Power Grab for Head of the Miami Dade Sports Commission. By Geniusofdespair

(Hit on image to enlarge, membership of Miami Dade Sports Commission Board.)
You might say, who gives a f--k well apparently County Commissioner Jose Pepe Diaz does since he is the CO-CHAIR, so this amounts to a power grab. Pepe: How does this benefit the Community? How does this benefit anyone but you (or the Commission)?

From the Dec. 11th Agenda of the Airport & Tourism Committee meeting, Pepe Diaz wants to change the head of the Sports Commission from TWO co-chairs to ONE chair, who HAS TO BE a County Commissioner and HAS TO BE appointed by the Chair of the County Commission. Details follow (appears to give the Commissioners more power as the co-chair did NOT have to be a member of the County Commission and was elected by Sports Commission members, NOT appointed by the County Commission Chair):

File Number: 083075
Miami-Dade Airport and Tourism Committee Agenda
December 11, 2008

TITLE ORDINANCE RE:POSITION OF CHAIRPERSON TO THE SPORTS COMMISSION
ORDINANCE AMENDING SECTION 2-1603 OF THE CODE OF MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA RELATING TO THE POSITION OF CHAIRPERSON OF THE MIAMI-DADE COUNTY SPORTS COMMISSION; PROVIDING SEVERABILITY, INCLUSION IN THE CODE, AND AN EFFECTIVE DATE

BODY

BE IT ORDAINED BY THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA:
Section 1. Section 2-1603 of the Code of Miami-Dade County, Florida is hereby amended as follows:
Section 2-1603. Governing Body.

* * *
>>Language to be put in<< [[Language taken out]]

[[The Commission shall have two Chairpersons. One]] >>The<< Chairperson shall be a member of the Board of County Commissioners appointed by the Chairperson of the Board of County Commissioners. [[One Chairperson shall be elected by the twelve voting members of the board of directors appointed in accordance with paragraph (a) above.]]

Stinging Miami Herald Editorial Regarding the Miami Dade County Commission. By Geniusofdespair

The Miami Herald actually said this in a editorial about the County Commission’s power grab of fire rescue services from Cities:

“...it would be refreshing if, just once, the county got off its high horse and treated cities with respect. The county is not omnipotent.”

and:

“Given the county’s poor track record of spending property and sales tax monies — several scandals come to mind here — Miami Dade officials should be grateful that cities haven’t risen up against the county for its waste and abuse of tax money. They could, for example, pitch for repeal of the half-cent of sales tax for transit.”

Ouch! And, thanks for the good idea.Couldn't find it on line, thus, no link.

The County Commissioner Who Would Be King: Bruno Barreiro. By Geniusofdespair

According to Miami Today Proposed ordinance would expand Miami-Dade County commission chairman's powers. That is how the County Commission works, ordinance by ordinance they destroy our charter. Here is but one more power grab on tomorrow's agenda. It might backfire since almost every Commissioner wants to be Chair so I do not think they will appreciate the elimination of term limits for the Chair that Bruno, the Chair, is proposing. It would take 7 votes to unseat him under Bruno’s new plan. Right now the Chair serves for 2 years and cannot be reelected.

There are other changes in this ordinance, among them:

“...waive a measure requiring committee consideration on certain legislative items”
“ ...tweak the 4 day rule” and
“Would allow certain items to be placed directly on a full commission agenda rather than sent to committee first, including building and zoning moratoria and applications to amend the County’s Comprehensive Development Master Plan.”

What does this all mean? If it is a change proposed by one of the “unreformable majority” (which Bruno is a member of) on the County Commission it is usually 99.9% always bad.

P.S. I finally figured out how to spell his name. Doesn’t go by the rule “I before E except after C.”

Conservative "Values": Florida's embarrassment of riches... by gimleteye

The Miami Herald reports that Governor Charlie Crist is "still reviewing and trying to pull some information together" on why the State of Florida allowed more than 10,000 felons to become mortgage originators. (Miami Herald, "Regulator no fighter for ban on ex-cons", July 28, 2008)

When the story broke, long-time Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen chipped in a birdie from the golf course: better for the state to encourage felons to work in white collar crime than rolling down your car window and shoving a gun in your face.

I have another point of view, from the fairways of the reality-based community.

The Herald describes Don Saxon, commissioner of the Office of Financial Regulation, whose purview includes the mortgage industry as a "long time state regulator". The Herald didn't come out and say it, but I will: Saxton is a political survivor.

