What's afoot isn't just a knee-jerk effort to get the county to bail the city out of a staggering $68 million budget crisis [FT, January 1997]. And it's not a Jacksonville-style consolidation of city-county governments aimed at providing fire, police and other services more efficiently. Backers of the merger, technically a disincorporation of the city but often labeled "abolition, '' are after something more revolutionary: Ultimately, they want to fracture not just the city, but the entire county, into a checkerboard of towns and villages of 15,000 to 20,000 people. They envision communities like Coconut Grove and Little Havana breaking off into independent municipalities that would rely on county government only for big-net services such as fire protection and libraries; the towns would maintain their own police departments, planning and zoning operations, and parks.
Supporters of disincorporation - mostly downtown property owners and homeowners in the city's more affluent enclaves - believe that community self-rule will make government both cheaper and more responsive. So, why the September vote to merge with the county? Provisions in the city's charter deter communities in the city from breaking away; the county's charter, by contrast, makes secession a relative breeze. Do away with the city and its charter, they reason, and small communities can go their own way.
The strategy hasn't been transparent to voters, public officials or the media. A poll by the Miami Herald revealed that few understand the motives behind the disincorporation movement. "There is still a lot of education and explaining that needs to be done," says Gene Stearns, a Miami attorney and self-professed philosophical champion of the town and village government model in Dade County. "But when voters understand that this is just the first step in a larger process, I think they'll come around to support it."
Frustration
The disincorporation drive is clearly a barometer of the frustration many city residents feel ove r Miami's problems. Some are angry because they feel they are subsidizing poorer areas. Coconut Grove, for example, has only 5% of the city's population but contributes 16% of its tax base. Other issues include corruption - an FBI probe recently snared Miami's city manager and a long-time city commissioner; the $68 million budget deficit; and the recent disclosure that despite its apparent wealth, Miami is now the fourth poorest city in the nation.
Trying to work within the existing system to solve those problems is futile, argue those who want to dismantle the city. The only way out, they say, is a web of community-based governments like that in Pinecrest, a municipality of 18,500 south of the city that seceded from Dade County in March 1996.
"With a village of this size, we're able to give government back to the people; we're able to get them involved in the things they really care about," says Evelyn Greer, a Miami attorney and mayor of Pinecrest.
Greer describes an initiative by a local citizens group that approached her with a proposal to hire off-duty police officers to patrol neighborhood streets. The Village Council allocated the funds, but placed responsibility for devising the program with the citizens themselves. A ten-person committee of volunteers submitted a detailed schedule of patrols, shifts and payment scales. With little modification, the council adopted the plan, and in three months, crime had dropped by 25%. Says one long-time resident: "For the first time, I feel I can make a difference in my community. We're no longer at the mercy of faceless bureaucrats who don't know Pinecrest from Pensacola."
Issues
Milan J. Dluhy, a professor of public administration and director of the Institute of Government at Florida International University in Miami, says studies show that, with the exception of fire/rescue and libraries, economies of scale do not apply to the delivery of municipal services. He believes both the quality and efficiency of other services - law enforcement, planning and zoning, code enforcement, and parks and recreation - are better in the hands of community-based governments.
Some argue that even a poor Miami community like Overtown, with few resources and a tiny tax base, could survive as an independent municipality. That argument was nearly put to the test two years ago when Destiny, a predominantly black, working-class community in north Dade County, sought to break away from the county and incorporate. Shirley Gibson, a retired Metro-Dade County police officer who spearheaded the effort, says county officials warned her that Destiny received $21 million in county services each year but contributed only $17 million in taxes to pay for them. As a so-called recipient community, Destiny would have been crazy to leave, county officials reasoned. Although voters narrowly defeated the measure, Gibson and other supporters argued that an independent town could have offset the $4 million shortfall by eliminating the waste and abuse that plagues the mammoth Metropolitan Dade County government.
"Today, if we want to assign a police officer to a street corner to deter drug dealing, we need to struggle through five layers of bureaucracy and wait three weeks," she insists. "That wouldn't happen if Destiny was on its own. When the people who are running a town also have a stake in it, you'd be surprised how much you can get accomplished."
But Dluhy and even some supporters of community rule like Stearns stress that efficiency can't be an excuse to abandon the poor. "Small government works well," says Peter Muller, an urban geographer at the University of Miami in nearby Coral Gables. "But it doesn't work at all if you don't have a tax base to pay for it. If Coconut Grove and the other rich sections of Miami go their own way, how will Liberty City and Overtown and the other poor communities provide even the barest level of municipal service?"
Tucker Gibbs, a veteran Miami activist from Coconut Grove who is opposed to disincorporation, says, "This city is so fractured, so divisive and so polarized by racial politics. You want better government? Maybe we should start by trying to get along with one another. If people are really serious about reshaping our local government, they should come forward with a plan that addresses the needs and concerns of everyone in the city and not just the unique special interests of their own neighborhoods."
Stearns favors a countywide fund - paid for by all county taxpayers - that would go to poorer areas. Dluhy, who sits on a county task force on revenue sharing, supports a half-cent county sales tax, whose revenues would be allocated throughout the county on the basis of need. County commissioners will consider the tax (and other revenue-sharing options) later this year. "This would be the best of both worlds," Dluhy says. "Communities could govern themselves, but the poorer areas would receive help from the rest of the county."
The vote
With the vote nearly two months away, disincorporation remains somewhat of a longshot; in its poll, the Miami Herald found overwhelming opposition to the plan. The city's Cuban exile community, which fears their political power would be diluted if the city is folded into the county, is fighting the plan, along with the city commission and those who believe that the effort would allow wealthier communities to turn their backs on the poor. Some exile leaders, making the rounds of local talk-radio shows, have gone so far as to suggest that Castro is secretly financing the disincorporation movement. Most business leaders, afraid of alienating city officials, have remained mum, and local business groups have taken a wait-and-see attitude.
Miami Mayor Joe Carollo insists the city is worth saving - warts and all. "We're going to make sure that we create the strong financial foundation that Miami needs to have," he pledged to a group of civic and business leaders last winter. "Not just to survive another hundred years, but to survive a thousand years."
But whether or not the city of Miami continues to exist, the trend toward community rule in south Florida may have already gathered too much momentum to stop. Three wealthy communities in Dade County - Key Biscayne, Aventura and Pinecrest - have already seceded from the county, and five others have begun drives to break away. In response, the County Commission has placed a one-year moratorium on incorporations. Meanwhile, neighboring Broward County is encouraging incorporation, with county officials working on a timetable to move all unincorporated areas under municipal umbrellas.