Category Archives: Miami

Already?

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

April 14 — just over two months away — there is going to be an election for Mayor of Coral Gables and for an open seat on the Coral Gables Commission. Vice Mayor William H. Kerdyk, Jr., who has been in office since 1995(!), is stepping down due to term limits.

So in a couple of weeks I’ll have to start paying attention to Coral Gables politics again. A lot has happened since the ’13 election.

[UPDATES: THERE ARE MORE CANDIDATES — See Fifth Candidate in CG Commission Race Group V and And Then There Were 6 and Contested Race in Group IV]

As usual, I’ll try to go to some candidates’ events (please post any info you have about where/when they are in the comments!), send the candidates an updated version of my questionnaire, and maybe even try to do a phone or in-person interview with each of them. Please use the comments below to suggest issues/questions I should be asking about.

Meanwhile, a key fact: Voter registration closing date is March 16, 2014.

The candidates

For Mayor (Group I, two year term): This is a rematch election between incumbent last election was fought over two main issues: Cason’s support for the then-City Manager Pat Salerno, and Cabrera’s claim that there had been an uptick in crime. Cason and his supporters ridiculed that claim, and he won re-election.

Funny thing, though–soon after the election it started to look like Cabrera was right all along. First City Manager Pat Salerno resigned after being caught hiding traffic accident data from the Commission (the underlying issue was planting of expensive and unnecessary palm trees – so Florida). Short of outright embezzlement (and we’ve had that in Coral Gables in the past), I can’t think of a better reason to get rid of a City Manager than hiding info from the Commission. 1

Then the Chief of Police I had got snookered about crime data like almost everyone else. Score another win for Ralph Cabrera!

But, wait a minute, a later data audit by the FBI (the FBI does data audits???) said the numbers were not cooked? Now I’m confused again… Expect to hear more about this during the campaign until we are all sick of it.

For Group IV (four year term): Frank Queseda is running unopposed. Once it was usual to speak of a Cason-Kerdyk-Quesada majority, but Queseda broke with Cason on the critical issue of ousting the City Manager after he was caught misinforming the Commission and, if memory serves, also broke with Cason on the decision to oust the Police Chief for faking traffic accident data.

For Group V (four year term): this is the seat Kerdyk is vacating. We are entitled to hope for an upgrade. There are four candidates:

Both PJ Mitchell and Norman Anthony Newell ran in Group III two years ago, in the election won by Pat Keon (49% of the vote). In that race Mr. Mitchell got 7.38% of the votes, Mr. Newell got 6.00%. Amazingly, perennial candidate Jackson Rip Holmes (1.32%) does not appear to be running this year.

Conducted in off years, Coral Gables elections can be low turnout affairs. Although there are more than 31,000 registered voters in Coral Gables, fewer than 7,200 voted in 2013. So every vote counts more than you might think. With multiple candidates in the race you don’t even need a majority to win. There’s no runoff, much less the instant runoff voting system I favor for multi-candidate elections.

Note: Just in case it is relevant I thought I should direct candidates and their friends to the House Rules on Coral Gables political coverage. Worth reading before you try to enlist me in sliming your opponents.

  1. Incidentally, as I understand it, Commissioner Vince Lago deserves a good share of the kudos for standing up for basic principles of honesty and good government and making Salerno go, which might be enough right there to get my vote when he runs for re-election.[↩]
Posted in Coral Gables | 2 Comments

Help Identify Miami’s Totemic Animal

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

Miami’s a tough challenge for a totemic animal – this place is a melting pot of not-very-melted elements. It’s South but not Southern. Cosmopolitan but, as the joke says, ‘so close to the United States’. Urban and sunbelt sprawl. And it could all be underwater in a couple of generations.

So. inspired by Sarah Lyall, Our Mascot Won’t Wear Wellies – Who Needs Paddington? Seeking a Mascot for New York City, I invite suggestion for Miami’s totemic animal.

