We better hope that car mogul Norman Braman and the headlines in state papers are right and that the twin bills in the state legislature that would allow the private owner of the Miami Dolphins and SunLife Stadium to
get public funds for a fancy roof and renovations that include better lighting and fewer seats (more on that later).
The Senate bill, which Ladra believed was poised to pass, has been stalled. House Speaker Will Weatherford (R-Wesley Chapel) has been reluctant to bring the other bill forward. He was quoted as saying that he has been waiting for three weeks for the Senate to move their bill, which is different because it forces five teams across the state to compete for the $3 million in sales tax rebates, rather than just give it to the Dolphins. That has more of a chance to pass.
If the legislature kills it, then the referendum doesn’t happen — even though people have already received their absentee ballots and early voting starts on Monday, the same day as the last week of session starts.
But what if this has always been part of the plan: To wait until the last minute. Dolphins owner Stephen Ross and the pro-stadium team want it to be passed on the last day of session. Because that keeps the anti-stadium forces still and silent for as long as possible while the other side gains yardage.
Braman, the most likely to fund a campaign to counter the high-priced propaganda machine that the pro-stadium Miami First Coalition is deep into already, has focused his efforts and his wallet on a Tallahassee lobbyist to sway our electeds to vote against it.
“I still don’t think it’s coming out of the legislature,” he told Ladra Friday. “I think our state leaders have a lot more sense than our county commission. The Miami-Dade delegation is not supporting it.”
But not the entire delegation, Norm. The chair of the Miami-Dade delegation, State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez (R-Hialeah) is the one who sponsors it and Sen. Oscar Braynon (D-Miami Gardens),who represents the district that is home to the stadium, co-sponsored it. I know they will get some votes from their closest colleagues.
And I just don’t have the same faith in the “assurances” he’s gotten that make him so confident we don’t need to start working on the people who vote here, not in Tallahassee.
The pro-stadium people seem equally assured. The Friends of Miami First PAC has more than $1 million from Ross’s own deep pockets, through his company to fund a heavy campaign that will only be relevant if the deal passes in Tallahassee. According to campaign reports filed Friday, they have already spent almost $200,000 on advertising and “advertising supplies” and another $150,000 on phone banks.
“We are fully confident that the Legislature will act,” said Miami First Eric Jotkoff, in the Miami Herald Saturday. “There’s a lot of time left in the legislative session.”
Added Dolphins CEO Mike Dee: “News [stories] of our demise are greatly exaggerated.”
we’re not panicking yet. Five days is a long time.”For Tallahassee, maybe. But 10 days is a very short window for the anti-stadium forces to mobilize should this thing survive in the state capitol. And if it does, that is how long there is for a “Vote No” campaign.
Meanwhile, the heavily-financed pro-stadium forces have been on the offensive for weeks to convince voters — which polls that have been made public show are overwhelmingly against — that this is a good idea. And you know what they say: The best defense is a good offense.
Cutler Bay Mayor Edward “Mac” MacDougall has put $50,000 of his own money into the effort to kill the bill, but has not done much in the way of informing voters. “It’s virtually nothing,” he admits. He’s done some outreach with other mayors, principally, motivating them to get the “Vote No” word out to their constituents. His focus now is in Tallahassee, not on the legislature but on Gov. Rick Scott, and getting him the message that this deal will kill jobs, not create them, by taking $13 million a year in tax rebates from the international banking industry — which creates more than 5,900 jobs with just that money and has an economic impact of more than $1 billion statewide, according to a 2005 study (more on that later). MacDougall will bring up this little known issue when he debates attorney, law professor and Miami First co-chair H.T. Smith on the Michael Putney show on Local 10 Sunday.
“I want the governor to hear that if he signs this bill, he is going to kill jobs,” MacDougall said.
But, again, with the focus in Tallahassee, there is no direct message getting to the voters. And Ladra is pretty positive that the pro-stadium forces planned it that way.
Braman said he’s not “putting all our eggs in one basket,” as I had put it. “I’ve been speaking out. And there is a mail piece coming.”
