Who controls the Dolphin Expressway and can spend $200M in tolls? MDX goes to court

Miami-Dade County’s warring toll boards are heading back to court as lawyers for the county-backed Miami-Dade Expressway Authority announced a suit to block a state-backed board attempting to take over five expressways generating more than $200 million in revenue a year.

On Thursday, the Expressway Authority —a toll board formed by the county in the 1990s and controlled by appointees from the County Commission — announced it filed suit against the state-backed Greater Miami Expressway Agency, created by Florida law in 2019.

The litigation escalates the extraordinary power struggle underway between County Hall in Miami and the Statehouse in Tallahassee, as a county toll board declared dissolved by the Florida legislature sues to block votes by four appointees of Gov. Ron DeSantis to a state board declared dissolved by the Miami-Dade County Commission.

Both boards now have rival executive directors claiming to control the Dolphin Expressway, State Road 112 and three other toll roads that serve as some of the busiest commuting routes in Miami-Dade. There are dueling nicknames too, with the state-backed board informally called the GMX to rival the county-backed board’s well-known alias as the MDX.

A copy of the lawsuit MDX said it filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court claims the state law “is a direct challenge to Miami-Dade Home Rule constitutional rights,” referring a clause in the Florida constitution granting Miami-Dade more autonomy than other counties in the state. The litigation was not yet listed on the court system’s online docket Thursday morning.

What’s the MDX and what’s the GMX?

In the suit, MDX states that since Miami-Dade formed the Expressway Authority in 1994 and used toll money to purchase the highways from Florida, the Legislature has no authority to dissolve the agreement with the 2019 law.

The suit names four DeSantis board members as co-defendants and asks a judge to declare the county toll board the owner of the five toll roads that make up the Greater Miami Expressway Authority system, including the Gratigny, Don Shula and Snapper Creek expressways.

The 2019 law was the culmination of a six-year battle by Republican lawmakers from Miami-Dade — including Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, a former state representative — against the MDX after the board approved toll increases the state office holders opposed.

While the Miami-Dade County Commission controls a majority of seats on the pre-existing board, DeSantis controls five of the nine seats on the new board.

The stand-off has so far shown the limits of the DeSantis partisan influence in Miami-Dade, with Republicans on the county commission, Joe Martinez and Jose “Pepe” Diaz, leading the effort to block GMX. Along with serving as chairman of the Miami-Dade County Commission, Diaz also was named chairman of the MDX earlier this year.

With two governments fighting over control, MDX, which continues running the expressways, has been unable to borrow money for new projects or improvements, according to a recent analysis by the Fitch credit-rating firm.

What’s next for the 836 extension?

The firm assigned a negative outlook on MDX’s financial prospects, citing uncertainty from “high levels of political influence.” The clash has also frozen efforts by MDX to extend the 836 southwest into Kendall, a $1 billion project that DeSantis supports.

On Thursday morning, the DeSantis-picked GMX board meet in a state transportation office in Fort Lauderdale to avoid conflict with an ordinance Miami-Dade commissioners passed in May declaring the new toll board abolished.

Four GMX seats remain vacant after Miami-Dade commissioners refused to participate in naming board members to the agency.

Mariana “Marili” Cancio, a real estate lawyer in Miami, was elected chair of the new board, and vice chair went to Fatima Perez, a lobbyist for Koch Industries. The board voted to appoint as interim executive director Torey Alston, currently chief of staff to DeSantis Transportation Secretary Kevin Thibault.

Board members, including Richard Blanco and Rodolfo Pages, voted to instruct Alston to arrange a national search for a permanent director and to try and get the remaining seats filled by the County Commission and the county’s Transportation Planning Organization, where commissioners hold a majority of seats.

DeSantis versus Miami-Dade commissioners in MDX fight

DeSantis appoints four GMX seats, and a fifth member is a local state transportation administrator that reports to Thibault, Stacy Miller.

“I appreciate the opportunity to be moving forward, instead of looking back,” Miller said ahead of the vote to appoint Alston instead of asking MDX’s director, Javier Rodriguez, to move over to the new agency.

Rodriguez was briefly a target of the anti-MDX legislation, which at one point specified he would ineligible to run the new agency. Gene Stearns, the Miami lawyer representing MDX in the suit, called Thursday’s proceedings the actions of an agency with no authority over anything in Miami-Dade.

“GMX is a zombie agency,” he said in an MDX press release announcing the suit. Under the Florida Constitution, “only the County can determine who has the right to own and control MDX’s transportation assets.”

After the meeting, Cancio was asked what message she had for county commissioners trying to dissolve the board she now leads. “I look forward to working together,” she said.

This story was originally published October 28, 2021 at 1:20 PM.