What did four years of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava mean for Miami-Dade County’s budget?

Running for her first term as Miami-Dade County’s mayor in 2020, Daniella Levine Cava promised to steer local government onto a more responsive track captured by the Democrat’s campaign slogan that year: “A mayor who cares.”

As she seeks reelection Aug. 20 against a GOP-heavy field of challengers, the former social worker and child-advocacy lawyer has put her stamp on county government with a number of high-profile programs and new positions.

After calling affordable housing a crisis in Miami-Dade in 2022, Levine Cava created a grant program to fund lawyers for low-income tenants fighting eviction from landlords over unpaid rent and other alleged lease violations. In Levine Cava’s 2025 budget proposal, the program costs $1 million, on top of $10 million in 2022 for landlords who agreed to keep middle-class rents flat for three years.

“It’s not just people at the low end of the economic spectrum. It’s the middle-class people who are being priced out,” Levine Cava said in a recent interview. “I have spent a lifetime working on that issue.”

Levine Cava’s $12.7 billion budget proposal for 2025 has nearly $3 million for a youth summer jobs program aimed at reducing crime in low-income neighborhoods. In 2022, her budget transferred four Social Services staff to activate Miami-Dade’s Office of New Americans, which helps immigrants pursue U.S. citizenship.

Miami-Dade now has a chief heat officer earning $174,000 a year with the mission of trying to mitigate the ill effects of South Florida’s climate — a post that one of Levine Cava’s Republican rivals, Miami Lakes Mayor Manny Cid, has vowed to eliminate if elected, as part of a promise to reverse the incumbent’s expansion of county government spending.

“All of those [positions] that came in that don’t provide direct quality of life to our residents, they’re all gone,” Cid said during a July 17 meeting with the Miami Herald Editorial Board. “The focus has to be on those middle-class residents who can no longer continue to live here.”

Levine Cava took office in November 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic had shut down much of the hospitality industry. But federal aid dollars under both the Trump and Biden administrations cushioned Miami-Dade from revenue shortfalls, with more than $1 billion flowing through the county’s budgets since 2020.

Since then, spending has increased faster than it did under her Republican predecessor, Carlos Gimenez, a two-term mayor who was term limited in 2020 and now represents the Miami suburbs in Congress. Miami-Dade is projected to spend about $560 per resident in 2025, up nearly 8% after four years, according to county budget forecasts.

In 2021, when Gimenez’s final budget was in place, the county was spending $519 per resident, an increase of just 5% over four years.

The four budgets Levine Cava submitted in her first term offer a look at what’s changed under her tenure and what has not.

Some highlights include:

More sewage spending under orders to stop polluting Biscayne Bay

Levine Cava dubbed herself the “Water Warrior” of the 2020 campaign, and the only Democrat in the 2024 mayoral field has presided over an uptick in spending on the county’s failing sewage system. The system is under a 2014 federal court order to reduce pollution into Biscayne Bay caused by pipe leaks and spills from wastewater plants.

Between 2021 and 2024, the county recorded spending about $909 million in completed sewage projects, according to budget documents. In the prior four years, when Levine Cava was a county commissioner and Gimenez was mayor, the county spent about $654 million on sewage projects. One factor driving the acceleration: state legislation requiring Miami-Dade and other counties to eliminate pumping treated wastewater into the ocean by 2026. Spending on complying with that legislation approached $200 million between 2021 and 2024, compared to a little over $40 million during Gimenez’s final term.

County government workers earn more under Levine Cava

The county’s workforce grew faster under Levine Cava than it did under Gimenez: up 9.2% over the last four years to more than 31,000 positions. Under Gimenez, who is now representing Florida’s 28th Congressional District, the workforce grew by about 6.8% during his final four years in office, according to county budget summaries. Some departments that saw above-average hiring under Levine Cava: Parks, Human Services and Aviation, home to Miami International Airport.

Unions representing most of the county’s workers are backing Levine Cava’s reelection, and her administration negotiated contracts with raises for the workforce. Levine Cava’s first budget had new union agreements that gave workers an extra $249 million over three years, according to a 2021 analysis. In 2020, the average worker earned about $72,300 a year. Now it’s about $96,100, according to the latest budget summary. That’s a 33% increase over four years.

Similar average-pay figures weren’t available for Gimenez’s tenure, but the former mayor criticized what he sees as county bureaucracy growing too quickly under his successor.

