Booz-Allen concluded that the port's revenues had doubled over the past five years -- to $24.9 million in 1988. But the port's 1988 net income of about $8 million was only slightly higher than the net income in 1983 and had declined steadily for the past three years.

The main reason for the declining profit margin: "Expenses over the past five years have grown 40 percent faster than revenue," Booz-Allen said.

Port Chairman Browne said last week that one commissioner or another always raised questions when another employee was hired or another big expenditure made. But compared to the revenue that the project was likely to generate, no one was overwhelmingly concerned about one more person or one more contract.

"I don't think it has gotten out of hand intentionally," Browne said. "But the momentum has gotten to the point of almost runaway speed."

In addition to cutting employees, Booz-Allen recommended a long list of changes to increase the port's profits: streamlining the port bureaucracy; freezing cost of living increases for three years; operational changes at the foreign trade zone; letting private business buy huge, expensive-to- maintain cargo cranes.

Commissioners are studying the consultants' report and acknowledge they could have been thriftier. But they say they never imagined taxpayers would turn on them with such virulence after ignoring them for so many years.

"We were flying higher than Donald Trump," Commissioner Joseph DeLillo said. "We never really knew that they would react as violently as they did."

Said Commissioner Betsy Krant: "I think the people were caught off guard. The port was caught off guard."

The problem, they said, is that the public doesn't recognize -- or appreciate -- how successful the port is today. It has grown from a backwater to the world's second busiest cruise ship port in just five years, trailing only Miami. The containerized cargo business has boomed too, doubling since 1986.

Success like that costs money, they say, and around-the- globe traveling helps them lure new business. The new tax revenue will pay for a new hub for cargo and allow the port to attract more cruise business, more jobs and more money for Broward County, commissioners told taxpayers during the Sept. 5 public hearing.

Those taxpayers weren't swayed. Nearly three dozen took the podium to raise Cain, saying they don't see how they benefit from port expansion. One irate man called commissioners "spoiled children."

The criticism has been so intense, the port has scaled back expansion plans, trimmed the tax proposal by 43 percent and vowed to curtail their spending and entertaining.

Eleven yet-to-be-filled jobs were cut, including an aide for Commissioner Jim Kane. DeLillo wants to slash the commission's budget in half and says the port should set a limit on what it pays for outside lawyers and consultants.

Battered though commissioners may be, taxpayers' fury has helped them "grow up," Krant said. The public wrath and future scrutiny will force commissioners to watch their spending more closely.

"I think this is going to be a very positive thing for the port, to take that health exam, get a prescription and try to apply it," Krant said. "I think we will come out with a tighter ship and an improved bottom line."

Said Kane: "This will be a better port in the long run because we faced this tax issue. It means we're going to tighten our belts and be more responsible to the taxpayers."

Herald Staff Writer Ron Ishoy contributed to this report.