Miami-Dade considers too many big things at once

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It seems like a shock and awe campaign.

This week alone, Miami-Dade Commissioners considered giving away the last waterfront property to a Cuban exile museum project, finding a way to break the lease with the Dade County Youth Fair to make room for Florida International University’s expansion on 80-some acres of county land (do I smell a stadium anyone?) and the county budget and tax rate.

Oh, which included the consideration of library and police and fire services cuts.

Originally, it was all supposed to happen on the same day. But Tuesday’s meeting ran long and both the exile museum and FIU’s dream, which is just another land grab even if it’s for better reasons (more on that later), were carried over to Thursday.

These big ticket items come on the heels of not one, but two stadium deals — tourist tax dollars for the Miami Dolphins SunLife improvements (“At last,” says Steve Ross) and a sweetheart deal for the Miami Heat operators of the AmericanAirlines Arena, who have been robbing the county blind for years — a water and sewer bid that became controversial because the procurement process may have been compromised and the failed bid to get a soccer stadium placed where the Cuban exile museum now wants to hurry up and be before the commission changes their mind.

Doesn’t it seem to anybody else that this is an intentional barrage of important measures that are not getting the individual attention that they deserve? Maybe the politicians — or the lobbyists, most likely — learned from the Miami Marlins deal: It takes too long to get what you want if you don’t distract your opposition and the media with several big issues at once. Keeps us busy pissing out fires so that they can’t stand back and look at the damage from a wider perspective or for too long.

When you are busy catching up on so much, it’s hard to pay attention to anything for very long.

Consider some of the other things the commission did this week that went completely under the radar:

• Directed the mayor to speak to the chief judge about their needs, which is the possible construction or inclusion of a new civil court building in the All Aboard project (more on that later).
• Authorized the spending of $16.5 million via five companies that get $3.3 million each as part of the water and sewer improvements mandated in the consent decree, for “design services related to the implementation of a pump station improvement plan.”
• Spent another $10 on geographical information services related to the consent decree.
• Recaptured and reallocated (say what?) more than $9 million from the community action plan for things like an energy solutions grant program and “home investment partnerships,” whatever those are.
• Authorized an administrative boundary change on an Enterprise Zone, whatever that means.

Because that’s is the point. If you’re head is spinning like Ladra’s, please realize that is the whole idea. There’s so much going on at once that it’s difficult for anyone to catch everything. And like anyone who has siblings knows, the best time to get away with something is when the spotlight is on your brother or sister.

So what is the county getting away with?

Ladra doesn’t know. Too busy catching up. And there’s no time to anyway. The FIU subject is coming up again by the first week of September — when we’re in the full throes of the budget process — because, of course, there is an effort to railroad this onto the ballot in November.

Shock and awe.