FTX arena deal includes cash for commissioners. Don’t let it turn into a slush fund | Editorial

Under the deal announced this week to rename the AmericanAirlines Arena for a little-known cryptocurrency exchange called FTX, Miami-Dade County’s 13 commissioners would each get a yearly chunk of cash to spend in their districts under the vague guise of combating gun violence or promoting economic prosperity.

Those are worthwhile goals, zero argument. But those feel-good labels are so broad that they leave allocation of the money — which could amount to more than $100,000 per commissioner, though the deal is still being negotiated — wide open to abuse.

There are unanswered questions, too. How will gun-violence or economic prosperity organizations in the districts apply for the money? Leaving it up to a commissioners’ whims to dole out the money risks setting up a system of political favors that could last for 19 long years, the length of deal with FTX. And why the rush to close a deal that would link the Miami Heat’s home court with an exotic financial instrument? It took a Miami Herald public records request to get the details of the proposal.

There are arguments on the larger question of whether the individual commission districts should get a cut of the money at all. Neighborhood programs on gun control and prosperity are important issues. So are countywide ills — the sewer system and septic tanks, for example — that might benefit if all of the money went into a more general budget. Miami-Dade can certainly use the money, especially as it emerges from a pandemic, in whatever shape the deal finally winds up.

Another consideration: If commissioners divert, say, $4 million a year in naming-rights revenue to individual districts under this proposal, that means a total of $90 million less, over the 19 years of the agreement, goes into the county’s main hotel-tax budget. That budget funds such institutions as Zoo Miami and the Arsht Center. Again, the deal is not signed yet, but it’s worth discussing the trade-offs that are built into it.

If county commissioners want to control a portion of the money and add it to their annual budgets, which are now about $1.2 million each, they need a plan that is open to public scrutiny. Besides simply accounting for the cash, they’ll need safeguards built in to show the public they’re serious about preventing abuse.

When commissioners take up the issue again on Friday, they need to give voters a lot more reassurances about how they’ll spend this windfall of cash. Otherwise, it’s just a slush fund by another name.

This story was originally published March 25, 2021 at 2:10 PM.