Category Archives: Miami

Coral Gables Commission Candidates Give Their Top 3 Issues (Updated With All Candidates)

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

The Coral Gables Commission election is scheduled for April 9, now less than a month away.

I wrote the same email to all the candidates in mid-February, asking for their views on what they saw as the top three issues:

Dear [Candidate Name]:

I am a professor of law at the University of Miami and run a blog at https://www.discourse.net which, I’m told, many members of the University community look to for guidance regarding local elections.

As a resident of Coral Gables, I plan to start writing soon about the upcoming elections. I would be very grateful if you could help me by telling me a little about your candidacy.

In particular, I’d be grateful for URL of your official campaign web site, and your answer, on the record, to the following question:

“What do you see as the three most important issues facing Coral Gables at present, and what do you believe we should do about each of them?”

I hope to publish the responses from each of the candidates.

Thank you very much for your assistance with this project.

Yours Sincerely,

I used the email address in their official candidate filing. Not all responded, so a week later I sent it again, using addresses on their campaign pages if I could find it. I sent a third request — and made a followup phone call — yesterday, Monday 3/11. Even so, PJ Mitchell never answered at all, and although both the Cabrera and Lago campaigns promised answers I never received them. I look forward to adding them if they send them in later. [Update #1: Commissioner Cabrera sent in his list and it is now included below.] [Update #2 Vince Lago sent in his comments 3/13] [Update #3: it turns out that PJ Mitchell did respond in a timely way but my spam filter ate it. Everyone is now included below.] (Further comments from candidates and their supporters are also welcome in the comments.)

The candidates’ replies are below, in alphabetical order within each of the three groups. I will update this post as and when other replies trickle in. I also plan to go to the remaining forums, life permitting, and will post my voting suggestions nearer to election day.

Continue reading →

Posted in Coral Gables | 1 Comment

Coral Gables Candidate Issues Round-up Coming Real Soon Now

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

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Guide to Coral Gables Candidates Forums (Updated)

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

…or is that Fora? Anyway, based on emails and comments to my earlier posting on the elections, here’s what I think I know about the schedule for candidate debates for the 2013 Coral Gables Commission and Mayoralty elections:

Ponce Business Association. To be held at Coral Gables Congregational Church. Doors open 6:45; debate starts at 7pm.

  • Thursday 3/7 Group 3 Commission seat
  • Thursday 3/14 Group 2 Commission seat
  • Thursday 3/21 Mayoral candidates

Latin Builders Association, 3/22 location Cancelled

Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce. University of Miami, Bank United Fieldhouse Tuesday 3/26 6pm. All races. They say they are inviting questions to be sent to events@coralgableschamber.org.

Unfortunately, I’m going to miss the Group 3 debate on 3/7 because I’ll at an academic conference. If someone reading this — who is not affiliated with any of the campaigns — is planning to go and would like to volunteer to do a guest posting, please get in touch.

Meanwhile, my emails to candidates asking for issues statements has only borne partial fruit. Looks like I may need to follow up with actual phone calls….

Posted in Coral Gables | 2 Comments

Coral Gables is Having an Election

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

In keeping with its unfortunate pattern of having elections when nobody else does 1 the City of Coral Gables is having an election April 9, 2013, for three seats on the Commission (one of whom is the Mayor who has a shorter term than other Commissioners). The electorate is small, as is the City: out of a population of about 48,000 there were 29,355 registered voters in Coral Gables as of 6/25/12. Voter registration for the coming election closes March 9 (29 days prior to the election).

Having the election in April of an off year may increase the odds that participants are higher-information or more motivated voters, but it surely must cost more than adding a few lines to the November ballot. I’d also think it tends to depress turnout — which could I suppose be seen as a feature by insiders.

The candidates in Group I (Mayor, two year term) are Ralph Cabrera and incumbent James Cason. Cabrera is an incumbent Commissioner but is term-limited for running to retain his current seat. Cabrera’s challenges in this campaign will be making a positive case for himself as a better choice than Cason. Although I’m no great fan of Cason’s, I would imagine few voters could identify much they think he’s done wrong; of those things, how many would Cabrera have done differently? Just saying that we’re better off with a long-term resident — Cabrera’s opening line — isn’t going to cut it. Suggestions floating around that Cabrera is former Mayor Slesnick’s revenge candidate probably won’t help much either. On the other hand, if you are like me, you might be put off by Cason’s anti-city-worker vibe, which manifested itself in Cason’s masterminding unilateral cuts to the City’s police pensions. Then again, I imagine that many city voters may approve.

