Rebate checks for MDX toll payers are in the works — unless a judge intervenes
Miami-Dade County’s original toll agency, the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, plans to pay out $4.8 million in toll rebates at the end of 2021 — assuming another county toll authority created by state law doesn’t take over the checking account.
The obscure but high-stakes battle of competing toll authorities may be reaching a head as the board of the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority prepares to pay out a chunk of the cash that the new board, the Greater Miami Expressway Agency, would control if it takes MDX’s place.
“This is the right decision,” MDX chairman Jose “Pepe” Diaz, who is also chairman of the Miami-Dade County Commission, said in a statement.
This week, Diaz and the rest of MDX’s newly appointed board approved reviving a rebate program for frequent drivers on the expressways the agency has run since the 1990s: the Airport, Dolphin, Don Shula, Gratigny, and Snapper Creek.
The average driver would receive $70 from the $4.8 million program, which rebates a portion of tolls for participating drivers who paid at least $100 in MDX tolls since 2019. MDX’s Rewards Program required pre-registration when it was last active in 2019.
Tere Garcia said the checks would go out at the end of 2021, covering tolls paid between July 1, 2019 and June 30 of this year. Existing members can update their information between Aug. 2 and Sept. 7; new registrations aren’t allowed.
None of this would be unusual — MDX has been approving rebate programs for years — except that state law has already declared MDX abolished, and a new board is prepared to start running the same expressways under GMX. That hasn’t happened yet, with Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed the GMX bill into law, still needing to appoint a fifth GMX board member to create the quorum required to conduct business since the county won’t fill its designated seats.
The 2019 law, which already survived one court challenge, calls for the new GMX board to create a rebate program, too. Miami-Dade insists the law violates Florida’s Constitution, which grants Miami-Dade certain levels of independence to run its own affairs as a home-rule county.
MDX had been without a board as agency lawyers pressed a court fight to overturn the 2019 law. A judge allowed MDX staff to continue maintaining the expressways and collecting tolls while its lawsuit, filed against Florida’s Department of Transportation, continued. After MDX lost that suit in April, Miami-Dade commissioners took action to fill the board again and declare GMX an illegal entity.
County commissioners in May passed an ordinance attempting to abolish the GMX, then appointed Diaz and MDX’s other board members.
A spokesperson for Florida’s Transportation Department was not available for comment Friday.
Miami-Dade’s declaration of the end of GMX was seen as the prelude for the county itself to enter the legal fight over the 2019 law and make the kind of constitutional arguments over home rule that MDX couldn’t raise in its suit. The MDX rebate action could also prompt Florida or GMX board members to sue in an effort to block the action.
In an interview Friday, Diaz declined to comment on what might come next in the fight over GMX, an agency the county declared defunct.
“MDX is the entity. MDX is what’s running it,” Diaz said. “That’s what we’re dealing with.”
This story was originally published July 30, 2021 at 2:18 PM.