Miami-Dade spends lots on lobbyists – inside and outside county hall

Interesting bit of news I read in The Miami Herald yesterday. It turns out Miami-Dade County spends more on lobbying the federal government than any other county in the country. The fact is, I learned, that “Among all city, state, territory and county governments, only Puerto Rico and Pennsylvania spend more on federal lobbying.” This information comes from the Center for Responsive Politics.

This year’s contract should be close to $3 million. Commissioners are now pushing to grow the circle of people being paid to do the work. The not so funny part of this thing is that no one is really sure what these lobbyists accomplish. As Commissioner Sally Heyman told fellow commissioners, “One time we had one piece of legislation (that passed in DC) and we had six lobbyists take credit for it.”

And other than the fact that the five lobbying firms who will receive our tax dollars are all influential – some locally others in Washington — I would dare ask why we need them?

More info from the Herald article: Miami-Dade has “its own cadre of lobbyists.” There are seven full time staffers in an Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.

So either the 7 full-timers we have are really bad and do little work, or the five outside lobbyists are paid for political reasons… I’d really like to understand this a little better. By the way, the seaport and the airport also have their own lobbyists.

I knew lobbyists ran this county, I just didn’t know how many of them are embedded as we now say…

Alvaro F. Fernandez