Miami-Dade County commissioners are fond of heaping praise on the Miami Center for Mental Health and Rehabilitation, calling it a groundbreaking facility that will save lives and likely save the county millions of dollars. But they have also refused to move forward with allowing the center to open.
Several commissioners have raised questions about how the center would be funded in future years, but no one has been more outspoken in throwing up roadblocks designed to keep the center from opening than Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins.
Earlier this month, Cohen Higgins made a motion at the Intergovernmental and Economic Impact Committee requiring the mayor to come up with a plan explaining how the county was going to pay for the center for the next ten years. And she called on the mayor to “specifically identify what you are not going to fund in order to fund this building.”
It wasn’t on the agenda. The public wasn’t informed in advance. And it passed without any discussion.
On its face, what she proposed may seem reasonable, but that’s really not how the budgeting process works.
