Miami-Dade Judge: Miami Commission can’t cancel election without public vote

First step victory for mayoral candidate is appealed
The wannabe dictators at Miami City Hall just got a hard slap of reality from the bench. And Ladra is here for it.
In a fiery ruling, hot enough to singe the mayor’s eyebrows, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Valerie Manno Schurr on Monday declared what most Miamians already knew in their gut: The Miami City Commission’s shady decision to cancel next year’s election and hand themselves an extra year in office without first taking it to voters was unconstitutional.
Basically, they tried to cancel your vote. And got caught and slapped on the ballot.
And thanks to former City Manager Emilio González, who is running for mayor, the election is back on.
Well, maybe. Fingers crossed. “While we respectfully disagree with the trial court’s decision,” City Attorney George Wysong said in a statement, “we are confident in the strength of our case and remain optimistic about the outcome on appeal.” That appeal was filed before the ruling came down based on Wednesday’s hearing. Because the city already knows the case is a stinker.
The issue is pressing, since the ballot for this year has to be ready for printing by September, so the judge has set a date of Aug. 8 to resolve it. Knock on wood.
Read related: First lawsuit filed to stop city of Miami from cancelling November election
González sued the city days after the commission voted last month to move municipal elections from odd to even years, effectively postponing the 2025 election until 2026 and extending their own terms without so much as a “¿te importa?” to the voters.
The ordinance — sponsored by “reformer” Commissioner Damian Pardo — is purportedly about increasing turnout a lot and reducing costs a little. The idea was to empower voters, Pardo said. But the change also just happened to keep voters out of the loop and ignored an earlier vote to limit terms to a max eight years by giving the bonus year to even term-limited commissioners.
“This is not just a victory for me,” González said in a statement, polishing his halo, “it is a triumph for all voters in the City of Miami and across Miami-Dade County who believe in upholding our charter and the rule of law.”
His legal team — including former Florida Supreme Court Justice Alan Lawson (the big guns) — called the move what it was: a charter-busting, power-hungry hijack. They compared it to stunts pulled in places like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Cuba — countries where elections get postponed for “reform” and never really come back.
Sound familiar, Miami?
Lawson argued that the charter — Miami’s own governing rules — and the county’s Home Rule charter say you need a vote of the people to make election changes like this. And they trump any state law the city was relying on.
But city attorneys argued that, no, no, they were just tweaking the city code. Not the charter. As if voters can’t tell the difference.
The judge did not mince her words to say that the city was playing a magic trick with, um, words.
“The City’s contention that its Ordinance did not ‘amend’ its City Charter is nothing more than semantic sleight of hand. In one sense, of course, the City is correct, it did not effectuate a permissible amendment to its Charter because the Florida Constitution and Miami-Dade County Charter do not allow the City to amend or repeal its provisions by ordinance. That can only be accomplished with a vote of the electorate, as the Plaintiff correctly contends.”
Sounds like a Catch-22: “We didn’t change the charter because that would require a vote of the people. No, we don’t need a vote of the people because we’re not changing the charter.”
Read related: Miami Commissioners pass election date change — and steal an extra year
Even Assistant City Attorney Eric Eves had to admit, awkwardly, at a hearing last Wednesday that the city’s new ordinance puts the charter and code at odds. “Yes, it conflicts with our charter. But I haven’t heard anyone claim our charter supersedes the state.”
The city and Pardo kept using the example of North Miami — where they extended terms by 18 months in 2023, and later upheld by an appeals court — to say that, well, if that municipality can do it, why can’t we? Eves suggested that Manno Schurr read the opinion of Judge Reemberto Diaz in that case and copy/paste. “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel,” he said.
But the González team argued that the North Miami case did not set a binding precedent. “There’s no procedural value whatsoever in that opinion. The issue you’re being asked to decide was not raised in that case,” Lawson said, calling it irrelevant.
