County votes to dissolve state’s Greater Miami Expressway Agency

The war to control five Miami-Dade expressways and their toll revenues, which seemed settled in August when a state agency took over from a county authority, has only intensified, with parallel bids for the county to regain control and the state agency alleging law violations.

After a Leon County judge in August ordered a turnover of assets of the 29-year-old Miami-Dade Expressway Authority to the state’s newly created Greater Miami Expressway Agency (GMX) and ruled the former authority dissolved, GMX took over operation Aug. 19.

But last week the county commission voted 10-2 that the state had no legal authority to run the expressways because the takeover violated the county’s home rule charter granted by the state in 1956. The county action says passage would legally restore control to the ousted authority.

GMX fired back, alleging that two county authority employee contracts had violated state law and said that proved authority “mismanagement and wasting taxpayer dollars.”

Meanwhile, a ruling in the Circuit Court of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit that GMX had been properly abolished by the county in accordance with the state constitution is still being appealed to the Third District Court of Appeal by GMX.

The county commission vote last week on an item added late to the agenda by Kevin Marino Cabrera was only preliminary. Chairman Oliver Gilbert III refused requests to discuss the issue, saying forcefully “We don’t have discussion on first reading.” Commissioners Anthony Rodriguez and René García voted no.

The ordinance is to be discussed next by the Chairman’s Policy Council of the commission in a public hearing Oct. 10. If it passes there, it will go back to the full commission for a final vote.

The ruling in favor of GMX by Circuit Judge Angela Dempsey in Leon County said GMX was given control as of July 1 by new state legislation that also dissolved the authority.

“All of the assets, employees, contracts, rights, and liabilities previously owned or controlled by the former MDX… have been transferred to and are now the property of GMX,” Judge Dempsey ruled.

The five roads involved are SR 122, the Airport Expressway; SR 836, the Dolphin Expressway; SR 874, the Don Shula Expressway; SR 878, the Snapper Creek Expressway, and SR 924, the Gratigny Parkway.

A potential future highway in Monroe County was included in the new state legislation that was geared to put GMX in charge of the expressways. A key impediment to that takeover had been that the county authority operated entirely within Miami-Dade and the state could not control a county agency under Miami-Dade’s home rule charter.

So the state legislation added to the package an area of northeast Monroe County where a single federally owned road, County Road 94, runs entirely through the Big Cypress National Preserve. The new 11-page proposed county ordinance details an allegation that the narrow gravel road, commonly called the Loop Road, could never legally be expansive enough to become an expressway, essentially making the claim of a multi-county agency a sham.

That issue could be pivotal: if the expressways run only in Miami-Dade the state could not take control contrary to county wishes.

Meanwhile, last week the Greater Miami Expressway Agency, which now bases itself in the former Northwest 21st Street home of the county authority, issued a press release headed “GMX uncovers alarming MDX employment contracts that violate state law.”

The release said that when its transition team took over starting Aug. 19, the GMX board instructed members to immediately “review all contracts and agreements made by the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority” and said they found that two employment contracts violated state law by including “provision for 52-week lump sum payments” where state law limits severance payments to a maximum of 20 weeks.

The allegation did not name the employees or their positions, or indicate whether lump sum payments had ever been made.

The release said that one of the two contracts also included a $12,000 vehicle allowance and a $10,000 yearly business allowance for dining and entertainment expenses. The release did not allege that either expense allowance was illegal, nor how much of those allowances had in fact ever been paid or whether the expenses were improper.

“Discovering these contracts that break state law with entertainment slush funds and the potential to provide automatic balloon payments demonstrates prior mismanagement and wasting taxpayer dollars,” said a statement from attorney Mariana “Marili” Cancio, the MDX board chair.

“GMX will continue to demonstrate financial stability and effective governance to retain the trust lost by MDX,” Ms. Cancio concluded.

“This is all about power and money,” attorney Gene Stearns, who represented the county authority, told Miami Today in August. “Today it’s MDX.

Tomorrow it’s the airport or the seaport.”

The next step in the controversy is scheduled today (9/28), when the county’s Transportation Planning Organizations has on its agenda a motion to adopt a process to appoint two members to the GMX board, which has been operating without any of the four representatives appointed in the county as law provides. All five current appointments are under the governor’s control.

The state legislation requires two of the nine members to be appointed to the GMX board to be named by the planning organization and two by the county. By state law the planning organization appointees would have to be residents of an incorporated municipality in the county and could not have held in the previous two years an elected or appointed office in the county.

In the unusual legislation, the state law would also prohibit anyone who was a member of the county expressway authority from serving on GMX and prohibit anyone who had lobbied the county authority within the past four years from serving as an officer of the new agency. As detailed in the current county legislation, the state law would also “prohibit anyone who has been an employee of a person or entity that has done business with the former Miami-Dade County Expressway Authority from serving as an officer of the new agency.”

The Transportation Planning Organization vote this week would seek to advertise for candidates for its two appointments to the GMX board, sift the applicants and recommend appointments at the authority’s Dec. 7 meeting.