Coming? Speaking out? It’s not enough to debate in front of a few dozen people. That does not even begin to match the huge effort that Miami First and pro-stadium forces are making.
They have been phonebanking like teenagers with good gossip. They’ve gone out to visit the senior centers and comedores where absentee ballot collecting is a sport of its own. They ha
ve sent three mailers out, maybe four, pushing their messages of creating jobs and economic opportunity and scaring people with the threat we will lose the team if we vote against their $350 million facelift. The Spanish mailer says “suppot our community, back the creation of more than 4,000 new jobs for Miami-Dade.” But that figure is in dispute and it doesn’t say that most of those jobs are temporary. It also says “it won’t cost county taxpayers a cent” but tourist tax dollars are our dollarsafter the tourists pay it, even if they do have to be earmarked for specific tourism-related costs or projects (fyi: tourists will stop coming if our water and sewer system finally fails) and it doesn’t mention the $90 million in sales tax rebate they get in Tallahassee, regardless of the May 14 vote. Those are our cents for sure, which we can use on anything.
They have palm cards and handy little gift note pads to hand out at community meetings. I wouldn’t be surprised if they came out with pens or magnets for the fridge in the next week or so. They have a facebook page with 546 likes, a brand new website that was having technical problems Saturday morning but is fine now, an official twitter handle with 1,383 followers, an unofficial twitter handle to attack Braman and two hashtags. Dee led reporters and cameras on a tour of the stadium Friday to show where the $350 million in renovation dollars — more than half of it public — would go. They rolled out a new uniform, new logo and the Super Bowl Committee provided details about their bid which includes a theme park in the downtown.
Or do you think the timing of such announcements and press tours and today’s celebrated “Fin Fest” community party is a coincidence? Really?
“I don’t think they’re convincing anyone,” Braman told me.
But my sources say they may be.
The Miami First campaign is doing constant polling — or tracking, rather — via their phone banks and many of their paid propagandists have been getting cockier about their chances. One told me that the numbers are, indeed, looking up for them. Ross is all cheeky and smiles in the interviews he finally gave last week. “We’ll see on the
14th,” said another smug supporter the other day after we got into it.
Pollster and FIU Professor Dario Moreno, who did the first two polls, says that the support is likely gaining. Not only does the pro-stadium stance have nowhere to go but up, but also because their messages are the only ones getting to voters en masse.
“Their numbers have to be getting better,” said Moreno, who added that he has not conducted any more polls on the matter since the first two. His poll in October in and around Coral Gables that said 84% were against it and a countywide poll around February that said 73% were against it.
“They’ve made so many concessions that they are likely moving voters,” Moreno said. “Also, the ballot language will make it go better for the Dolphins.”
Ladra received her absentee ballot. And Commissioner Juan Zapata was right when he said it looks like it was written by a pollster. Except I think it was a pollster in conjunction with a media person.
The resolution “proposes using $7.5 million a year, adjusted annually for growth, from additoinal tourist room taxes to be levied to modernize stadium conditoned on:
- Dolphins remaining long-term in county
- Private funding for majority of costs
- Stadium owners paying county at least $112 million in 30 years
- Stadium owners paying penalties up to $120 million for not bringin premier football and soccer events to stadium, and
- Award, in May 2013, of Super Bowl.
Really? Really? Does anybody else find that wording suspicious? Can I call foul here? Unsportsmanlike playing, at least.
And Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban Bovo was right when he said the ballot should have the word “increase” because it is an increase in the tourist tax, it is not “using… additional taxes,” which could easily be interpreted as dipping into tax money that is already collected. But I bet that was Commissioner Barbara Jordan‘s intention all along.
The pro-stadium team has moved the ball toward their end zone with almost zero defense holding them back. They are passing. They are rushing.
What the anti-stadium forces (because it’s not really a team yet) needs here is some blocking and tackling. It is too late for a sack.
Braman and others seem to be praying and hoping for a fumble, when what we need to do is make an interception. Before the end of the game.
Anti Dolphins stadium team’s silence is not golden added by Ladra on
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