Assistant City Attorney Eric Eves, Judge Valerie Manno Schurr and plaintiff’s attorney, Alan Lawson
Pero, por si las moscas, the hearing was also attended by a North Miami resident who wanted to tell the “horror story” about the change of election in that city. “We ended up with someone serving 25 years in office,” said Eileen Bicaba, president of the NoMi Neighbors Association, who last year filed a lawsuit against three council members for violating the state’s Government in the Sunshine Law.
“This was nothing short of a coup in North Miami,” Bicaba said, passionately.
In her ruling, the judge mostly relied on one aspect: She said the city’s reliance on state law was misplaced. Perhaps a better word would be “selective.” Because the city actually omitted a tiny little wee part of the law it relied on, which reads, “The Florida Election Code… shall govern the conduct of a municipality’s election in the absence of an applicable special act, charter, or ordinance provision.” The judge’s bold letters, not Ladra’s.
The second part of the law only exists, Manno Schurr repeated, apparently for emphasis, “in the absence of an applicable charter provision.” Again, Ladra has to compliment her on the use of bold font when appropriate. In other words, you can only apply that law when the county or the city don’t have laws that conflict.
“Here, there are two charters that together apply and control: the Miami-Dade Charter and the City Charter,” Judge Manno Schurr wrote in her 14-page decision. So the state law “cannot be construed to authorize the City’s passage of the Ordinance.”
The Miami-Dade charter “unambiguously prohibits the City from cancelling an election, moving an election, or extending the terms in office for city officials without the consent of the electorate given at a properly held election,” the judge wrote. Keyword: Without.
“Furthermore, the Court will not presume that the Legislature intended [state law] to be construed as permitting municipalities to extend existing terms or change the term limits in the absence of express text granting such authority,” she writes in the ruling. Boom! She gets it.
“This omission stands in stark contrast to section… which expressly allows a municipality to effectuate ‘changes in terms of offices necessitated by . . . changes in election dates,’ provided the issue is not ‘preempted to a county,” Manno Schurr writes.
Which, as established, it is.
Read related: Miami commissioners should shorten their terms for election year change
All of this was unnecessary. Pardo could have taken this concept to the people, you know, like in a democracy. He could have campaigned for it. He already put lifetime term limits on the November ballot. It would have been easy to add the change in election year and let the voters decide. But it’s way easier to just bulldoze ahead because he “had the votes” on the commission, and, as he says, he had to seize the moment.
Who cares if people had already spent time and money campaigning for this year’s election? Ladra bets Pardo would have felt differently, however, if they had pulled this in 2023, when he was running for commissioner. Perhaps, as some critics say, extending his own term is the only way he’ll serve more than four years.
On Wednesday, Pardo posted a statement on social media that was the exact statement provided to Political Cortadito by the city’s spokeswoman on behalf of the city attorney. So it’s an echo chamber over there at City Hall. They got nothin’ to say.
Commissioner Joe Carollo, who has also threatened to run for mayor and voted against the election year change, had attorneys attend Wednesday’s hearing after they filed an amicus brief in support of Gonzalez, which is a nice change of pace. Not that González needed it or welcomed it.
Denise Galvez-Turros, an activist in Little Havana who filed to run for commission in District 3, also filed a lawsuit last week that challenges the validity of the ordinance and asks the court to find it void and unenforceable.
“This unlawful act is not merely a procedural defect. It is a calculated effort by a narrow majority of the Commission to entrench themselves in power, override the will of the electorate, and circumvent the very Charter provisions they are sworn to uphold,” wrote attorney Reid Levin on behalf of Galvez Turros.
“The people of Miami are entitled to choose their representatives at the ballot box; not have them imposed by ordinance.”
There is a little more than two weeks left before the Aug. 8 deadline to hear the city’s appeal of Manno Schurr’s ruling. Expect another round of lawyerly acrobatics from the city attorney’s office.
Maybe more excuses about turnout, costs, traffic, climate change, Mercury in retrograde — anything to avoid putting this to a real vote.
Emilio T Gonzalez v City of Miami — Judge says ordinance to change election year without public vote uncon… by Political Cortadito on Scribd

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