Miami-Dade Sheriff powers, costs split commission

In a special meeting to discuss the functions and responsibilities of to-be-elected county constitutional officers, Miami-Dade commissioners talked again about the future of the sheriff – still without a final decision.

In a one-hour debate about powers the incoming sheriff may have, Commissioner Joe A. Martinez and Jennifer Moon, former chief of policy and budgetary affairs for the county who now is serving as a policy advisor for the commission, detailed her reasons why keeping the police department under the purview of the sheriff would be the best budgetarily and operational decision.

Transferring the policing functions to the sheriff would only imply moving the budget from the county’s administration to the new office. “If the department is split, both entities [sheriff and police] would likely want to have more resources in order to have availability for certain types of activities, and that would also generate additional costs,” Ms. Moon said.

When the new Office of the Sheriff is created, keeping the police department under the purview of the mayor could unintentionally create a situation where all of the senior staff may remain on one side and all of the most junior people on the other, she continued.

The Legislature adopted a law this year allowing county sheriffs to move funds elsewhere within their budgets after the spending plans have been approved by county commissions, a decision that has raised concerns over the discretionary power those officials would have. “Truthfully, that is the power that any mayor has now or any leader of a county or of a city has now,” Ms. Moon said.

She also said having those powers granted to the elected leader is positive, and that the county was able to exercise that power when security issues arose in Metrorail and the county deployed police officers as part of priority response teams into the stations although they were created for other purposes.

The Miami-Dade Police Department provides services to the county’s unincorporated areas and to the Town of Miami Lakes, Village of Palmetto Bay, and Town of Cutler Bay. Once a sheriff is elected, if the police remain a separate entity they would become the police for the unincorporated areas, and those municipalities being currently served by the county police would have to make agreements with neighboring cities to continue receiving some services.

“Then the budget complication is that if you have a police department wholly operated by the county that is local patrol and funded by the unincorporated area budget and then you provide service to a municipality, you’re using unincorporated area tax dollars to provide a service in a municipality,” Ms. Moon explained.

“That municipality should pay for that service; right now, because of the way it’s structured, they are paying because it comes out of the county-wide general fund, but that would no longer be the structure once you have a sheriff,” she said.

The Miami-Dade Police Department is currently funded from countywide and Unincorporated Municipal Service Area (UMSA) revenues. The countywide budget funds those services provided regionally, while the UMSA budget funds local patrol services in UMSA, a memorandum from Mayor Daniella Levine Cava explains.

“There is no way whoever sits in that chair for the mayor in November [of 2024] will be able to negotiate all these contracts, all these mutual aid agreements with every single constitutional officer – who, by the way, will garner 20 or 30 times more votes than any of us sitting here because they’re running countywide – and come to an agreement with all those people in all that time,” said Commissioner Martinez.

Those municipalities currently being served by the Miami-Dade Police Department would have to enter into a memorandum of understanding with another city and pay to receive those services they now have. Those policing services are currently not part of their budget; they would have to either cut services or increase revenues to be able to pay for that police service, Ms. Moon said.

Under Florida Statutes, one city cannot undertake “a wholesale takeover of the jurisdiction of the other municipal police force,” Oren Rosenthal, assistant county attorney, explained. It would be a mere collaboration, with a fee for specific services such as murder investigations.

“The municipal UMSA police force, or however it’s going to be called, cannot take over the investigation and lead it; that little municipality would have to have inexperienced investigators leading a homicide,” Mr. Martinez said as an example.

“That is the problem that this division or bifurcation [is] creating, actually, because the sheriff’s office is here today, it is called MDPD [Miami-Dade Police Department]. You are creating a new department, which is UMSA police force or whatever.”

As Miami Today reported previously, the sheriff is the top law enforcement officer in a county. The sheriff who takes office in 2025 under new state requirements may request staff, equipment, arms, and vehicles to perform functions, which may create duplication of positions and efforts.

“We want to, of course, avoid duplication, but duplication will not be entirely avoided for this or others of the constitutional offices,” said Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, advocating for keeping the police department under the mayor’s oversight.

“This isn’t about me, it isn’t really about any of us. It’s about the future of public safety and Miami-Dade County,” she added. “We are all term-limited, and this new constitutional officer will not be.”

Vice Chairman Oliver Gilbert said he did not entirely oppose the proposal of Mr. Martinez to turn all county policing responsibilities over to a future sheriff but thought that none of the police responsibilities should be given to the sheriff until commissioners know who is elected.

“I don’t disagree that [this] might be the cleanest way,” Mr. Gilbert said. “I don’t disagree that maybe we ought to turn over UMSA policing to the sheriff, maybe we should. But if we’re going to do that, then we need to actually know who the sheriff is, so that they’re accepting the responsibility to police UMSA but they’re also accepting our collective bargaining agreements, they’re also accepting the things that the department has, and the county has an obligation for right now.”

“None of these decisions have to be made until the person is actually elected,” responded Mr. Martinez. “The administration has four months to negotiate whatever it might be, and you’re not going into it in an antagonistic manner. At least, you’re going in it with an open mind.”

Commissioner Rebeca Sosa disagreed with the proposal by Mr. Martinez. “To place all the power in only one person, I’m sorry, my parents took me out of a country because all the power was in the hands of one person and I suffered through the years, and I have seen others from other countries suffering the same fashion,” she said.

Commissioner Kionne McGhee said that among sheriffs in Florida currently “there are 53 elected Republicans, 10 elected Democrats, and two NPAs [Non-Party Affiliate].” He said that probably the concern is that “by allowing the system to remain where it is now, people are comfortable. Not in a sense because it’s easier, but because they know what they’re getting and they know what to expect.”

When inquiring of Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, representing the Florida Sheriffs Association, about what would happen if commissioners decided to keep police functions within the mayor’s purview, he said, “we feel as strongly as I can state that there is no option other than the sheriff to be the provider of police services in the unincorporated part of Miami-Dade County.”

Commissioner Raquel Regalado also created a proposal, not yet discussed, that would keep all municipal law enforcement powers, duties, and functions currently performed by the county’s police department in county hall unless exclusively assigned to the constitutional Office of Sheriff by law.
Ms. Regalado and Mr. Martinez engaged in at least two direct confrontations during the meeting. The county is preparing to face a lawsuit whether commissioners decide to keep as much power within the mayor’s purview as possible or transfer the policing functions to the sheriff.