Miami-Dade commissioner drops plan to strip transit board of key oversight
The independent board created to oversee Miami-Dade County’s transportation tax is on track to keep its main oversight power after a county commissioner said she would rework legislation to weaken it.
Created in 2002, the Citizens Independent Transportation Trust (CITT) board was part of a package of projects and spending controls commissioners approved ahead of the referendum creating the “half-penny” sales tax that generates nearly $400 million a year for transportation.
Recent legislation sponsored by Commissioner Eileen Higgins would have repealed portions of the 2002 law that requires a two-thirds vote by the County Commission to overrule spending recommendations by the oversight board. Instead, commissioners could override the board with just a majority vote, ending the panel’s main check on the commission’s ability to spend the half-percent sales tax voters approved.
“My concern is the item guts the CITT,” Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins said at Monday’s meeting.
After other commissioners objected, Higgins said she would amend her legislation to keep the requirement for a two-thirds commission vote to override the CITT board.
“I can read a room,” Higgins said during the board’s Transportation, Mobility and Planning Committee meeting.
Higgins, chair of the committee, said she would rework her ordinance to only tweak existing rules for CITT that didn’t attract controversy, such as eliminating required review of transportation projects that don’t use the sales tax. She said her aim is to eliminate roadblocks to contract approvals as Miami-Dade pursues more federal transit dollars from the Biden administration and the 2021 federal infrastructure law..
“We cannot be slow about procurement in transportation. Because we will miss this money,” Higgins said in an interview last week. “If we’re one year late, we’re too late.”
The CITT board fought the original Higgins legislation, urging commissioners to reconsider the proposed changes.
“I’m disappointed that there’s legislation that would weaken the CITT’s oversight,” Oscar Braynon, a retired county administrator who now serves as chair of the CITT board, said last week. “I think it sends a message to voters that you can vote on one thing, but they will do another.”
Commissioners appointed Braynon and most of the other 14 members of the Transportation Trust board, which meets monthly to consider spending requests by administrators for large- and small-scale projects.
Even with billions of dollars generated since voters approved the new tax, most of the transit projects touted during the campaign remain on the drawing board, including Metrorail extensions north and south and a rail link to Miami Beach.
The override power is rarely exercised. A scuffle over Metrorail funding in 2019 was believed to be the first time CITT board members tried to reject a Transportation Department spending recommendation, triggering a possible showdown with commissioners and the potential for a two-thirds override vote. But the controversy fizzled when the CITT board backed off.
Shaan Patel, interim executive director of the Transit Alliance advocacy group, which receives county funding, said the organization supports removing a layer of authority over the tax.
“While we believe the CITT was a well-intentioned oversight board,” he said, “many of these types of oversight only serve to create roadblocks to projects and solutions.”
Javier Betancourt, the board’s director, said the panel plays a key role in preserving trust that the transportation tax is being spent appropriately. “We keep the process honest,” he said.
This story was originally published January 7, 2023 at 10:15 AM.