Here are a few candidates to prime the pump:

  1. The alligator. Gator
    Case for    : We got lots of ’em. Can swim. Lots of sharp shiny teeth. It’s tough, it hangs around.  Lazes around most of the day, but can be really fast when it sees something it wants.
    Case against: Wrong sort of lounge lizard. Lives in the Everglades, not Miami. Too stupid.  Not just native to the region, has been around for millions of years unlike majority of locals who were born in another country. Totemic animal of U.F., which has nothing to do with South Florida.

  2. The pitbull.
    Case for:  Lots of sharp shiny teeth. It’s tough, and hangs around.
    Staffordshire Bull Terrier brindle portrait by Gemma Longman - Flickr. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://www.discourse.net/site/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/320px-Pitbull_7906724602-200x300.jpg

     Case against:  Can’t sing.  Too much of a horn dog.
  3. The Ibis.
    Case for: We got lots of ’em. Flighty. Can swim.
    white-ibisSebastian

    Case against: Small one gets confused with a duck. No teeth. Larger one scares small children. Larger one is already UM’s mascot, can’t do double-duty.

  4. BurnieThe Burnie.
    Case for: You look at it and think, what the Hell is that?  Has been described as “the Philly Phantic on an acid trip” which nods to Miami’s drug culture.
    Case against: Dumbest-looking mascot in the NBA. Already belongs to Miami Heat. Doesn’t even have a mouth, much less teeth.

  5. The Burmese Python.
    Copyright Todd Pierson 2008Case for: An exotic alien species destroying the local ecosystem. Semi-aquatic. Not only has teeth but can eat an alligator.
    Case against: Not named the Miami Python. It would be OK if it were called the Cuban Python, but Burma is just too remote from Miami.

What do you think our totemic animal should be?

Posted in Miami | Comments Off on Help Identify Miami’s Totemic Animal

Herald Buries the Lede

Posted on January 12, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

Deep in a Herald puff piece about how Coral Gables homeboy Jeb! Bush likes to play fast golf, we find this gem:

One reason Bush can play golf so quickly on Sundays is that there is nobody ahead of him slowing things down. Citing privacy concerns, Biltmore executives declined to say how the former governor ended up with the premiere tee time, followed by Miami-Dade’s top elected official. Owned by Coral Gables, the Biltmore course is public but also includes a membership option that the website says gives early access to tee-time reservations.

Such a mystery….

[Originally posted 1/12/15, reposted after my hosting service crashed and then restored (most of) the site from backup.]

Posted in 2016 Election, Coral Gables | Comments Off on Herald Buries the Lede

Oy Vey

Posted on November 5, 2014 by Michael Froomkin

The only candidate I voted for who got elected was the Property Appraiser?

Posted in 2014 Election, Miami | 3 Comments

Links to My Miami-Dade Voter’s Guide

Posted on October 25, 2014 by Michael Froomkin

(Sticky until election day).

Posted in 2014 Election, Miami | 1 Comment

2014 November Voting Guide (Part Two: Constitutional Amendments, Charter Amendments, and a Bond Issue)

Posted on October 20, 2014 by Michael Froomkin

This is part two of a two-part guide to the ballot in South Florida. Part One covered candidates on the 2014 ballot in Miami-Dade; this part looks at the three state-wide proposals to amend the Florida Constitution, at four proposals to amend the Miami-Dade County Charter, and a proposal for a bond issue.

Florida Constitutional Amendments

1- YES, 2-YES & 3-NO

No 1: Water and Land Conservation. (Full text.) Earmarking certain existing tax revenues for the environment. Vote for water conservation. We need it badly. This won’t directly raise taxes in that it just earmarks existing revenues. Money being fungible, it is of course possible that taxes might be raised to pay for something that these existing revenues might otherwise have been used for. Vote YES.

No. 2: Medical Marijuana. (Full text.) Very limited – too limited. Vote YES anyway.

