered after arriving at the carousel. When I complained, the American Airlines baggage specialist didn't change her expression, "They're coming soon." Along with 21 million visitors lost, from one Miami-Dade county commission campaign to the next.
5 comments:
You forgot to mention the "slots" they wanted to install inside the terminal along with the horse racing that would have been a requirement.
From the inside, my company did a small job at the new rent a car building. Several contractors on site slowed their crews down because they didn't have any work coming in.
What goes on inside MIA has cost us, the taxpayers, millions of cost over runs/change orders and more.
The campaign contributions to the County Commission from airport vendors to the infamous baggage wrap are just alarming.
Vile Natacha's daughter has a cushy job at the airport.
When Angela tried to sort out the mess, they cut her loose. She surly stepped on some powerful toes. Souto calls MIA the "gem of Miami-Dade". What a joke.
The vile ones' daughter pull in over 100K salary in the "accounting" office. Don't know what's worse, the salary or the fact that she has her fingers in the "accounting" pie. Carl Hiaasen, cue up next fiction best-seller please, because the MDCC always managers to pull off a "sadder than fiction" -- oh yeah, same MDCC is about to raiser all our taxes too - oh what fun to live in MDC.
How many years have to pass before the crowing about successfully stopping Cuban-Americans from investing at Homestead ARB ends? You were paid well. Time to move on.
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