I-Team

FT. LAUDERDALE (CBS4 I-TEAM) ― There is outrage among many taxpayers in Miami-Dade County following our investigation that aired months ago involving tax dollars not spent.
 
Instead that money is hoarded and kept in commissioner's financial kitties. It's a practice called carryover which was first exposed by CBS4 I-Team Investigator Stephen Stock. Now, we have reaction from taxpayers who hit the radio airwaves in protest.

"This first aired on CBS4 and was followed yesterday in The Miami Herald," said radio host Jimmy Cefalo. The outrage melted the airwaves. "What you have is dogs fighting over the bone and the other dogs done run off with the bone," said one caller responding to the controversy.

Radio host and listeners alike vented about one of the most unique and questionable practices in local government anywhere in the United States. That's the practice by Miami-Dade County Commissioners of carrying over unspent funds from one year to the next in their personal office budgets.

"The voters are appalled. They can't believe that Miami-Dade County Commissioners are sitting on $5 million while they're cutting jobs and cutting projects and cutting services," Cefalo added.

Florida Tax Watch's Dominic Calabro said more voters and taxpayers should be outraged.

"It's almost sickening. Please do you understand what you're saying and doing and thinking? If this is not illegal, which I believe it is not, it should be," Calabro said. 
 
Here's how it works. Any money budgeted for commissioners' district offices NOT spent in one fiscal year carries over. It accrues in future years. Add up all 13 commissioners' carry over accounts and you are talking $5,015,788. That's an increase from the previous fiscal year which was $3,816,000. All of this is taxpayer money which has accrued over the years with little public oversight, process or debate.

"There's no accountability. You would suspect that it would be time to clean up the financial system in Miami-Dade County," said Doctor Sean Foreman, a Barry University political science professor specializing in local Florida governments.

The CBS4 I-Team first uncovered this problem back in March. Almost no other major local government in the country engages in carryover.

This does not happen in Cook County, Chicago, Illinois nor Detroit, Michigan and not in Washington, D.C or New York City. Only in Los Angeles County, California is there some type of carryover and then it's not a routine practice.

According to Miami-Dade Commissioner Carlos Gimenez, "The carryover money allows you the flexibility to when you don't have those needs to carry that money over into another year when you have another kind of need."

"Wouldn't that money be better used better served out on the street with needs that you say are out there?" asked Stephen Stock. "Yes. I think that's a very good discussion for our budget hearings this year. What we're going to do with carry-over," said Miami-Dade Commissioner Katy Sorenson.

Commissioner Sorenson seems to stand alone in her opinion because there appears to be little interest among the other current commissioners in changing the carryover practice.

In fact, even as hundreds of county employees prepare to lose their jobs and many county services are reduced or cut altogether the amount of unspent carryover has actually gone up from the previous fiscal year by more than one million dollars.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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