Two Miami-Dade messes, two government failures. Here's what to know | Opinion

The Miami Herald Editorial Board called out government missteps on two fronts last week — a PortMiami fuel yard on Fisher Island and an immigration detention center in the Everglades shrouded in secrecy. The editorials raise hard questions about accountability, transparency and what happens when officials act first and explain later.

Here are key takeaways:

• Miami-Dade commissioners voted 11-1 Tuesday to pursue eminent domain to seize a privately owned fuel yard on Fisher Island that’s crucial for keeping PortMiami’s cruise ships fueled.
• The Editorial Board blamed the administration of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava for the county’s missteps. The county failed to buy the 10-acre property when it was for sale. The new owners — including developers Russell Galbut and the Related Group — bought the land for about $180 million and now are asking $400 million to sell it to the county, a price Commissioner Keon Hardemon called “prohibitive”.
• Royal Caribbean CEO Jason Liberty warned commissioners that without the fuel yard, the future of one of the county’s largest economic engines would be “precarious.”
• Meanwhile, inmates at Alligator Alcatraz have been moved to other facilities for “safety” reasons as hurricane season approaches — a justification that “strains credulity” given the center was hastily built in the Everglades last July during hurricane season, the Editorial Board argues.
• The detention facility is projected to cost about $1 billion, and the state has received only a fraction of promised federal reimbursement, with secrecy and lack of transparency as hallmarks of the operation from the start.
• If the site is emptied, Gov. Ron DeSantis owes Floridians answers about cleanup of the seized Dade-Collier airstrip, where environmental groups argue the state built “a secret gulag in the Everglades” without permits or environmental review.

This report was produced with the assistance of a proprietary tool powered by artificial intelligence and using our own originally reported, written and published content. It was reviewed and edited by our journalists.