No. 3: “Prospective Appointment of Certain judicial Vacancies,” AKA court-packing in some scenarios. (Full text.) The court appointment process ain’t broke: Vote NO

Seriously, why would we want a lame-duck governor doing the Florida Supreme Court appointments … here’s why and it isn’t pretty. As former Florida Supreme Court Justice Harry Lee Anstead explained, it’s a “partisan political power grab”:

In the past, Florida was hailed nationally as a model system for appointment of fair and impartial judges based solely on merit. It was perhaps the greatest legacy of the late Gov. Reubin Askew, who voluntarily gave up his sole authority to appoint judges in favor of a nonpartisan merit selection system based on his belief that “the judiciary is too important to be left to partisan patronage.”…

Now, instead of working to restore Askew’s nonpartisan merit system, the current legislative majority is seeking to accelerate a partisan political power grab of Florida’s judiciary at the highest level. They want to vest a lame-duck outgoing governor with the authority to fill three seats on the Supreme Court that become vacant after the governor’s term expires.

The sponsors of Amendment 3 say they are trying to eliminate confusion and an imaginary future constitutional crisis in the delay of a new governor making the appointments. Those claims are thin cover for continued improper political interference in our courts…

What Floridians are really being asked to eliminate is a critical protection Askew built into the system of merit selection and retention. When the system was adopted, it was built on two pillars of public input and accountability. In addition to requiring appointed judges to go before the public for merit retention at regular intervals, a governor seeking re-election could be held accountable at the ballot box for his appointments. That accountability vanishes if an outgoing governor makes the appointments.

The scheme proposed in Amendment 3 gives a departing governor the power to tip the scales of justice for partisan reasons on the way out the door — with impunity. And, therein lies the easily identified real intent of this amendment. Partisan advocates, frustrated by the public’s rejection of their attempt to remove these same three Florida justices in their retention elections in 2012, have audaciously found another scheme to achieve their goals of stacking the court politically.

It is a one-time gamble and a shortsighted strategy on multiple levels. First, it presumes Gov. Rick Scott is re-elected so that he can make the appointments at the end of his second term. More importantly, it cynically ignores the possibility that an informed Florida public will reject this blatant attempt to politicize the judiciary.

Of course if Crist wins in November and this passes, it will kind of blow up in their faces. I’d still be against it though, even if I knew that was going to happen.

County Questions

Vote NO on all four attempts to undermine Art. 7.

Amend Article 7 to allow Libraries in Parks? Sounds innocuous. But it could be the thin edge of the wedge on undermining green spaces in a town where every proposal is about less green space, or ignoring promises about old green spaces. Let’s fund the libraries we’ve got first. NO. Note also that Commissioner Esteban “Steve” Bovo proposed this – that can’t be good. And indeed it isn’t. No, indeed.

Exempt Miami Dade Regional Soccer Park from Article 7? Another attack on greenery. Well, actually this is about a former landfill that they want to open to a privately run soccer camp. So there’s less at stake here environmentally, but it seems a bit special-interest to me. NO, weakly.

Allow Campgrounds and Lodgers/Cabins in Camp Matecumbe? I couldn’t find much information on this other than this article which makes the development proposed in this County Question sound unattractive compared to the plan the locals want. Leaning NO, but I’m open to hearing the other side.

Exempt FIU from Art 7 to encourage their takeover of the Miami-Dade Youth Fair site? NO. Really, NO.

The whole local establishment is for this which tells you something not so wonderful about the establishment here. I’ve gotten robocalls and live calls too. But it’s a pig in a poke. To make this plan work work FIU would have to comply with a contractual requirement to find a new site for the Youth Fair – and there’s no obvious place for it. It would be folly to approve a project like this until we know where they are planing to send it And if anyone knows, they are not talking. Don’t encourage this sort of back-door governance. We have a right to know at least the basic facts about a deal before we are asked to OK it.

Funding new courthouse. This would authorize a $393 million bond issue, most of it for a new downtown courthouse. The old one is in terrible repair; it has leaks and mold. We need a new one. The price seems somewhat high; one could quibble as to how unrepairable the old building really is. But something needs doing, and this is something. I’m voting YES.

Posted in 2014 Election, Florida, Miami | 14 Comments