The North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) honored Saxon in 2006 with its Blue Sky Award: "You have served investors in Florida and throughout North America with great distinction during a NASAA career that few can match," the NASAA press release glowed. "Your well reasoned, respected, and dignified voice continues to send a clear message to fellow regulators, state and federal policymakers, and the financial services industry, that the best interests of investors must always be served without fail... (Saxon) is a leading authority in strengthening the training of state securities regulators and enhancing the continuing education of financial services industry representatives."

They left out the bit about the felons. How were they to know? There were no regulations governing felons among mortgage originators.

Saxon began his career with the Department of Banking and Finance in 1979 as an investigative supervisor in Miami, the largest municipality in Florida's largest county. In Miami, the epicenter of mortgage fraud and credit crisis afflicting some of the world's largest financial institutions, Saxon's responsibilities then included investigations of banking, finance and securities fraud.

It was Miami, naturally, that sprung George W. Bush into the presidency and also propelled Jeb!, through political contributions from the development industry, for two terms as governor. Jeb! was the designated arbiter of conservative values. His key appointees were expected to toe the anti-regulatory, topless and bottomless adoration of the free market.

Jeb! appointed Saxon as the first Director of the Office of Financial Institutions and Securities Regulation in January 2003. Along with a multitude of career senior bureaucrats, I'm guessing that Mr. Saxon was in the audience that January when the state's top micromanager gave his final inaugural address and famously said: "There will be no greater tribute to our maturity as a society than if we can make these buildings around us empty of workers; as silent monuments to the time when government played a larger role than it deserved or could adequately fill."


To the assorted bureaucrats like Mr. Saxon, Jeb's meaning was clear: it was an anti-regulatory jihad to caution a class of public servant institutionally averse to rocking the boat even under the best of circumstances, except as the boat may rock after a night of martinis and post-prandials at Tallahassee watering holes where deep pocketed lobbyists from the financial services industries talked about the big problem of finding enough mortgage originators to feed the insatiable, never-ending demand for housing.

Privatize! Outsource mortgage origination to criminals!

Maybe these words weren't ever uttered in that exact order, but in view of the facts disclosed by The Miami Herald on rampant fraud and corruption in the mortgage industry, one can easily attribute to the embrace of felons the same light-bulb-in-the-head going off as the British who decided to use reprobates and criminals to colonize Australia.

2003, in Florida, was the high water mark for Florida housing boom, whose key values were embedded in the conviction that regulation was the enemy of progress. That same year Jeb! and W financier, Al Hoffman-- whose former company WCI Communities is now a shell of its former self-- crowed to The Washington Post that suburban sprawl was "an unstoppable force."

Today's Herald report highlights that Saxton made overtures to House Representative Scott Randolph, to strengthen regulation of mortgage originators. That's the biggest laugh line in the report.

"If they were trying to stir some urgency or interest, I probably wouldn't have been the one" to talk with, Randolph told the Herald. Randolph, you see, is the only card-carrying liberal in the entire Florida House of Representatives.

Imagine a hard-bitten civil servant, whose rise to power and influence was based on his ability to skirt regulation wherever its ugly head might rear up, going to a liberal with a bright idea for regulation. (Scott Randolph actually believes that state policy of Florida to drill holes to flush our poop down into drinking water aquifers is a bad idea!)

During the Bush years, when the housing bubble foamed to a fine froth, ex-convicts were denied the right to vote in Florida elections but allowed to play in the fields of the mortgage industry. Now there's a set of conservative values.

Whatever you call it, today the state's chief financial officer, Alex Sink, and current governor, Charlie Crist, are being forced by circumstance to reach in the dark down into the grab bag from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression in Florida. Everything they touch feels a little squishy, a little sticky, and smells really, really badly. Only a few years ago they used to polish that stuff in Florida and put it on awards.

Now you can laugh.

Reader You Have Got it Right About Our Broken System! By Geniusofdespair

In response to my post earlier today about the Vile Natacha Seijas whittling away at oversight of the ITC, a reader said:

"Isn't this the very problem with "independent trusts/agencies", like the housing agency? Little by little the oversight is diminished until only one commissioner has control."

The County Commission Meeting January 10th will just be one more feather in her cap because no one says no to Natacha. And our reader is right, almost all are doing the power grab so that is why they can't say no.

Eyeonmiami, one year old! The King is Dead, Long Live the King! by gimleteye

Yep. We've been blogging on Miami for a year. Here's a brief reflection on Eyeonmiami...

