On Second Thought

A budget crisis is grounding everything these days in Miami-Dade—programs, paychecks, and the jobs of county employees. Still, for all the hardship some commissioners are flying high. Their globetrotting trips defy the laws of financial gravity, and the quaint notion of showing concrete proof about the return on investment that taxpayers are entitled to have.

 

Those are the findings that made front page news in the Miami Herald Tuesday. The Herald documented $217,000 in taxpayer money spent on trade missions over two years, and the newspaper found nothing—in terms of new trade deals-- to show for the trips or the costs.

 

At least one commissioner disagreed. Rebeca Sosa and staff jetted to the Canary Islands in 2008. The tab to taxpayers-$21,000 and the commissioner said it was one case where dividends were paid.  Sosa said, “We were able to bring a direct flight, a new airline to the airport, Aero Europa.”

 

No such luck for Sally Heyman, who flew with fellow commissioners Audrey Edmonson and Natacha Seijas to South Africa in 2007. The bill came to $43,000. Heyman wanted to reopen non-stop flights to Miami but came away frustrated and now says such trade missions should be left to business professionals.  Heyman told me, “I voted against continuing the program (the travel program.)”

 

Heyman was outvoted on that score. Commissioners will keep funding the trade mission travel to the tune of $1.2 million next year.

 

Last month, the Herald found, Audrey Edmonson flew to Senegal and South Africa for 12 days with staffers. The cost to taxpayers hasn’t been tallied yet and Edmonson repeatedly refused our request for answers to basic questions like: is the trip worth the cost to taxpayers?

 

The biggest frequent flyer—by far—is Natacha Seijas.  Here’s a partial list for her and staffers: India at a cost of $28,000, a swing through Europe for $44,000, a trip to Japan and Taiwan this year at a taxpayer price tag of $34,000, and a recent trip to Brazil for $13,000.

 

If the payoff for taxpayers is coming from all those high flying pursuits it is not apparent yet. Oh, and Seijas, who routinely boast of her refusal to talk with reporters, wasn’t around Tuesday to be questioned. She was headed to Washington, D.C., on a business trip.

The party balloons came down and the reality check set in. On the day after his election victory, Miami mayor-elect Tomas Regalado hit the ground running. He met with city manager Pete Hernandez to talk about union pension costs. Those costs threaten to bankrupt the city Regalado will lead upon officially assuming his duties as mayor on November 11^th. After his meeting Regalado said, “We just planned a forum on pensions, a public forum on pensions for November 16^th.”

 

There will not be any solutions that day  but Regalado figures the unions and Miami residents need to understand the scope of the crisis—a $100 million pension obligation—that already eats up more than 20 percent of the city budget.  “Pensions are the main issue,” said the city manager.

 

In a low turnout election Regalado swept to an easy win over opponent and fellow commissioner Joe Sanchez, in part because of union support. Getting those unions to trim their pension benefits will be very hard.  Miami Police FOP president Armando Aguilar said, “I don’t think there needs to be any reduction in benefits. There are other ways of saving money.”

 

Tensions could build elsewhere too. Regalado sees the city manager as a staunch ally of outgoing mayor Manny Diaz. He spearheaded support for the Marlins stadium in Little Havana and other big ticket downtown projects that Regalado opposed. I asked if the city manager will keep his job. Regalado answered, “It’s a very difficult decision because I don’t know what has been going on in the city, and I hope he (Pete Hernandez) can explain it to me.”

 

Hernandez sounded an optimistic note. He told me, “We talk well and respect each other and can be a good team.”  That may be so but sparks will certainly fly over the Miami police chief, John Timoney. Regalado wants him gone, criticizing the chief for ethics lapses and perceived leadership failings. There was no response from Timoney’s office as this story was being published.

 

This much is certain. Regalado will need all the stamina he can find as he copes with issues--budgets, personalities and otherwise—in the political marathon now before him.

 

The fighting in Congress goes on over what health care reform should include, or whether the nation can afford an ambitious restructuring of one-sixth (1/6^th) of its economy.

