Don’t let the proponents of the bond referendum for a new civil courthouse fool you: This is not about Cielito Lindo.
The question that commissioners voted to put before voters on Nov. 4 is not about raising taxes to restore the historic downtown courthouse to its 
rightful glory. It is not about the health of our judges and judicial workers and the moldy, crumbling courthouse that the county has let fall into disrepair either through years of neglect or the intention to get to this point.
It is about building a brand new, shiny, $370-million, 600,000-square-foot courthouse in downtown Miami.
In other words, it is about business. Can you say ka-ching?
Why else would so many lobbyists be so intimately involved from the get go? Why else would Chief Judge Bertila Soto and the others ignore the fact that there are satellite courthouses with empty courtrooms in Hialeah and Miami Beach just waiting to be used to meter justice? Why else would the county not even express a tiny bit of interest in the vacant historic former downtown federal courthouse a couple blocks away that was abandoned when the new Wilkie D. Ferguson Federal Courthouse was finished in 2008 for $120 million?
Because then they couldn’t form a PAC and raise $1.5 million to spend on their political machinery. Because then they couldn’t spend the people’s money building a shiny new toy they can later name after one of themselves.
The ballot question about the courthouse next month is a political injustice to we the people.
The only emergency here — created by our county, by the way — is the health and safety hazards at Cielito Lindo, and you don’t need $360 million to fix 
that.
Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez had put it at about $25 million last month for the initial emergency repairs — the balance of the $393 million bond tax is to build the new building — and that money could come out of existing bond funds.
But rather than do that and then take a little time to study how our entire county court system should be addressed — because the Joseph Caleb Center is also undergoing repairs and the criminal courthouse by Jackson Hospital is in dire need of upgrades — our county leaders are again urging us to hurry up and agree to spend 15 times as much on — what exactly? — we’re not sure yet.
“It’s like giving them a blank check,” said Miami-Dade School Board Member Raquel Regalado, who has come out as one of the strong voices against the bond referendum. Regalado, who was in favor of the $1.2 billion school bond that passed in 2012, said that referendum was the result of years of talks and evaluations and studies and that it was not a knee jerk reaction like this one.
Read related story: Mayor Gimenez flip flops on courthouse tax
Even Gimenez himself was said to be against the referendum, telling insiders that he was confident monies could be found elsewhere, without going yet again to the public trough. He apparently flip-flopped right before or at the meeting. Perhaps because his best bud, lobbyist Jorge Luis Lopez, is one of the public faces of the campaign. Which is kinda weird, right? Instead of a judge, the guy debating the merits is the mayor’s favored lobbyist?
Soto isn’t even being honest in the video web ads that Building Blocks for Justice has produced for the referendum. The first one, all two minutes and 16 
seconds of it is about Cielito Lindo and the water damage and the termite infestation and the yada, yada, yada. But, like Ladra said, that will take up $25 million to fix and the $400 million that the greedy lobbyists are going after are for something else. The second, 30-minute spot, we imagine, is for TV and is much of the same: Not one single word about the brand new courthouse they want to build. Just photos of the damaged historic one they plan to abandon.
This is downright disingenuous of not just the campaign but Chief Judge Soto herself. How can a chief judge be so dishonest? This video is a sales piece. Tsk, tsk.
What’s in this for her?
There are nine other courthouse buildings that need to be addressed along with this one as a whole, which is what we elected the mayor and our commissioners to do. To think things through. Heck, they don’t even know what they’re going to do with Cielito Lindo once they fix it?
Is that a plan? No. Which is how we should vote on this referendum.
Courthouse bond ‘blank check’ is an injustice to voters added by Ladra on
View all posts by Ladra →
