Miami-Dade citizens: Assume the position

By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gmail.com

Get ready, citizens of Miami-Dade, one and all: Get ready for another colonoscopy, whether you need one or not.

I take that back. I am being unfair because of six things I can say about a colonoscopy five of them are good.

It’s a necessary, often life-sparing test that everyone past a certain age or in a high-risk category should undergo every few years.

The procedure is not only highly advisable but it is also performed under anesthesia so it’s painless.

Then you have to endure the procedure only when it is medically indicated, not when your gastroenterologist decides he wants to make some extra money to trade in his boat for a yacht.

Moreover, the risk involved is minimal in relation to the potential benefit: avoiding colon cancer or catching a malignancy at an early, curable stage.

Plus, colonoscopies are usually covered by insurance, assuming you are lucky enough to be among the decreasing number of people who have health insurance under our mercenary mode of medicine. If not, the worse cost scenario is in the hundreds of dollars, not in the hundreds of millions.

Really, the only real pain in the ass about the dreaded colonoscopy is the preparation, which is no fun. But eating a bad oyster is much, much worse, and I speak from experience – on both counts.

All that is much more than I can say about the reaming it looks like we are about to take –again – from another rich owner of a sports franchise seeking public money to enhance the value and the profits of his private business, namely Miami Dolphins’ owner Stephen Ross (aided and abetted by the usual suspects: politicos always in need of funds for the next campaign).

Ross wants almost $200 million from Miami-Dade to spruce up Sun Life stadium, or about half of the projected cost of renovation. Once again there are pleas that the owner can’t sink any more of his own money into the enterprise (ours is another story), promises that there will not be any dirty tricks this time and that what we see is what we’ll get, and confident assertions about the “incalculable” economic benefits the project will bring Miami-Dade. That last part, incidentally, may even be true because study after study has shown that public financing of stadiums always is a raw deal for the public, and you can’t calculate inexistent benefits.

Where did we see this movie before? Dare I say Marlins Stadium? Well, yes, but that is recent enough that everyone remembers how and how badly we got screwed. I don’t want to rehash that sordid and well-known tale. And that experience may be atypical while advocates of public dollars for professional football in Miami insist this deal is nothing like the Marlins one.

So let’s take another example. On December 2010, The New Times reported as follows:
“In the ten-plus seasons the Heat has played in American Airlines Arena, a $213 million-venue sitting on $38 million of county land, the team hasn’t shelled out a penny for its use. In fact, the county has paid $64 million in operating subsidies.

“Back in 1997, owners of the Heat – which then played in the eight-year-old, publicly financed Miami Arena – threatened to move to Broward County unless they were given the bayside plot of land originally slated to become a public park. The Miami-Dade mayor at the time was Alex Penelas, who has a devastatingly pretty face and the business acumen of a Labrador retriever. After the county and team reached an agreement, Raul Masvidal, the consultant hired to represent Penelas in negotiations with billionaire Carnival Cruise owner Arison, told the New York Times: "We expect the county not only to come out even – we expect it to make money."

Substitute Alvarez (the mayor responsible for the Miami Marlins stadium deal) for Penelas, plug in Gimenez (our current Miami-Dade mayor) where it read Alvarez, and so it still goes, time after time, here and everywhere. The owner is in the driver’s seat. Politicians do their bidding. The public pays.

This time the ironies are especially rich, however. Ross isn’t threatening to move to Broward County. Heck, the stadium is practically in Broward County. And the method Ross proposed for raising the $200 million, which the Miami-Dade County Commission compliantly endorsed last week by a comfortable 9-4 margin, is by increasing the taxes paid by tourists who stay in Miami-Dade hotels. But, given the location of the stadium, a lot of the tourists that may come for a game will stay in…Broward. Anyway, aren’t business people against raising taxes? No, that’s only when their taxes are raised.

The bigger picture is, of course, that it is not just sports. Sport is just a microcosm of the way the game is played in huge sectors of this “free enterprise” economy. Rich corporations and wealthy individuals who hate taxes and big government get huge government subsidies. Take, just for starters, the oil business.

But that’s a subject for a whole other column. Today we are talking about Miami-Dade and how we are about to get nailed – again. That is unless we rise up, en masse, and demand that any deal be subject to approval via voter referendum.