One Meek is elected to represent Miami-Dade citizens in Congress. Yet the county commission feels compelled to spend taxpayer money to hire yet another Meek as a congressional lobbyist.

You'd think that if U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek was doing his job, there'd be no need to hire his momma to haul her tired old bones to Washington.

And it's not just Carrie Meek getting paid a nice chunk of Miami-Dade County money for rather abstruse pursuits in Washington ($18,000 for the first six months of 2009). Even as the county commission tosses workers and eliminates services, struggling to close a $427 million budget shortfall, the county flings public money at congressional lobbyists like no other county or city in the nation.

BIG SPENDERS

Miami-Dade County spent $428,000 on various lobbying firms to wrangle money and influence in Washington during the first half of 2009, according to the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics. Only two other government entities in the nation -- the commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the state of Pennsylvania -- spent more public money on Washington lobbyists.

Broward County was no slouch either, tossing away $140,000 in the first two quarters of 2009, just ahead of Chicago and Dallas. Nor was the city of Miami cowed by its own brutal budget problems -- spending $120,000 in those six months. The reigning assumption in South Florida seems to be that its congressional delegation, elected to perform exactly this kind of work, has been peopled by dithering incompetents.

And what do we get for those big bucks? The Herald's Jack Dolan, who reported that Florida ranked dead last in federal stimulus funds, wrote this telling sentence on Aug. 2: ``So far, summer interns are all Miami-Dade County and the city of Miami have to show for the biggest economic stimulus program in U.S. history.''

EXPECTED MORE

One might think all that lobbying power might amount to something more spectacular. Al Cárdenas, the former Republican Party of Florida chairman who collects $200,000 a year lobbying for Miami-Dade in Washington, told The Herald's Leslie Clark that the county needs high-priced lobbyists. ``Florida ranks at the bottom most of the time in terms of what it gets from Washington and clearly has to work harder than most.''

But Miami-Dade has been working hard, giving away money to lobbyists for years. From 1998 through 2008, Miami-Dade County spent more than $15 million lobbying Congress -- more than any city, any other county, more than 49 states. Yet a decade of ``hard work'' has hardly translated into federal funds.

Miami-Dade and Broward counties also spend taxpayer money like crazy on lobbyists in Tallahassee ($322,000 by Broward last year). The results, judging from the state money flowing this way, have been just as dismal as the federal effort.

Obviously, I'm looking at the wrong results. Public money doled out to lobbyists by county commissioners indeed flows back to South Florida -- as campaign contributions from those same lobbyists. It's as if they're really just fronts in a clever money-laundering scheme that allows South Florida county and city commissioners and school-board members to funnel taxpayer money into their own re-election campaigns.

If any federal or state funds happen to come our way, well, that's just gravy.

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