 

In South Florida, meanwhile, the debate is personal for a stunning number of people.  U.S. Census Bureau figures show that one-fourth of the people between ages 18 to 64 in Broward County are without health insurance. In Miami-Dade more than one-third of residents in that age group have no health insurance safety net. Hialeah offers the most sobering statistics. More than half of the people there are uninsured.

 

Omar Sakedo is one face behind those numbers. He cannot find work and goes without health insurance. Sakedo said, “I had a hernia and had to have surgery done and they didn’t want to pay for it. It is rough when you don’t have insurance.”

 

Worse yet, health care experts say chronic illnesses turn into crises that send the uninsured to emergency rooms where they cannot be turned away. That is the most costly kind of care and someone ultimately pays the E.R. bill. That somebody is you, in the form of higher health insurance premiums if you are lucky enough to have coverage.

 

Martha Baker is a South Florida trauma nurse and is president of the Service Employees International Union.  Baker told me, “The chronic illness in this country sucks up 75-percent of our health care dollars. We need to decrease the money we spend on chronic care and spend more on prevention.”

 

Critics of health care reform proposals—which include preventive care provisions and a mandate that everyone has coverage-- argue the nearly one-trillion dollar, ten year price tag is unaffordable. They argue no one, including President Obama, has offered a clear, concise, precise explanation of exactly how to make sure such reform does not break the bank.

 

Health care reform supporters, meanwhile, say critics neglect the enormous costs of doing nothing to put health care on a sustainable footing in the U.S. Look no farther, they say, than your own soaring health care premiums, or to the friend or relative denied coverage for a pre-existing condition.

 

Baker said, “If we do not reform the system we have now, we all either die or go broke from the system. We must reform health care for the sake of the health of our country but also the economy of the country.” 

 

The latest public corruption scandal—this one in Broward County—brings back memories. They make citizens, civic and political leaders cringe.

 

South Florida’s public trust has been trashed often over the years, as the accused have marched into court and/or off to prison with clock work regularity. Guy Lewis was a hard charging, corruption busting U.S. Attorney in Miami from 2000-2002. He put his share of corrupt officials behind bars. Lewis told me, “Here in South Florida the rules did not seem to apply. People played fast and loose. It was our culture.”

 

The ingredients never change. Start with power, position and access. Then throw in the lure of money. “Greed, money, “ Lewis said, “it is easy to do, whether in county hall, city hall, the port, airport, there are huge amounts of money involved.”

 

In the mid-80’s, Sunrise mayor John Lomelo went to prison after a bribery conviction. Hialeah mayor Raul Martinez ultimately fought his own extortion case to a legal draw in a series of reversals, hung juries and acquittals.  Flamboyant Miami Beach mayor Alex Daoud was less fortunate. He, too, went to prison in the 1990’s for a bribery conviction.

 

No one can forget Miami police Chief Donald Warshaw who did time after ripping off a charity for kids. More recently, former Broward sheriff Ken Jenne finished his sentence on a federal tax evasion conviction.

 

 Lewis said of corrupt officials , “It starts out small, it really does. They make the wrong decision for the wrong reasons and usually it is something under the radar and then it grows a little bit. It is almost like cancer that is not dealt with early on.”

 

The cancer called greed caught Miami city manager Cesar Odio and Miami commissioner Miller Dawkins in the mid-90’s, sweeping them away in yet another bribery scandal.  The list goes on and on, from corrupt judges to politicians who were bought in South Florida.

 

 Lewis said all of us pay when such a “culture” is allowed to flourish. He told me , “I was a zero tolerance prosecutor and the reason was it infects the rest of the community, whether it is business, whether people won’t come down because they can’t trust politicians, or can’t trust the process, whether it is because I know you have to pay off  people to get contracts that are government contracts. It hurts us.”

 

That is an instructive warning about the need for vigilance and the price a community pays when it turns a lazy eye toward the trail of politicians who ignore the public trust.

