Miami-Dade's Carlos Gimenez hoards COVID-19 CARES money, irks cities

The brewing battle between Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and some city mayors over the COVID-19 pandemic response has become a food fight over $474 million in CARES federal funding for governments to help cover coronavirus-related costs — and Grimenez is getting grabby.

On Monday, the county decided that all the cities would have to share $30 million of that money.

“This money is meant to go to the people in Miami-Dade County,” the mayor said in a virtual press conference Tuesday afternoon, stressing that residents who live in the 34 municipalities are also county residents and will be getting benefits that include rent assistance and small business loans.

“Miami-Dade is responsible for this money. We’re on the hook for it,” Gimenez said in response to a possible class action lawsuit from cities. “We’re not going to be writing a blank check to anyone.

But what he really means is that Miami-Dade will be the only one to get a blank check for more than a few million.

Because Miami-Dade is the only 305 government with more than 500,000 residents, it is the only one to get money from the CARES Act — or Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act — a $2 trillion economic relief package meant to help with fallout from the COVID-19 health and economic crisis, including the unplanned costs of testing, food distribution and sanitizing facilities.

The city of Miami fell short by 20K with only 480,000 residents so they got nada. Atlanta, with 506,000 residents by comparison — or only 26,000 more — is reportedly getting $88 million.

Grimenez had earlier negotiated giving cities $135 million of the pie, according to a group of mayors led by Miami’s Francis Suarez and Miami Beach’s Dan Gelber. Already upset by the lack of input they have had on the county’s conflicting emergency orders, testing sites, the rollback of the re-opening and contact tracing, they are talking to the Miami-Dade League of Cities this week about possible action, including a potential lawsuit.

“We, as a city, are exploring the possibility of legal action against Miami-Dade County for bad faith negotiations and for taking money away from our citizens,” Suarez said, adding that the national CARES formula would allocate the county’s largest city $81 million. “The county proposal would get our citizens as little as $8 million.

“That is money that we are not going to be able to pay our firefighters, to pay our police officers, who are on the front lines of COVID,” Baby X added. “That’s money we can use to avoid taxes and fees on our residents. They have taken that money and given it to whoever they want to.”

He has said that he and the city’s elected commissioners should decide how the money is spent in Miami, where they better know what the needs are. Perhaps they want to do more business development or more rental assistance, he mentioned.

“This is a lot of hoopla and people don’t know what they’re talking about,” Gimenez said, responding to a question about the mayor’s statements. He basically dared them to sue in Tuesday’s press conference.

“If he wants to file a lawsuit, file a lawsuit. We have 10,000 lawsuits in Miami-Dade,” he boasted. And perhaps that’s one of the reasons we have such an expensive legal department.

“All the city of Miami has to do is give us the invoices for COVID-19 related expenses for their police and fire department, and we’ll reimburse them,” said Gimenez, who has been battling Suarez and other municipal mayors on their divided COVID-19 response since the beginning.

So, basically, Suarez just has to keep and turn in his receipts, you know, like he’s an employee getting reimbursed for expenses in the line of the job. A toll here, parking there. That seems reasonable — for Miami-Dade to be in charge of the city’s accounts payable.

Oh, and cities have until Monday to submit their applications for reimbursement.

Deputy Mayor Jennifer Moon sent an email to all the municipalities Tuesday explaining the process and providing a spreadsheet with eligible costs by category. All cities will need to have an inter-local agreement with the county as well, Moon said.

The county has also spent about $80 million already in unbudgeted emergency-related costs, Moon said. That indcludes costs for PPEs, meals to seniors, testing, surge teams, contact tracing (although didn’t we get a separate grant for that from the state?) and $1.8 million allocated to a group of community organizations to make bulk food purchases from South Dade farms in order to avoid those crops going bad and to provide produce for the various food distributions the county has helped coordinate.

Anything that is eligible — and Ladra suspects they will find a way to take advantage of this — will get reimbursed up to 82.5 percent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, apart from the CARES money, which Gimenez swears will benefit all Miami-Dadeians.

The county commission met Monday to divvy up the pie, but some allocations seem vague:

$35 million for home-delivery of senior meals (pictured right)
$20 million for veterans
$20 million for the United Way to do what it pleases with it (so a blank check to the United Way is okay)
$35 million to bail out the restaurant industry
$10 million to bail out the taxi and limousine industry (no word on how much would go to Uber)
$10 million in rental assistance so residents living month to month aren’t suddenly homeless
$10 million for landlords to use to offset loss of rentals, because, you know, to be fair
$10 million to museums, theaters and other cultural institutions, most if not all of which are closed

Ladra only adds up to $150 million here, so is there still another $324 million to spend? For the county to spend all by itself?

“The people of the cities will get their fair share through the programs [that get funds] allocated by the county,” Gimenez said, adding that the money has to be spent by the end of December and hinting that he may not trust some cities to spend the money correctly — like he’s one to talk, having misspent our half penny tax funds amid shell games to balance the budget and give friends and family no-bid contracts and jobs. In fact, Ladra has to wonder who’s lining up at the trough this time.

“Miami-Dade County has to assure every cent is spent on a COVID-19 eligible activity,” Gimenez said, adding that any ineligible expenses could have to be reimbursed to the federal government.

“We also want to make sure the cities are leveraging FEMA money,” he said, adding that that is what they are doing at the county. Huh? Didn’t we already spend $80 million? And did any of that go to the field hospital set up on the Youth Fair grounds that Ladra was told has been taken down?

According to an email received earlier this month from the mayor’s office, the $474 mil is expected to help “offset the cost of” personal protective equipment, cleaning supplies and food for families in public housing, for example, and enforcement of emergency orders (the mask police). But isn’t FEMA going to reimburse us for all that? How can we be sure nobody is squirreling away money by double dipping?

“We have a pretty sophisticated system that keeps track of all expenses in each department,” Moon said at Tuesday’s virtual press conference, but Ladra is unsure because it looks like yet another complicated shell game with millions — or perhaps close to a billion dollars — at stake.

This money war promises to ramp up even more as the COVID-19 crisis continues to color everyone’s feelings and concerns about everything. And as money continues to come in from the federal government for relief. Besides the new package being considered by Congress currently, there is more money already coming in.

According to Deputy Mayors Moon and Ed Marquez, there are other grants and federal coronavirus assistance funding opportunities “emanating from the [CARES] Act,” that include an additional $222.5 million for transportation expenses, so that the county can continue to offer free bus and MetroRail rides to residents, and $207 million for the aviation department. Services for people in public housing may be an eligible expense of other CARES Act funding besides the $474 million, they said.

And besides FEMA reimbursement.

It’s beginning to look like the COVID-19 crisis means Ka-ching to Miami-Dade.

No wonder they want to hold on to the purse strings.

CARES funding, Carlos Gimenez, coronavirus, COVID-19, Francis Suarez

Miami-Dade’s Carlos Gimenez hoards COVID-19 CARES money, irks cities added by Ladra on July 28, 2020
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