‘We need to scale back’: After a flush 1st term, Miami-Dade mayor warns of lean times

In her first term, Miami-Dade’s mayor used federal COVID dollars and extra revenue from a real estate boom to fund tax breaks and spending increases.

Now preparing the debut budget of her second term, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava is warning of leaner times ahead as revenue growth cools and the higher spending from recent years threatens a fiscal squeeze.

“I fully recognize the hard work and difficult decisions ahead,” she wrote in a March 7 memo to department heads announcing austerity measures and asking for potential spending cuts. “We must be proactive as we wisely manage our resources to avoid even harder decisions in the future.”

Levine Cava won’t release her 2026 budget proposal until the summer, but the latest forecast from her administration shows a $48 million gap between expected tax revenues and countywide spending next year.

In the March 7 memo, she imposed a hiring freeze and paused raises for some county managers. Levine Cava also asked department heads to submit budgets with 10% cuts — reductions that would be the sharpest pullback in county spending since the aftermath of the 2008 housing crash.

For now, the spending cuts are just a budget exercise as Levine Cava and her deputies decide what kind of a spending plan to send to county commissioners in July. All signs point to the 2026 budget being the most challenging one yet for the Democrat and former social worker who ran on the slogan “A mayor who cares” and took office promising a more responsive county government.

With $1 billion in federal aid flowing through the county budget since 2020, Levine Cava had extra money to boost spending and services. Real estate values soared through the pandemic too, with the value of the county’s property tax base up 40% since 2021, compared to growth of 19% over the prior four years.

In the March 7 memo, she noted there has been extra spending tied to Miami-Dade’s new form of government after last fall’s state-mandated elections for sheriff, tax collector and elections supervisor — positions that previously reported to the mayor.

Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz (R) wants an extra $50 million over what commissioners approved in Levine Cava’s 2025 budget for the Sheriff’s Office, and Tax Collector Dariel Fernandez (R) is retaining a portion of the county’s property-tax revenue to fund improved DMV services. That could cost Miami-Dade’s countywide budget about $10 million next year, based on the most recent estimate from Fernandez’s office.

But spending also grew steadily in Levine Cava’s first term, including through union contracts expected to add more than $100 million in payroll costs next year, according to administration memos summarizing the three-year labor deals approved in 2023 and 2024.

Commissioners last fall approved Levine Cava’s $12.7 billion budget for 2025, an 8% increase from the prior year. The overall budget covers big sources of government spending that are funded by fees paid by users, like Miami International Airport and the Water and Sewer and Solid Waste departments.

Property taxes are the main source of revenue for the $2.5 billion general fund within the budget that covers core countywide functions, including police and jails. That’s up 46% over the last four years, compared to a 25% increase in the prior four years under Levine Cava’s Republican predecessor, Carlos Gimenez, who is now a member of Congress.

Along with higher spending, Levine Cava’s prior budgets dialed back the amount of revenue growth available for future budgets.

Flush with revenue in 2022 and 2023, Levine Cava won support from commissioners for two 1% reductions to the countywide property tax rate.

While property-tax revenue continued growing from higher real estate values, the rate cuts make the budget process more challenging. If the countywide tax rate was at its 2021 level of $466 per $100,000 of taxable value, Miami-Dade would have another $41 million to spend this year. The current rate is $457 per $100,000 in taxable value.

Federal dollars in recent years helped Miami-Dade increase spending while lowering tax rates.

COVID aid began flowing when Levine Cava was still a county commissioner in 2020. Some emergency aid programs supported specific county functions, like air travel at Miami International Airport and the transit system in Transportation and Public Works.

Other pandemic dollars landed in county coffers with few limitations on how they were spent. That included roughly $528 million from the American Rescue Plan stimulus legislation approved when Joe Biden was president.

The latest county summary of how that federal money was spent since 2021 shows some of the funds went to one-time expenses related to infrastructure projects, including extending the county’s sewer system to homes and businesses using septic tanks ($10 million), the purchase of housing complexes for Miami-Dade’s homeless agency ($6 million) and upgrading traffic lights ($5 million).

COVID dollars also funded county services and grants that needed to be replaced by Miami-Dade dollars to continue. That included $57 million to prevent higher trash bills by subsidizing the county’s Solid Waste budget, $9 million for programs aimed at reducing gun violence, $5 million for workforce training and $1 million for a countywide savings account program for families saving for college.

“It’s a weird thing to say we were prosperous during COVID, but we were,” Carladenise Edwards, Levine Cava’s chief administrative officer, told commissioners during a meeting last week of the county’s Appropriations Committee. “Now we are in a period of austerity. We don’t have the resources we had to do the things we were doing. So we need to scale back.”

This story was originally published March 17, 2025 at 3:50 PM.