What is wrong with Miami-Dade County Government? Guest Blog by Sergio

Sergio is back with some more advice:

In Part-One of my article, I quoted many of the scandals involving: misconduct; waste; corruption; ethical violations, not only at the County level, but also at the various City and government levels, including Jackson Memorial Hospital, the Airport, and many other entities.

In Part-Two of my article, I said that the problems we are facing can not be solved by simply replacing the Mayor and a commissioner. We need to drastically change the county charter and create a code of ethics contract with rules and regulations to make it very difficult for elected officials, and department managers to waste our taxpayer’s money. Also in Part-Two I gave some idea of what needs to be done to have an effective government.

HERE IS PART-THREE.

In order to find waste and corruption in our government you need to follow the money trail. For example: When Alvarez and Seijas fought to avoid their recall, they raised within days, thousands of dollars to fight back their removal from office. Alvarez collected over $300,000 and Seijas collected over $250,000, while Vanessa Brito from Miami Voice collected less than $25,000 to unseat these politicians. If not for NORMAN BRAMAN, who spent over a Million dollars of his own money, I do not think that the average person like you and me (receiving less than $25,000 in salary or pension) would have won against them.

Who were the people who contributed so quickly to stop the recall petition of Alvarez and Seijas? According to the newspapers, the main contributors were various County Unions, including the police, the Jackson Memorial Union, the Miami Marlin owners and many of the contractors doing work in the new stadium, the Transport workers Union, and most of the lobbyists who currently do business with the County.

We need to find out what type of audit controls the Inspector General currently has to stop waste and corruption. Before you change things, you need to find out what is in place, to see what needs to be changed.

For example: $5 million was given by the commissioners to the Police Dept. to crack down on environmental polluters, but the money went to buy flat-screen TV’s and other stuff unrelated to the purposes assigned for the money. Was this ever resolved?

You will remember that millions of dollars were raised to buy hundreds of new transit buses and lay down miles of new tracks, by increasing a half a penny in sales taxes. Of the 90 miles of new tracks only 3 miles were laid down, and very few buses were ever purchased. Where did the money go?

How about the millions of dollars also raised for Jackson Memorial by another sales tax increase. Over $1 million went into new furniture for the top executives. Do you know where the rest of the money went?

A City in Miami Dade County awarded a contractor $2 million for several miles of sewer pipe lines. The money was paid and the pipe lines never laid down.

How about the scandal of Millions of dollars awarded for Low income housing. The money was paid, and not a single house was ever built. How did this happened? Where are the controls to avoid this from happening again? Let us learn from these examples.

How about all the County projects with time delays and cost overruns costing taxpayer’s millions more. All general contractors doing work for the COUNTY over a certain amount, should be bonded and each contract should stipulate of a 10% hold-back on each draw requested, to be maintained by the County until the end of the job. Also, the contract should have large penalties for delays and the County should not be responsible for cost over-runs.

Furthermore, No draws and advance of funds, should be given, until 2 inspectors have certified that the work was done. The bonding company should be responsible for fraud, delays and cost overruns. This is the way it works in private business and dealings with banks. Who certified that miles of sewer pipes were installed, or buses were purchased, or apartment building were erected, before we paid for them? Apparently no one.

The new Mayor and the County Commissioners need to be able to answer the following:

1) What are the essential duties of the Inspector General, job description, functions and responsibilities? Do we have an internal affairs unit? Do we report only on cases of corruption, or do we report also cases of waste and mismanagement? What are the principal job duties and responsibilities of the auditors.

2) Principal problems and challenges: How do we avoid prior scandals of funding 100% of projects that were never completed? How do we supervise payments and funding?

3) Reporting relationships: To whom do the Auditors investigating fraud, corruption and waste report to?

4) Working environment: How could we put in place a comprehensive package of audits and controls to prevent future abuses by Commissioners, department heads, and employees? What plans are now in place, that evidently are not working, so we could change them?

5) How about public review of existing contract with the unions, to see how they were approved, so we could learn for the future, on what not to do?

So long as our commissioners and elected public officials continue to get most of their political contributions from the people they give contract to, and so long as we have no effective audit controls and code of ethic contracts in place we will never be able to stop waste and corruption. The Inspector General needs to be front and center. This is the department that investigates corruption. We need to fund the IG and make his department independent of County Commission control.

With regards to prior comments made. Not all counties in Florida have the same retirement age requirements and benefits for their employees. That is another point. We should ask the Miami Herald to request that information from the State and from Miami Dade County, to be sure that You and I get the correct information. Also the Police and Firemen do not get the same deals as others.

We must implement a series of audits and controls to prevent past scandals of waste and corruption to continue for another 20 years.


Last but not least, I am not interested in meeting with people who have been part of the problem for years, and not part of the solution. I am just a simple man, living on social security and barely making a living on less than a $25,000 a year pension. The Press, Norman Braman and so many attorneys, and CPA’s we have in this County should create a citizen committee to force politicians to do and implement some of the ideas I respectfully give you here.

So, Sergio has left us with some good advice for County government: Implement a system of strong oversight and auditing, write ironclad contracts, adopt impeccable ethical standards, learn lessons from past mistakes and put in place new policy so the mistakes don't happen again. Good advice for the county, I hope they listen.