By MARCO RUBIO
marco.rubio@myfloridahouse.gov
Miami-Dade County is in the midst of a full scale affordability crisis. Burdened by high property taxes and uncertainty regarding their economic future, many residents are living in a time of unprecedented anxiety. If you spend just a day talking to people, you will hear all about it.
You will hear about young couples who are unable to purchase their first home. You will hear about their grandparents who are making the choice between medicine and food because they cannot afford both. And you will hear from families wondering how they will cover next month's bills.
The common thread tying their stories together is the intolerable cost of property taxes. Massive and unrealistic increases in property values allowed both local and state government to take in billions of dollars in property taxes. But government greed has consequences. Today Miami-Dade is a national leader in foreclosures.
Last year, we proposed a number of initiatives to lower property taxes. One plan, which I developed with County Commissioner Rebecca Sosa, would have eliminated property taxes on all homesteads and replaced the revenue with a consumption tax. Numerous other ideas were considered as well.
Every plan to lower property taxes was opposed by local governments, many of which used our tax dollars to lobby against our interests. These governments claimed that if they reduced property taxes, they would be forced to cut essential public services such as police and fire rescue.
Now we see that some of the same local governments that could not spare any monies to help their taxpayers have voted to spend billions of dollars on a series of elaborate public works.
The $2.9 billion so-called Global Agreement, recently approved by the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County, calls for the construction of a new baseball stadium for the Florida Marlins, a tunnel at the Port of Miami and a ''museum park'' at Bicentennial Park. The city and the county will fund these projects through an elaborate shell game of hotel taxes and community redevelopment funds created to help poor neighborhoods.
The same governments that a few weeks ago were claiming poverty while working families were desperately pleading for tax relief, now, miraculously, have hefty budgets to fund the largest public works projects in the history of Miami-Dade. What's worse, they did all this without voter approval!
Moreover, many of these projects have been eating at the public trough for years. Voters already approved spending millions of dollars for museums at Bicentennial Park in 2004 when they voted for the new General Obligation Bond. Voters already approved $10 million to upgrade the Orange Bowl that same year. And we have been paying for cost overruns at the performing arts center since 2002.
Where has the money gone? Why can we afford to invest close to $3 billion in these grandiose projects, but we can't afford to cut taxes?
In the midst of this affordability crisis, our revenues should be spent on real economic development. Lowering regulation and cutting taxes would give our local economy a much needed boost. But instead, we have chosen to spend on large-scale public works projects designed to benefit an elite few at the expense of the average taxpayer.
Especially troubling is that some of our government leaders appear dangerously and disrespectfully out of touch with the people they serve. They seem oblivious to the daily pocketbook struggles people are facing. For them, everyday is a new opportunity to grow government, taxes and regulations.
This legislative session I will push to:
• Pass revenue and spending caps on all revenues for all levels of government.
• Require that any future tax increases be approved by voters.
• Amend Florida's community redevelopment laws so that the kind of shell game used to fund the ''Global Agreement'' will never happen again.
The 21st century is a time of great promise for Florida and America. No community has a greater opportunity to capitalize on these promises than Miami-Dade. We are geographically and culturally positioned to truly become a global leader in trade, finance and investment.
But to fully benefit from these opportunities, we need a government in touch with and responsive to the needs of its residents. And today their greatest need is help making ends meet. Port tunnels, museums and baseball stadiums are not going help homeowners pay their bills.
We will continue to pursue reforms at the state level. But my deepest hope is that change will come voluntarily at the local level. Our local government leaders should seize the opportunity to lower spending, reduce taxes and regulation and shrink the size of our bureaucracy. If they do, they will be sending a powerful signal to the world that Miami-Dade is open for business.
State Rep. Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, is speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.
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