A group of teachers represented by United Teachers of Dade, which represents
more than 35,000 educators and school employees in the fourth largest school district in the country, say that Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez has violated the state constitution and shortchanged students at Miami-Dade Public Schools.
They plan to file a lawsuit Friday against the mayor over what they say is $171 million in lost and delayed funding.
According to a statement issued late Thursday, the lawsuit seeks to demonstrate that the funds have been lost due to Gimenez’s failure to properly fund the county’s flawed tax appeal process.
“If not corrected, Gimenez’ failure to properly fund, staff and administer the Miami Dade Value Adjustment Board (VAB) will continue to deprive Miami-Dade County Public Schools millions of dollars of necessary funds from the state,” reads a press release announcing the lawsuit and a press conference Friday morning.
“Cutbacks caused by the lost and delayed funds, say local teachers, are violating the guarantees to a quality education in Florida’s constitution. The loss of funds is forcing overcrowded classes, reductions in school libraries, and reduced opportunities for English Language Learners and special education students,” the announcement said.
Karla Hernandez-Mats, secretary and treasurer of UTD, said in the statement that the mayor was not doing his part.
“Every day, parents and teachers are doing our jobs and getting our children ready for school,” said Hernandez-Mats, a Hialeah Middle School Teacher of the Year (2010-2011) who is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Both she and UTD President Fedrick Ingram will announce the lawsuit Friday morning.
“The mayor needs to do his job,” Hernandez-Mats said, “which is to make sure our schools have the resources they need to educate our kids.”
Well, that is part of his job, alright. One might think that with all the fretting he did about the county’s own budget shortfall — the one that kept shrinking and shrinking before our very eyes — and the creative rushing to find money here and there to save police positions and not increase bus fare, Gimenez would also be inclined to fix the value adjustment process, which could also be depriving county coffers of desperately needed dollars.
According to his spokesman, Michael Hernandez, the county “lost close to $40 million last fiscal year due to value adjustment issues.” He couldn’t tell me late Thursday, without talking to budget staffers, what the figure was the fiscal year before last. Or what the estimate is in this budget.
But we could easily be talking about hundreds of millions of dollars lost to inefficiency at the VAB. Can you imagine how many more millions we are losing to Homestead exemption fraud?
The Value Adjustment Board is where property owners go to appeal the appraised value of their homes, usually because they think it is too high. Property owners apparently get a stay on their tax bill while the decision is made, and the backlog is seemingly higher than ideal. Ladra is still checking into the details of all these things and more, and will follow up Friday, after the lawsuit is filed.
And sure, $40 million in a $6.2 billion budget seems like a drop in a barrel. Even $171 million might seem like nada to the county bean counters. But all that hand-wringing with employees who wanted their benefits restored might have been averted had the county been able to reap in its true earned ad valorem property taxes and not a figure minus the appeals. The 10 percent taken from community-based organizations may have been left alone.
Also, aren’t there other entities that depend on the ad valorem taxes that come in based on the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser and the county’s VAB? The public libraries are funded by their own taxing district that may have lost millions. Ditto for the fire rescue services.
And might we see cities who feel cheated out of their own fraction of ad valorem taxes file lawsuits of their own? Bet you they will if the UTD teachers win this one.
Teachers to sue Carlos Gimenez over lost, delayed tax dollars added by Ladra on
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