FIU study on Miami-Dade government spending should be part of transparency effort | Opinion

A contentious budget season may have ended recently, but for Miami-Dade County and local governments throughout the state, the struggle to prioritize spending has just begun.

Miami-Dade leaders agreed to a $12.9 billion budget for the new fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. Although the county reportedly faced a $402 million shortfall at one point, commissioners avoided many tough choices about cutting programs and services by tapping reserves and finding unused money. That financial salvation is not likely to be available year after year.

Neither can the county rely on the kind of revenue growth it saw in recent years.

A new study by Florida International University’s Jorge M. Perez Metropolitan Center shows that Miami-Dade’s operating budget grew 42.2% during the five-year period from 2020 to 2025, far outpacing South Florida’s rate of inflation of 28.9% during the same period.

The biggest budgetary dollar increases went to fire and rescue, water and sewer, transportation and public works and non-departmental budgets, according to the study. The largest percentage increases went to the Miami-Dade Advocacy Trust, Public Housing & Community Development, the Office of the Mayor and the Board of County Commissioners.

“With many counties and municipalities facing revenue shortfalls, we thought it was important to analyze how their financial picture has changed during the last few years,” says Howard Frank, director of the Metropolitan Center and author of numerous studies on local government budgeting.

Further complicating the budgetary issue for counties is a movement in Tallahassee to eliminate or restructure the property taxes that contribute to the operating revenues of many local governments.

The FIU study looked at how much Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties each rely on property taxes. It showed that during the last five years Palm Beach slightly reduced its financial dependence on property taxes, while Miami-Dade’s reliance on property taxes slightly increased, now representing about 37% of its operating budget.

It is obvious that Miami-Dade government will need to prioritize how and where it spends its money. The outcome will be the result of a democratic process that will depend on all stakeholders having clear and transparent information about the county’s finances.

Unfortunately, obtaining a clear picture of such information is murky at best. Yes, much of the data is publicly available but not all of it. Furthermore, lax standardization in reporting methods makes it difficult to truly grasp and compare the financial condition of many local governments.

And it’s not just an information problem — it’s a communication problem. The information is not communicated in a way that makes sense to most residents. In short, you are more likely to understand the finances of a public company than you are to decipher the finances at your county hall.

It doesn’t have to be that way. The FIU study was an initial effort to see trends and patterns that stakeholders, decision makers and taxpayers will need for making sound choices. Much deeper and more insightful analysis is possible. Nor should this effort for greater transparency and clarity be a one-time project.

Instead, it should be part of an ongoing effort to understand and track how our local governments are financially managed. Doing so could go a long way in preventing them from having a budgetary crisis in the first place.

Jacqueline Bueno Sousa is a courtesy faculty research fellow with the FIU Metropolitan Center, South Florida’s urban think tank. She was a Miami Herald columnist from 2009 to 2011. She is also a former writer with the Wall Street Journal.