Are some people paid to speak at Miami-Dade meetings? That’s (usually) hard to prove

Danielle Siegel rode the bus and Metrorail to a Miami-Dade County Commission meeting recently to wait her turn before the microphone to endorse a land deal for a Costco about 20 miles south of her Flagami home.

“I’m here to support the Costco,” Siegel, 60, told commissioners at the May 7 meeting. “I buy a lot of bulk food.”

She later told a reporter she was offered $50 to be there that day — a significant sum, Siegel said, as she struggles to pay rent while living off benefits income of less than $700 a month.

“It means groceries to me,” she said.

Siegel wouldn’t put the Miami Herald in touch with the person she said offered cash for her supportive words on the Swerdlow Group’s no-bid proposal to build a Costco on county land near Cutler Bay. But the Miami development company said it had nothing to do with the people who attended the meeting to support the project, which is being touted as a boost to South Dade’s economy and workforce. Swerdlow would build the new Costco center and rent it to the wholesale retailer.

“We had no idea who the people were” who spoke in favor of the project, CEO Michael Swerdlow said in an interview. In a follow-up statement, the Swerdlow Group stated it didn’t pay anyone to speak at the meeting and that the Costco deal won passage “based on the merits of our proposal and has received wide public support.”

Commissioner Kionne McGhee, who sponsored the Costco legislation and has led the charge for its passage, declined to answer questions this week about whether he knew of anyone being paid to speak in favor of the resolution at the May 7 meeting. He referred questions to a spokesperson, Andre Rodriguez.

The Herald emailed Rodriguez a question about what McGhee knew about anyone being offered money to speak in favor of the Costco legislation. Rodriguez responded with a one-word statement from McGhee: “Nothing.”

READ MORE: Costco closer to getting a South Dade site through no-bid deal for cheap county land

The speaking stipend Siegel described is a rare acknowledgment of something that County Hall veterans say is a common but quiet tactic in trying to win commission support for development projects: providing modest compensation to someone willing to address commissioners, seemingly as a regular member of the public, in favor of a particular project.

“All the commissioners know,” said Juan C. Zapata, who served on the Miami-Dade commission between 2012 and 2016.

He said in his experience, developers typically hire consultants, who in turn hand out small amounts of money for people willing to speak at public meetings in downtown Miami that can stretch for hours. “They do it all the time.”

There’s no law against receiving compensation to speak before the County Commission, though Miami-Dade’s code does require the person to register in advance as a lobbyist and disclose who is paying them for their remarks, said Jose Arrojo, director of the county’s Ethics Commission.

“The ordinance requires registration so that the public, and the decision makers in government, know that the advocacy is compensated,” Arrojo said. He said he wasn’t aware of the Ethics Commission ever investigating allegations that a member of the public had spoken at a government meeting without disclosing that they were being paid to be there.

Without knowing that speakers are being paid, their comments can seem like a sampling of broader community sentiment.

“I think decision makers and county commissioners need to have their eyes wide open to these tactics,” said Eve Samples, executive director of the Friends of the Everglades, a frequent opponent of development projects when they encroach on environmentally sensitive lands. “What sounds like sincere support may not always be.”

In a brief interview with the Herald about 90 minutes after she addressed commissioners, Siegel said that she had been promised $50 but hadn’t been paid yet and wasn’t sure how she would be paid. She said that a friend had contacted her the night before about the opportunity.

After paying her rent, Siegel said she’s left with less than $100 each month to pay expenses, so the chance to pick up $50 was appealing.

“It’s not easy out there,” she said.

Costco pitch

Local employment was a top selling point for Swerdlow in his long lobbying campaign to buy the vacant 17 acres of county land off Southwest 190th Street, north of where U.S. 1 meets Florida’s Turnpike. Within five years, Costco agreed to create a minimum of 210 jobs there that pay at least the county’s living wage, currently $21.26 an hour.

Swerdlow would also pay an additional $1 million over 10 years to Miami-Dade, plus another $1 million to a fund that helps homeowners with septic tanks pay for hooking up their plumbing to the county sewer system. Part of the deal also allows Miami-Dade to accept free land from Swerdlow for a future Water and Sewer facility, meaning Swerdlow could acquire the future Costco parcel with a property swap instead of paying the $8 million purchase price.

The administration of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava opposed the proposed $8 million deal with Swerdlow Group, which is well below the land’s appraised value of $31 million. In a memo, Levine Cava urged commissioners to demand a higher price and to insist on concessions that included a requirement for affordable housing to also go on the Costco site.

On May 7, the board voted 8 to 5 to approve the sale without the mayor’s requested changes. Voting against were Juan Carlos Bermudez, René Garcia, Danielle Cohen Higgins, Eileen Higgins and Micky Steinberg. That was enough for the sale to be approved, provided Levine Cava doesn’t veto the legislation by Friday.

No commissioner mentioned the limited public comments about Costco, including Siegel’s, and there was no indication that the brief remarks from those supporters influenced a decision that’s been the subject of more than a year of lobbying and negotiations.

Though she was able to say a few words to commissioners, Siegel didn’t get far in her comments. Commission Chair Oliver Gilbert intervened that morning, noting that the board wasn’t allowing speakers on Costco because there was already a public hearing on the legislation last month. No member of the public showed up to speak at that April 10 committee meeting.

At last week’s meeting, a few pro-Costco speakers still came to the microphones for brief comments before being reminded of the rules.

“I’m here to support the Costco development,” said Ken Forbes, who lives in the South Dade neighborhood of Princeton. “I brought other community people with me today who did not sign up [to speak], but they’re here to support it as well.”

Forbes later told the Herald he wasn’t offered compensation to speak and that he wasn’t aware of anyone who was.

“I can’t speak for everybody,” he said in a telephone interview. “I know myself, and those that came with me from our neck of the woods, we were not paid for anything. We are active in things pertaining to community development. We were there for the jobs.”