Miami power grab: It took a judge to remind city leaders they can't cancel democracy

Miami Herald

5 days ago

It took a judge to bring the Miami City Commission back to reality. The city's elected officials can't postpone an election and extend their own terms by a year, no matter how good the reason, a Miami circuit judge said this week.
What a relief. For a while, Miami, known for government dysfunction, was once again making headlines for the wrong reasons.
Fortunately, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Valerie Manno Schurr ruled against this power grab. She said Monday that commissioners violated the Florida Constitution when they decided last month to extend their own terms a year by postponing the November 2025 election to November 2026. In a split 3-2 vote, commissioners pushed back the election to align with midterm and presidential elections, which they said would likely lower election costs and lead to higher voter turnout.
Those are worthy goals but this was an audacious move. There's no way not to see it as self-serving. It would extend the terms even of those who are term-limited out of office this year, including Mayor Francis Suarez and Commissioner Joe Carollo, who voted against the measure. Moving the election to even-numbered years may be a plus for voter participation, but doing it by extending the commission's terms without voters deciding? That's the eyebrow-raising part.
The ruling came in a suit filed by Miami mayoral candidate Emilio González. In the suit, he compared the commission's decision to what happens in 'regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, or Cuba — the very places so many of Miami's people come from — [where] those in power, while in power, forced upon those voters what they think is best for elections going forward — and secured for themselves additional time in power, without a vote of the electorate. That cannot stand.'
It's not as if commissioners weren't warned. Both Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier told them not to delay the election.
Commissioner Damian Pardo, who sponsored the proposal, cited worthy reasons for moving the elections. Voter participation in particular has been a problem in Miami for a long time. The city needs greater civic engagement. By moving the election to even-numbered years, when more people generally vote, Miami could see a spike in turnout. That would be great.
But voters should be the ones to decide if the election should be moved. The ends do not justify the means.
Coral Gables confronted a similar issue earlier this year — with a different conclusion. The commission voted 3-2 to shorten the terms of commissioners and of Mayor Vince Lago by over four months in order to move up the date of the next election from April 2027 to November 2026.
There's a fundamental issue at play here: Voters should be able to trust that, when they elect their representatives, it's for the agreed-upon amount of time. Those who are elected shouldn't be able to change the length of their terms at will.
In arguing that changing the election date is legal, the city of Miami is relying on three Florida statutes that allow municipalities to move an election date via ordinance. North Miami recently changed its elections to even years, and the decision was appealed but, in the end, the Third District Court of Appeal affirmed a lower court's ruling that the city had the authority to make the change.
Will that hold up in Miami's case? The city has appealed the judge's ruling and asked for a decision by Aug. 8. Complicating matters, there are other issues politically linked to the election postponement, including lifetime term limits for the commission — an idea the Editorial Board supports — and the need to expand the city commission from five seats to seven or nine, which needs to be done as well.
But no matter how the legal arguments settle out in this case, a judge has called commissioners' decision unconstitutional. That should pull them up short. In their purported zeal to put election participation on a better path, commissioners can't forget that they work for voters.
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