Candidates in Group II (Commissioner, four year term) are Marlin Holland Ebbert, Ross Hancock, and Vicente Carlos Lago. Lago has the most signs in my neighborhood, possibly because he’s moving into a house down the street in a few weeks. Ross Hancock is the guy who came from nowhere to get within 1% — 2000 votes — of unseating Erik Freisen, our appallingly bad and until then seemingly impregnable State Rep., in the November 2012 election.

Group III (Commissioner, four year term) has five candidates: ran in 2011 and got 100 votes.

I may be a motivated voter but, like almost everyone I know in Coral Gables, I don’t start out as as particularly well informed about most of the candidates in this election — other than maybe the incumbents and repeat candidates. So far the few mailers we have had to the house are the kind consultants suggest candidates use as a get-acquainted device: they are all biography and civic memberships, and have nice pictures of the candidates with multi-generational families. They tell me almost nothing that I for one want to know.

So, in an effort to find out what I want to know, I’ve written to each of the candidates to ask them what they think the biggest issues are and what they would do about them. I’ll report here with the answers if I get them.

(Anyone know when the candidates’ forums will be held?)

  1. If memory serves, candidate and now Commissioner Frank C. Quesada promised to try to fix that?[↩]
Posted in Coral Gables | 4 Comments

About that Stadium

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

Just about everything that is wrong with the discussion about the Miami Dolphins’ attempt to hold up the taxpayers of Miami-Dade county for a giant bit of corporate welfare is visible from the first sentence of Sunday’s Miami Herald story on the leadtrial balloon:

The Miami Dolphins have agreed to seek voter approval of tax dollars for Sun Life Stadium, with team executives dropping their objections to a referendum on the controversial plan, sources close to the matter said Saturday.

The Dolphins have “agreed” to let voters be consulted directly! Get that? We can’t have a referendum unless they agree? It’s as if Miami-Dade were negotiating with another sovereignty — a county in Texas, or a country in South America. Next if we are lucky we will read that Dolphins have “agreed” to follow certain locals laws that they happen to approve of.

Sorry guys. Taxpayer-funded stadiums are just about always a bad idea. Here are just some of the reasons:

  • Owners game the system, pitting municipalities against each other, and abandoning cities that don’t subsidize them … and sometimes abandoning those that subsidize them if some other town makes a better taxpayer-subsidized offer.
  • The economics behind the supposed financial benefits is highly suspect: mostly they do not exist. See Dennis Coats & Brad Humphreys, The Stadium Gambit and Local Economic Development, 23:2 Regulation 15 (2000). In any case, there are many other capital improvements one could make with that kind of money that would show a much larger return. (The right question isn’t “will this show a benefit” but rather “compared to what”.)
  • In addition to the teams’ multi-millionaire (or billionaire) owners, the big winners are the corporations and .1%ers who get to use the skyboxes added to the stadium.
  • Ticket prices to the events are beyond the means of many of the very taxpayers who have to pay for the project.

In addition to those generic problems, this particular stadium upgrade, now, is a super-bad idea for these extra reasons:

  • To whatever limited extent the area will benefit from increased tourism revenue, Broward county will get about half the benefit — but the savvy authorities in Broward have said they won’t pay a penny (and there will be no referendum there, either!).
  • Super Bowl weekend will overlap the Boat Show, when hotels are sold out anyway. Not only will there be no extra benefit to the area in terms of occupancy but there will be chaos. I suppose there may also be price gouging, which might feel like a benefit to the hoteliers in the short run, but that just risks driving the Boat Show away in the long run.
  • Our elected officials can’t be trusted to negotiate a decent deal — or to ensure taxpayers benefit from any profits.

This proposal is worse than socialism: in Miami we socialize the (high) costs of stadiums, but privatize the benefits.

Here’s a modest proposal: How about, as a condition of any proposal that we pay for this turkey, we require that 15% of the tickets — including some of the good seats — be given away free by lottery (limited to local taxpayers) for every home game?

Posted in Econ & Money, Miami | 1 Comment

MIA Customer Response In Action (Not)

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Michael Froomkin

Back in October I wrote about how I was emailing the honcho at MIA who seemed to be responsible for kicking Boingo out of the airport (See And Another Thing (No Boingo Wifi at MIA).)

For the record, MDAD Deputy Director of Business Retention and Development Miguel Southwell never replied to my email.

Posted in Miami | 1 Comment