CITT rejects Eileen Higgins' strike to strip oversight on transit contracts

One member called the proposed amendments a ‘power grab’

The Citizens Independent Transportation Trust, which provides oversight of the half penny sales tax spending, unanimously rejected on Wednesday an attempt by Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins to sideline them.

Higgins has proposed amending the process so that projects that would normally go to the CITT first — People’s Transportation Plan projects that use the half-penny tax funds approved by voters in 2002 — go straight to the county commission instead. It would allow the commission to consider and approve contracts for transit using surtax funds prior to it going to the CITT.

She also wants the CITT to stop looking at $1 million plus projects that do not use surtax funds — a practice started when the administration began to use the half-penny monies for operating expenses — and she wants the commission to have an override power on CITT recommendations with a simple majority, rather than the 2/3 vote needed now.

¿Que se ha creido?

Higgins, who pretty much considers herself the director of transit, apparently thinks it’s taking too long for contracts to be awarded.

But CITT Executive Director Javier Betancourt said that an analysis of three years of CITT actions showed “in no case where any items were deferred at our insistence.

“We have had a small number of meetings where due to lack of quorum or lack of action items, those meetings were cancelled,” Betancourt said, adding that the CITT has a 45-day clock to move on an application.

“After 45 days, it moves to the BCC without a recommendation,” he said.

So they are really not holding anything up. The CITT has also been asked to have special meetings to accommodate items and have done it “almost always,” Betancourt said.

In the 20 years since passage of the surtax, the following program and services have been implemented:

The Golden Passport program provides free public transportation to all senior citizens 65 years of age and older and to those who receive Social Security benefits.
Downtown Miami’s Metromover service is available at no cost.
There is 24-hour Metrobus service on 21 routes, seven bus routes, as well as over 358,000 additional hours of bus service and the implementation of 4,500,000 additional bus service miles.
Funding of major highway and road improvements undertaken by Miami-Dade County Public Works through 2014 are among the many long-term benefits of the PTP.
Upgrading the County’s traffic signalization system.
Municipal circulators and free trolleys.

Betancourt said the CITT could support the second change — and no longer look at million dollar projects that do not use surtax funds. That would provide more time for the 15-member board to watch over the People’s Transportation Plan funded by the half-penny tax — which is what they were created to do.

“The half penny tax was passed on the basis that the community would have a say in how it was spent,” said member Joseph Curbelo. “What is the purpose of a recommendation if the commission can vote with a majority regardless of the recommendation.”

Some CITT members mentioned that this sidelining could actually have the unintended consequence of delaying projects further. If a surtax project as to go to the CITT anyway, it would have to go to the commission twice — once before and once after the CITT review.

Former Cutler Bay Mayor Peggy Bell said she was a little bit concerned about the “slippery slope.” And she is right. Higgins would probably like it better if the CITT did not exist at all.

Too bad. That’s what voters voted for.

“When this was voted on by the voters of Miami-Dade County in went hand in hand with the creation of a trust so that we would be a watchdog over these funds,” said Vice Chairman Robert Wolfarth, who reminded the others that a transportation tax put to the voters had always denied.

“This is not good legislation.”

Member Paul Schwiep had a statement read into the record: “As a trust, we have a sacred responsibility to the public to make sure the trust funds are used appropriately. Watering down our authority renders the trust practically pointless and is a slap in the face of the voters.

“It is an unwarranted power grab by the BCC and we will never recover the trust of the voters if this goes through.”

CITT, Eileen Higgins, half-penny sales tax, transit

CITT rejects Eileen Higgins’ strike to strip oversight on transit contracts added by Ladra on December 8, 2022
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