The current $8 billion operating budget for Miami-Dade — which mostly covers payroll of workers but doesn’t include spending on roads, bridges, buildings or other projects — is up $2.3 billion since Levine Cava took office.

Gimenez served as mayor for nine years after taking office in 2011 in a recall election amid backlash from a tax-rate increase by the mayor at the time, Carlos Alvarez. Gimenez reversed the rate increase in 2012 with an austerity budget, and it took five years for the operating budget to get back to where it was under Alvarez. Overall, operating expenses grew less than $1 billion under Gimenez.

“She increased the budget more in four years than I did in nine,” Gimenez said in an interview. “Spending is out of control.”

Levine Cava criticized the Gimenez administration for neglecting county infrastructure spending throughout his tenure — including on failing escalators and elevators at Miami International Airport and on the county’s sewage system and sewage-treatment plants.

“My predecessor did not invest in these things,” she told the Editorial Board last month during a discussion on sewage upgrades. “Maybe the budget was lower because he didn’t do so ... We have to address these things timely.”

Lower tax rates but county tax bills inching up as usual

Miami-Dade rarely alters its property-tax rates, so inflation is the main factor in how much the yearly county tax bill changes for the typical homeowner. In Florida, a home can only see its assessed value climb by the inflation rate or 3%, whichever is lower that year.

With inflation high for most of her first term, Levine Cava secured 1% reductions in county tax rates in 2023 and 2024. That still resulted in slightly higher bills for the typical homeowner. But in the long run, the property-tax picture remained mostly the same over the last eight years.

A homeowner with a property assessed at $133,000 in 2016 saw their tax bill increase 14.7% in the four years before Levine Cava took office. After four years of Levine Cava budgets, the same bill would have increased 14.2%, according to Miami Herald calculations.

More dollars for Miami-Dade jails

Spending at the county’s jail system picked up speed under Levine Cava. The Corrections Department’s budget grew 36% in Levine Cava’s first term, including a proposed $523 million spending plan for the jails she submitted in July ahead of a final commission vote that’s scheduled for later this fall.

While the number of positions on the Corrections payroll remained flat, Levine Cava said her administration boosted wages for officers to fill vacant positions and cut back on overtime within the jails. Payroll costs grew 33% in Corrections during Levine Cava’s first term, compared to 15% in the prior four years.

County jails have been under federal supervision since 2013, and the Justice Department told a judge last year Miami-Dade has made enough progress to wind down the monitoring. Levine Cava said the boost in payroll spending helped mitigate some of the ongoing issues at the county’s jail systems, where officers were overworked and leaving for other jobs.

“We had mandatory overtime. People were not able to go home to their families. Sometimes they would do two shifts, and then be told they had to do a third shift,” Levine Cava said in an interview. “It was causing morale problems, which then were leading to dangerous conditions in the jails.”

Regulatory spending up after Surfside condo collapse

In the years after the condo collapse in Surfside, the Levine Cava administration has beefed up spending on county employees who oversee building safety and construction codes. The code compliance division grew by nearly 50% since 2020. Staffing at the county division that regulates pollution and other environmental issues is up about 20%.

Both divisions are part of the Regulatory and Economic Resources Department, which has seen its budget grow an average of 11% a year since Levine Cava took office, up from roughly 5% per year in the prior four years.

Larger budgets at the top

While Levine Cava serves as the county’s top administrator, Miami-Dade’s legislative arm boosted its staff and resources under her budgets. The number of employees working directly for the 13 commissioners increased 50% over the last four years to nearly 300, and the budget is up 75% to $46 million.

Commission jobs grew by just 30% under the prior four years. Commissioners have final approval over the Miami-Dade budget, and the board submits its annual budget to the mayor to be part of that year’s spending proposal.

Levine Cava has grown her office too, with the mayor’s staff up 22% to 50 positions and the budget nearly doubled to almost $10 million since she won the 2020 election.

Levine Cava’s latest financial disclosure form lists a net worth of $13 million, mostly through investments. She reduced her salary to $200,000 when she took office. Gimenez earned about $250,000 annually when his second term ended after lifting part of a pay cut he imposed on himself in 2011 from Alvarez’s take-home pay of about $360,000.

While the mayor earns less, her staff earns significantly more. The 41 employees assigned to Gimenez’s office in 2020 earned an average of $77,000 a year, based on county salary figures. Under Levine Cava, the average employee at the mayor’s office is earning $123,000.