City of Miami Mayor Manny Diaz and automobile magnate Norman Braman were guests on this morning's This Week in South Florida with Michael Putney. Of course the topic was the mayor's ambitious plan to makeover downtown Miami.
There's a tunnel, a baseball stadium and other goodies in the Plan but not so fast. Braman pointed out why the Plan will not work and how the County's poor will get the shaft. Haven't the County's poor been taken advantage enough?
While the Herald is busy pointing the finger at Michelle Spence-Jones, hopefully it will widen the net to include other decision-makers in the area because something is definitely rotten in the cotton. For starters, how about NOT attaching the tunnel issue to the stadium issue? The baseball team owners should pay for that project.
It has also been pointed out that Mr. Braman's position on public support for stadiums was quite different when he was in Philadelphia and wanted land donated to him. Whatever the heck is going on, it seems like the average citizen can't really believe either side of this issue. Here we go, again.
Here's a reminder of other broken promises…..
Downtown -- megaplan or megascam?
Posted on Sun, Jan. 27, 2008
By CARL HIAASEN
The so-called ''megaplan'' to transform downtown Miami will be another orgy of waste, corruption, mismanagement and false promises -- only on a grander scale than most public rip-offs in South Florida.
At the center of Miami Mayor Manny Diaz's scheme is a new 37,000-seat ballpark for the Florida Marlins in Little Havana, a 6,000-space parking garage, new museums at Bicentennial Park, a streetcar line and a truck tunnel to the Port of Miami.
The price tag in public funds is whimsically projected at $2.9 billion, a figure that is certain to explode by multiples, if history is a guide.
A hefty chunk of the dough supposedly would be property tax revenues from two Community Redevelopment Agency districts, the boundaries of which the megaplan's backers want to expand.
CRA funds are meant to be used for housing and business development in poor neighborhoods, not as a welfare spigot for wealthy owners of sports franchises.
But this is Miami, where anti-poverty money is seldom diverted to the unglamorous mission of fighting actual poverty. A prime example is the brazen looting of the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust, as recently detailed by The Miami Herald.
Paying for the new Marlins stadium isn't possible without a shell game devised to bleed other coffers. The megaplan calls for the CRA to pony up potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to pay off the construction debt of another downtown debacle, the new performing arts center.
Instead of decent low-income housing, Overtown gets . . . opera!
Noble promise
If the CRA bails out the arts center, more tourist-tax dollars theoretically would be available for the Marlins stadium. The total cost of the new ballpark is now stated at $525 million, with the city chipping in $121 million and the county giving $249 million.
Of course, these figures are of strictly comic value. The true price tag will be much higher.
Not surprisingly, Diaz and other cheerleaders for the megaplan have no intention of putting it on a ballot, which would be the kiss of death. Voters, burned too often, are wary.
The noble promise of ''revitalizing'' downtown has been bannered across almost every big project, no matter how half-baked, that relied on public funding.
• The Metromover was pushed through with a pledge of reviving inner-city neighborhoods. It didn't, and people are still paying for it.
• The first basketball arena was pushed through with a pledge of launching a redevelopment boom. It didn't, and people are still paying for it. Same story for the second basketball arena, built just a few blocks away.
• And the aforementioned performing arts center was pushed through with a pledge of sparking a downtown renaissance. Guess what: It hasn't, and it won't.
Given people's well-founded skepticism, boosters of the megaplan are hoping to dodge citizen input by ramming it through the city and county commissions. Some politicians are already salivating like Pavlov's dog.
If the deal gets approved, there will be millions of dollars to be handed out in consulting contracts and lobbyist fees, a fraction of which will be legitimate.
The remainder will go to the usual hustlers and shakedown artists who buzz like garbage flies around the commission chambers.
One dissenting voice belongs to County Commissioner Javier Souto. In a recent letter to County Manager George Burgess, Souto expressed deep doubts about the downtown megaplan.
Formidable opponent
He predicted it would become ''just another scandal'' in which the county ``becomes an active participant and accomplice in defrauding the . . . community out of dollars meant to tackle poverty and create opportunities.''
As chairman of the county committee reviewing the proposed $550 million Museum Park, Souto can't easily be ignored. The question is whether he's serious, or just making noise.
A more formidable opponent is auto dealer Norman Braman, who questions the legality of enlarging the Omni CRA district to include Watson Island, not exactly the inner city. On Wednesday, he filed the first in an anticipated series of lawsuits against the city-county plan.
Braman opposes the use of urban redevelopment money to help finance the Port of Miami tunnel, a key part of Diaz's blueprint and a potentially paralyzing fiasco.
The mayor might honestly believe that, after decades of neglect and shattered promises, Overtown will be miraculously revived by a tunnel under the bay, a cute little trolley and a baseball stadium in a different neighborhood.
The mayor might also honestly believe in leprechauns.
Political raid
Expanding Overtown's redevelopment agency would be good if (a) property taxes were certain to rise, and (b) the revenues were used to benefit the people who live there.
In its present harebrained form, the downtown megaplan looks like a megascam, another sneaky political raid on anti-poverty funds.
There's nothing wrong with having big dreams, but this will be a nightmare, guaranteed.
A $3 billion streetcar named Deceit.
Miami's Haitian community is reeling from the arrest of Haitian community leader Rulx "Ringo" Cayard on Thursday. After a 2 ½ year investigation by the State Attorney's office, Cayard landed in jail on a $500,000 bond.
City of Miami and Miami-Dade County Commissioners have put their collective necks on the line with the approval of the Miami Marlins baseball stadium. Not only was the more than $600 million deal not approved by the voters, there are so many loose ends that it's mind-boggling.
City of Miami police chief John Timoney did not attend a hearing of the Citizens Investigative Panel that is examining allegations that the chief received use of a luxury vehicle for free. After the public brouhaha and criticism by the FOP (Fraternal Order of police), the Chief eventually paid Lexus of Kendall sticker price for the vehicle. He also paid a nominal penalty and will be docked a week's pay. Just so you know, a week's pay is more than $4,000.
As the fallout regarding payoffs and the Related Group continues, the public deserves to know if the other two City of Miami commissioners who voted in favor of Related along with Michelle Spence-Jones are or were investigated also. Now, don't get it twisted, if Spence-Jones and others are guilty of criminal activity they should be punished but, hello, it took three--- count'em three votes for that item to pass.
On Friday, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle announced that her office had written to Florida Governor Charlie Crist requesting outside prosecutor be called in to handle the case of Former City of Miami Manager Joe Arriola who was accused of assaulting the valet manager at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Brickell Key in March. 
likely they were small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.