In Miami-Dade mayor debate, candidates brag about supporting police and their budgets
Both candidates for Miami-Dade mayor pledged to keep police spending intact in a race where “defund the police” has become an attack line.
Candidates Esteban “Steve” Bovo Jr. and Daniella Levine Cava both sit on the Miami-Dade County Commission, and earlier this month they voted for the $9 billion 2021 budget one of them will inherit in November. It increases the county’s police budget by about 1% to $782 million and continues allocating to police and jails about 45 cents of every dollar of property taxes and other general funds that Miami-Dade collects from businesses and residents.
Miami-Dade’s police unions endorsed Bovo, who has represented the Hialeah-area District 13 on the commission since 2011. He’s tried to make public safety a defining part of his campaign, with frequent warnings about the dangers of “defunding the police.”
“It’s a lie to say that I will cut police funding,” Levine Cava said in Wednesday’s Spanish-language Univision debate. ”For six years at the county, I’ve always voted to increase police funding, and I’ve also brought 80 police officers to the south part of the county because we are growing and we didn’t have the protection we needed.”
She pointed to past commission austerity votes before she won her South Miami-Dade District 8 seat in 2014, including when Bovo joined the majority that fall to approve a police budget with a 1% reduction in staffing during a broader revenue squeeze in the county. He pointed to Levine Cava’s calls for investing in social programs as a way to reduce crime and incarceration, including “sobering centers” and other proposals promoted by groups asking Miami-Dade to shift some law enforcement dollars to services.
He twice summoned images of protests in other American cities to emphasize the priority he puts on public safety.
“If we don’t have security, Miami-Dade County will become a New York City, a Chicago, or a Portland,” he said.
Moderators Ambrosio Hernández and José Alfonso Almora presided over the hour-long debate between Bovo, 58, and Levine Cava, 65. He’s Cuban-American and fluent in Spanish; she’s white non-Hispanic and speaks Spanish as a second language.
A partisan, non-partisan campaign
The two candidates represent two sides of the political spectrum on the Miami-Dade commission: he’s a Republican running as the “conservative” candidate, and she’s a Democrat who has touted her ties to prominent Florida Democrats endorsing her.
Donald Trump was never mentioned in the debate, but he loomed over one of the feistier segments when the question turned to a 2017 commission vote to drop Miami-Dade’s “sanctuary” policy to refuse detention requests at county jails from immigration officers. With the new president vowing to strip funding from local governments not cooperating with immigration authorities, Bovo joined the majority in allowing jails to hold people an extra two business days if they’re being sought by federal agents for possible deportation.
The old policy of denying the “detainer” requests had landed Miami-Dade on a list of “sanctuary” jurisdictions during the Obama administration, and that status was lifted under Trump. Asked about allowing Miami-Dade to become a “sanctuary” jurisdiction again, both candidates said they wouldn’t but also wouldn’t let county police go further and enforce federal immigration laws.
“That’s not the purpose of our police force,” he said. “They are supposed to protect our streets, to make sure we can safely operate businesses. I will not be an agent of INS.” He added that if an undocumented person broke the law and they had a removal order, that person should know county police would cooperate with federal immigration agents.
Levine Cava said she introduced legislation that ensured Miami-Dade police would not actively participate in immigration enforcement.
“If people are afraid of the police, they won’t report crimes,” she said. “And the community would be less secure.”
The monorail project
The two took different approaches to an in issue that could be coming before the commission soon: whether to approve a county-funded monorail project that Genting and partners want to build between Miami and Miami Beach.
An Inspector General report raised ethical questions about the Genting team’s talks with the Gimenez administration on the proposal ahead of the county soliciting bids for the project — a solicitation that brought no other bids but Genting’s. A county-funded consultant’s report concluded extending Metromover from downtown would generate more riders, and Levine Cava said she’d prefer that option for the long-delayed “Baylink” transit route.
“Unfortunately, the project has ethical problems,” and the review of the proposal would extend into the term of the new mayor, Levine Cava said, using the feminine Spanish word for mayor — alcaldesa. “It would probably be best to follow the recommendation from studies that say we should extend the Mover.”
Bovo didn’t weigh in on the merits of moving forward with monorail but said a transit venture with a private company and private financing can provide the county benefits. He said he’s not ready to find faults with the potential transit fix.
“I think we should wait for the mayor to finish his analysis so he could present it to the commission,” he said. “Then we can review it.”
This story was originally published September 23, 2020 at 8:13 PM.
