The Most Shameful Meeting of the Board of County Commissioners In Miami Dade History: Part 2 ... by gimleteye

 Continued from Part 1:

A catalog of offenses committed by the county commission on Feb. 21st:

Offense #1) Alice Pena sits on a county wetlands advisory task force as co-chair. The committee is appointed by all the county commissioners and mayor. Its intent is to review county regulations for wetlands. Ms. Pena is well known for decades service to property owners and farmers anxious to farm and build homes on an area deemed by government to be critical to restoration of Everglades wetlands: the 8.5 Square Mile Area. On Feb 21st, Ms. Pena went over the top of the county committee which she co-chairs and was given the opportunity to make "a special presentation" to the full county commission. There was no advertisement and no opportunity for rebuttal by environmental groups who have spent decades, also, on issues of protecting Everglades wetlands including wetlands and environmentally sensitive lands inside county boundaries. What is astounding is that the wetlands advisory task force is stacked with a solid pro-growth majority: not a single environmentalist was appointed to that committee.

Ms. Pena is a special interest: the 8.5 Square Mile Area has been the focus of one of the longest mediated settlements and biggest taxpayer investments in US history, involving many state and federal agencies. As the Feb 21 rolled on, the "five minute presentation" (Chair Martinez' words) turned into an ugly, uninformed-- barely literate-- political attack on environmental rules. Linda Bell, who succeeded the lone pro-environmental voice on the county commission -- Katy Sorenson-- has made it her personal mission to kill DERM.

Offense #2) How could the county commission entertain a "special presentation" by one person -- with no opportunity, none, for rebuttal-- , a person who sits on a county appointed board, without opening every other county board to interference by the commission? Pena should have been asked by the county commission to get in line, to make a professional presentation accompanied by facts, like every member of every task force in Miami-Dade County and submit her positions to the county commission either through the committee she serves on or through a minority report. What she did on Feb 21, pulling rank on her committee and appearing alone before the county commission, is a disgrace. It is profoundly demoralizing, which may be Joe Martinez' point; he will run to the right of Gimenez as the special tool of the Great Destroyers.

Offense #3) Pena trotted out a list of grievances without substantiation and without challenge by a single county commissioner. No one asked her for the facts or data to support her claims that DERM is "the gestapo". She held up a map to the county commissioners, but offered not a single specific about either her neighbors' complaints, their location, or specific cases of abuse. County commissioners, who took her at her word, then spent an entire hour in a shameful parade of non-sequitors organized around the abuse of environmental regulations. The entire diatribe was without a single-- not one-- piece of evidence or science. (In comparison, science-based studies costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars involving environmental rules have been brought before the commission and summarily sent to the dustbin. The Ag Retention Study, the South Dade Watershed Study, the EPA study of the Urban Development Boundary).

Offense #4) Any commissioner on the dais (including Xavier Suarez who noted that he once "represented the 8.5 Square Mile Area residents") knows that a deal made between all levels of government allowed part of the 8.5 Square Mile Area to be protected when the federal government raises canal stages to restore the Everglades. (Former county commissioners like Pedro Reboredo and Gwen Margolis were also silent partners for land ownership in the 8.5 Square Mile Area.)  Yet not a single commissioner asked to see proof, evidence, or any science-based data supporting whatever Ms. Pena was trying to accomplish. Pena's real goal -- and the smirkers -- is apparently to undo the entire plan for rewatering the East Everglades and acts of Congress. (What is next for environmentalists in Miami-Dade: Crystal Nacht?) Certainly, by the end of the hour it was clear that Chairman Martinez and the rest of the Unreformable Majority would have widened the scope of the wetlands advisory task force to include massive changes to the entire Miami Dade County Code.

Offense #5) The county attorney practically set a historical record for weak-kneed obfuscation: no one, not Lee Hefty for PERA/DERM, raised a single question of Pena or the rambling, disjunctive discourse. At times, watching the tape, the commissioners seemed to be high on some kind of drug. Only Sally Heyman and Barbara Jordan had the guts to wonder aloud, about  the absence of protocol in what Martinez, Diaz, and Linda Bell were  proposing: using the wetlands advisory task force as a wedge to attack  all environmental rules in Miami-Dade county.

Offense #6) Mayor Carlos Gimenez: you make the bed you sleep in. Gimenez surely knew what a can of worms was being opened on one of the biggest issues imaginable. Wetlands are just the wedge. Read the partial transcript, below. If Gimenez has the courage of his convictions, he would have called the commissioners to task for undertaking such a massively important discussion without any public notice. It wasn't a hearing: it was Alice Pena. Does Gimenez believe no one is paying attention? It is also telling that the most informed member of the county commission on environmental regulations and the Urban Development Boundary, Commissioner Dennis Moss was absent on Feb. 21st and also absent last week. 

Offense #7) Logic. The discussion from the dais is marked by an absence, on the part of the county commission, to speak about technical legal issues. On Feb. 21st, the absence of discourse that was intelligible was shocking. At times it seemed like commissioners who know better, Commissioners Sosa and Heyman come to mind, consciously decided against saying anything that made sense, finding refuge in illogic. For example, any one of the commissioners could have asked Pena to specifically detail her allegations against DERM. Any one of the commissioners could have ventured to educate the audience on the history and background of wetlands regulation in Miami-Dade. Any one of the commissioners could have asked-- and ought to ask-- where is the data that environmental regulations kill jobs?

Offense #8) "A fair balance between the environment and farming and developers." This canard: "balancing the environment and the economy" is such a lie. There is no balance in Florida, today. The state legislature refuses to acknowledge either federal law or federal court decisions on water pollution by farmers who are, according to the county commission, "the best stewards of the environment." The state and county refuse to impose either best farming management practices or technical standards to reduce the pollution of Florida waters, not to mention the Everglades, a World Heritage site. When you hear a county commissioner talking about "balancing the environment and the economy" know that what they mean is this: the balance is whatever ag interests and developers want it to be. Politics trump science. Take that to the bank.

Offense #9) Florida International University. Joe Martinez made a big deal -- it was the first I had heard any mention of this-- that FIU law students were being tasked with reviewing the county code "under the supervision" of the county attorney. If I were in the county attorney's office, I would resign on the spot. What an embarrassment.  I suspect there are laws being broken along the way in this underhanded, devious plan by Chairman Martinez and the Unreformable Majority. I wonder if members of the board of directors of zero-rated US Century Bank, whose name is on the FIU stadium, are supervising the law school students and faculty. What a disgrace.

Offense #10) Alice Pena and the UDB "working group", brainchild of Joe Martinez and Pepe Diaz, have a clear aim: to erase any and all protections for the environment that conflict with private property rights as construed by the big ag and the developer lobby, including a wholesale revision of the Urban Development Boundary. The special interests who are pulling the strings are the same as they have always been. I call them, the Great Destroyers.

The imminent jeopardy to environmental protections in Miami-Dade County is the direct result of Governor Rick Scott, who bought his way to the CEO's office in Florida with no understanding how eliminating state regulatory authority for land use planning and drastically reducing state regulatory oversight of environmental issues would play out. The result: the wolves have breached the barriers in Miami-Dade. The lunatics are running the asylum.

Please go to part 3, the Transcript.