 

 

Work hard, get an education and join the American Dream. That is a pretty good summation of President Obama’s much debated speech to the nation’s schoolchildren Tuesday.

There was not a single mention of a socialist agenda. Imagine that. A lot of schoolchildren, including many in South Florida , tuned out when their parents tuned into the pre-speech controversy over the past week.

The hype got a big boost when Jim Greer, Florida’s Republican Party chairman, hinted that the president was trying to pitch a “socialist agenda” to the nation’s kids.  Of course, he had not seen the speech but in today’s political atmosphere facts are no impediment to name calling by both of our major political parties.  What's more ,Greer is convinced that by helping to raise a red flag the White House toned down any plan to veer into politics in the chat with kids.

Greer is breathing a sigh of relief now. I talked with him Tuesday evening and he said, “At the end of the day I thought it was a good speech, an appropriate speech, and I’m glad my kids had an opportunity to hear it.”

Gracious words to be sure, but Greer still isn’t backing down from his original assessment of President Obama.  He told me, “I have respect for the president. I respect the presidency. I taught my children to have it, but the president’s belief in government’s role is a socialist type of governing philosophy.”

There is that politically charged word again.  Greer is much more circumspect, apparently, when it comes to labeling his political heroes with the same label.

Case in point: Florida Republican Governor Charlie Crist, the always cheerful politician seeking a U.S. Senate seast in 2010. Late last month the conservative Wall Street Journal criticized Crist. The paper opined that, “The governor has driven private property and casualty insurers out of the state by expanding a government favored public option (Citizens) for hurricane insurance.”

Greer confirmed that he has never thought of Crist as a socialist, noting that government favored property insurance in Florida is for “people who cannot get insurance.”  Hmm. That sounds like the argument some Democrats are making for a government backed public health insurance provider.

For the record, Greer  also never lashed out at President Bush years ago  when he championed a prescription drug plan for Medicare, one that analysts say is now helping to bust the federal budget.

I asked Mr. Greer if he ever called the former president a socialist. “No”, he replied. Did he ever say President Bush was pushing a socialist agenda? “No”, he told me again.  Greer went on to say, “The difference is you have to take the whole thing in context where, in fact, government does do certain things that are needed but not in a broad based approach to governing. Then it is not socialist.”  

In the final analysis South Florida schoolchildren got a number of valuable lessons this week. One of them is a reminder on how quickly one’s perspective can change depending on your side of the political fence. Too bad it’s a fence both Republicans and Democrats increasingly hang with barbed wire.

Circuit Judge Victoria Sigler decided Thursday that the legal fight over what to do about  some 70 sexual offenders living under the Julia Tuttle Causeway will be settled in Miami, not a far off Tallahassee courtroom as state lawyers argued.

The city of Miami is suing to force the state to close the camp, which has been the subject of national and international scrutiny. The city argues Miami area sexual offenders released from state prison –and with nowhere else to go because of tough residency rules—are all but being told to go live under the bridge.

Miami commissioner Marc Sarnoff said, “This is a statewide problem and requires a statewide solution. You cannot have judges and people of different jurisdictions saying the dumping ground for the entire state is the city of Miami.”

Lawyers for the state declined comment but will appeal the judge’s decision to keep the case in Miami.

The larger issue, many argue, is the reflex to treat all sex offenders as the worst of their lot. The Economist news magazine’s cover story this week is titled, “America’s Unjust Sex Laws.”  The article points to a system that often lumps the offender who had, say, consensual sex with the sexual predator who inhabits our worst fears.

Miami-Dade Homeless Trust Chairman Ron Book said, “We need to get legislators to go to a tiered systems and some people should come off the registries. We should look at sexual assault statutes as part of this.”

All that may comprise a long-term solution—if politicians shed tough on crime slogans for substantive solutions –but local leaders say the state must begin by doing its job and closing the camp under the Tuttle Causeway.

There are no guarantees about how or when that might happen, as state officials, including Governor Crist continue to sidestep a contentious, growing problem.