Miami Beach unfairly denied its voters a voice by killing homelessness tax ballot item | Opinion

Miami Beach commissioners decided Wednesday, more than halfway through the early voting period, to nullify votes already cast on a 1% food and beverage city tax for homeless and domestic violence services.

The 11th-hour move to rescind a question on the November ballot that would ask voters whether to authorize the tax smacks of an anti-democratic effort by commissioners to cancel a potential electoral outcome they disagree with.

The 4-3 vote to remove the measure from the ballot could have happened any time over the past year, long before mail ballots were sent and before early voting began in Miami-Dade County last Monday. The Miami Beach Commission originally voted to put the referendum on the ballot in July 2023 and a group of new commissioners was sworn into office last November. Yet the commission chose to wait until six days before Tuesday’s Election Day.

Some of the commissioners said they were not aware of the ballot measure until last month, the Herald reported. How could the city’s own elected officials not know about an election item as consequential as a new tax? That stretches credulity. And it’s no excuse for such poor timing, taking away the voices of 20,000 Beach residents who already cast ballots in good faith.

As the Herald reported, Commissioner David Suarez led the rescinding effort and said the tax would “transfer wealth from Miami Beach taxpayers to an unelected county organization,” the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, which provides services and long-term housing for the homeless. But all of Miami-Dade’s municipalities already levy the food and beverage tax, with the exception of Surfside, Miami Beach and Bal Harbour, where voters will decide on the tax in November.

The Editorial Board previously recommended voters in Bal Harbour and Miami Beach approve the tax.

Homelessness is a regional issue and Miami Beach, which recently began to crack down on the issue, with arrests of people who violate the city’s ban on “camping” in public places, should know that. Most of the services for that population, including shelters, are located over the causeway in the city of Miami.

Miami Beach has contributed lump sums to the Trust over the years and allocated funds to address homelessness on its own, but that is not the same as committing to join other local governments to look for countywide solutions for an issue that doesn’t respect municipal borders.

To be clear, Miami Beach commissioners have the right to oppose the 1% tax, which would apply to beverage sales at businesses that sell alcohol for on-premises consumption and have gross annual receipts above $400,000 (hotels and motels would have been exempt). But the right way to oppose an election item at this point is by campaigning against it, not using commissioners’ authority to tip the scale at the last minute. A law firm representing some city voters sent a letter to the county on Wednesday saying they planned to ask a judge to prevent Miami Beach from removing the ballot item.

The Herald reported that Mayor Steven Meiner, who cast the deciding vote to pull the ballot language, said he didn’t like that the “same players involved in the Homeless Trust” who have criticized the city’s arrests of homeless people were also asking voters to approve the tax. That seems retaliatory at best. Commissioners Joseph Magazine, elected last November, and Kristen Rosen Gonzalez also voted to rescind the question.

Miami Beach has taken some of the most draconian approaches to address homelessness, a sticky issue not easily solved with a single city ordinance. Wednesday’s commission vote should be followed up with a commitment to provide a recurring funding stream for long-term solutions to the problem, not just short-term thinking.

As Commissioner Alex Fernandez told his colleagues on Wednesday, according to the Herald: “I think we are sticking our head in the sand if we think we will arrest our way out of homelessness.”

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This story was originally published October 30, 2024 at 4:37 PM.