It's appropriate for our first birthday to be filled with Citigroup’s announced loss of $11 billion from financial derivatives tied to the housing bubble, which is manifesting first and foremost in our backyard. That's on top of nearly $9 billion from Merrill Lynch last week.

I've written a lot about the way that Miami and Florida is the center of the housing bust, tied to a failed economic model that depended on financial engineering of home mortgages into securities that are essentially worthless. It didn't take a genius to see this tsunami of bad debt, bad development, and its consequences to Miami and Florida: we were just early at Eyeonmiami.

And for being early, we get a lot of attention on the web.

Today's news is that Robert Rubin, of Miami Beach, has assumed the chairmanship of the beleaguered financial juggernaut that taught me so much. There is no one who represents the financial status quo on Wall Street and continuity so much as Mr. Rubin, former US Treasury Secretary under Clinton and an expert in bond trading on Wall Street: in other words, a principal for the rainmaking machine that used the lowly home mortgage to facilitate the creation of vast wealth for a few and unlimited liability in world credit markets.

Miami is the epicenter of crashing housing markets, it is partly because the excesses took such easy root in a place defined by the economics of production housing: whether for single-family homes or condos.

The culture of Miami is defined by a fraternity of interests arrayed around real estate industries, from cement manufacturers in Everglades wetlands to laws firms like Greenberg Traurig built on zoning practices to the fortunes of Cuban émigrés who reconstituted their power and authority as the Latin Builders Association by developing farmland into tract housing, paving over wetlands, building political fortresses in places like Hialeah, and trashing opposition, whether in the form of community activists, conservation organizations, or neighbors.

The Miami Herald, the city’s newspaper, has been part and parcel of the real-estate development based culture. It is largely in the vacuum of the Herald—chasing the bouncing ball of quarterly profits to satisfy stockholders and option holders among its executive ranks—that Eyeonmiami emerged as an unpaid, unsolicited source of opinions and underreported facts, especially related to land ownership and development interests of the Growth Machine.

A little less than ten years ago, I worked for a major financial institution managing private equity during the run-up to the dot.com bust. Everything about the dot.com bubble defied what I had learned about sound fiscal prudence. And everything about the housing bubble that manifested afterwards has been 100 times more dangerous, based on my understanding of credit markets.

In the office where I worked, there was a small group that was patiently exploring the real estate sector. None of us knew at the time, that Alan Greenspan would respond to the burst bubble of the internet by lowering interest rates to historic, low levels—a measure no doubt encouraged by Florida builders who promoted the political fortunes of Jeb Bush in 1998 and George W Bush in 2000. What a decade it turned into, until the unravelling.

At the same time, I was also engaged in an area that captures so much of the betrayal of fiscal prudence and conservative values: efforts to protect Florida’s unique natural resources and environment. For decades, it has been clear that destroying the quality of life and natural resources that drew so many to Florida in the first place, was fiscal irresponsibility of the first order.

This is the underlying theme of Eyeonmiami: how local zoning decisions (scarcely reported and even avoided by The Miami Herald) are the foundation of a smash and grab fiscal model— rampant overdevelopment based on mortgage securitization—a chain of responsibility that stretches from land speculators/lobbyists at County and City Hall, to local bankers in places like Homestead, to local legislatures straight through the political system to Wall Street, where hundreds of billions in losses are now, finally, piling up.

This reality is toxic to the mainstream media that depends on paid advertisement extracted from a bad economic model: Eyeonmiami hasn’t shied from saying so, day after day, in posts having to do with the housing crash, with political corruption, with the costs imposed on the poor, on the middle class, on Miami’s quality of life, infrastructure deficits, and the environment.

Eyeonmiami doesn’t write much about Ocean Drive or the celebrity culture, except perhaps as reflected in such symbols as the Carniverous Center for the Performing Arts. But what we do care about is how our way of life in Miami is dysfunctional and in pointing that out clearly—even when the facts are unremittingly bad—that momentum will build for change. Maybe it is in the heart of a 17 year old high school reader. Or, in a neighborhood activist in Little Haiti or Liberty City.

You can never know for sure, but if you believe in change you have to believe that there are some readers, some voters, some people who are desperate to know more, to learn and to understand how things get to be the way they are in a place we love for its potential and for qualities we embrace.

No one pays us for the time we spend writing, here. And that makes us either suckers, saints or just plain human. One observer wrote to us that Eyeonmiami has become an urban legend. That's good.

My only regret is that the ease of blogging without a good editor, when a large audience is reading, means that typos and awkwardness and poor writing slip through. To those readers who have notices, my apologies!