Finding budget solutions, but on the backs of those who CAN afford it
The billionaires don’t care. An extra $1,000—or even a $10,000 or $100,000 hit to their wealth—doesn’t affect their lavish lifestyles. The same goes for multimillionaires aspiring to join the 10-figure club.
But ask someone who rides public transportation to work every day—perhaps a single mother with two children—whether the 50-cent fare increase the Miami-Dade County Commission approved this year makes a difference.
“I have a good job,” says María, who earns $20 an hour at a job she’s held for more than a decade. “But between food for the kids, a place to live, a cell phone I need for work, clothes for the kids, transportation, and all the other necessities, I can’t afford to take care of myself.”
She lives in an 800-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment in Little Havana. As she speaks, her eyes drop in embarrassment.
“And now I understand I’ll be paying between $10 and $15 more a week just to get to work,” she continued. “Let’s say it’s $10. It’s really more, but even at $10, that’s more than $500 a year out of my pocket. I know $500 doesn’t sound like much to some people, but to me, it means five months of cell phone payments, for example, or three months of electric bills.”
When presenting her proposed 2027 budget, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said that “slowing revenue growth, rising inflation, and uncertain state and federal support” had made this a very difficult year. She also announced a shortfall of more than $50 million that the county must address.
What solution did the mayor and the commission choose? Once again, it was to take from those who can least afford it.
To balance the budget, the county plans to cut bus routes, reduce the hours some buses operate, and add 50 cents to every ride on a Miami-Dade bus or other public transportation, including Metrorail.
Here’s another example. I know a young woman who takes Metrorail to and from her job in downtown Miami. She lives at the county’s southern end and now fears that reduced evening service will prevent her from working the extra hours she sometimes puts in to help her mother, with whom she lives, make ends meet. That is money she will have a hard time replacing.
And here’s the irony: These are people willing to work long, extra hours. They are not the lazy people some wealthy individuals imagine when they complain about workers who supposedly don’t want to work. These are people willing to put in 16 hours a day, if necessary, to support themselves and their families.
But now, because of cuts to public transportation, those extra hours may no longer be feasible. Without reliable transit, they could be forced to pay for an Uber, an expense they cannot afford.
This is the solution the county has chosen: balance the budget in a way that seems to favor those who need help the least while making life harder for those who need it most.
A more equitable solution
In the past, I’ve written about the nearly 6,500 Miami-Dade County employees who earn more than $100,000 a year. The county employs 29,407 people. That means more than 20% of its workforce earns six figures. Of those approximately 6,500 employees, 196 earn more than $200,000 a year.
Good for them, I say. But it’s also time for some of them to help.
What if county employees earning between $100,000 and $200,000 agreed to a 5% pay cut, and those earning more than $200,000 took a 10% cut?
Using very conservative estimates—applying a 5% reduction to a minimum salary of $100,000 for the first group and a 10% reduction to a minimum of $200,000 for the second—the savings could exceed $30 million. That would reduce the county’s reported shortfall from more than $50 million to approximately $20 million.
And that’s just one possibility.
Another area worth examining is the money allocated to county commissioners for their district offices and discretionary spending.
According to Miami-Dade County’s fiscal year 2025–26 budget, each of the 13 county commissioners received a standard allocation of $335,000 in annual discretionary funding to distribute to community-based organizations addressing district-specific needs. The county budget allocated $4.355 million for this purpose.
But there’s more.
The same budget allocated $2,315,500 per district for district-office operations, including staffing and other operating expenses. Add that to the $335,000 allocated to each commissioner for discretionary spending, and the total comes to $2,650,500 per district.
Across all 13 districts, that’s more than $34 million a year.
Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that commissioners don’t need staff or that their offices should operate without adequate resources. I also recognize that much of the discretionary funding goes to community organizations doing valuable work—sometimes filling gaps the county itself has failed to address. But surely there is room to examine these expenditures and identify savings without imposing an even greater burden on working families.
And here’s my larger point: It’s time for some of the county’s best-paid employees—not those struggling to make ends meet, but the more than 6,000 employees earning six-figure salaries—to help address the situation.
What I’ve seen year after year is county salaries going up. I can’t recall seeing county salaries go down, even as life becomes increasingly difficult for so many Miami-Dade residents.
What I’ve seen year after year is county salaries going up. I can’t recall seeing county salaries go down, even as life becomes increasingly difficult for so many Miami-Dade residents.
And there’s one more expense I haven’t mentioned: the newly created sheriff’s office. Its leader, as far as I’m concerned, seems never to have met a tax dollar she didn’t believe was hers.
The point is not that every department can operate without adequate funding or that every county employee is overpaid. Rather, the point is that every part of government should be willing to examine its spending when money is tight—and that the burden should not automatically fall on those least able to bear it.
In other words, Miami-Dade may be running short on cash. Perhaps it’s time for all of us, as a community, to tighten our belts. But why is it that whenever belt-tightening comes up, those who can least afford it are always asked to do the heavy lifting?
It’s simply not fair.
And I blame the mayor and the commissioners, who seem far more responsive to those who can afford to spend money on elections, hire lobbyists, and make their voices heard in the corridors of power than to the people who ride the bus to work every day.
Those bus riders will never have the money to hire lobbyists to make their lives easier.
If Miami-Dade needs to find savings, let’s find them. But let’s start with those who CAN afford to pay their share—not with the working people who are already struggling to get by.
Lastly, I know this is a pipe dream and I’ve oversimplified most of it. I understand the county commission can’t just come in and cut 5% or 10% from workers’ salaries. Contracts, unions, and many other factors are at play. But when the county has shortfalls, let’s start looking up and leave those at the bottom with what little they have. We must ALL contribute, and those with more should contribute the most.
