A group of Miami Beach registered voters failed to persuade a judge on Friday to overturn the city commission's hasty decision earlier this week to not count votes on a Nov. 5 referendum that asks voters to approve a 1% tax on food and beverage sales on certain businesses to benefit primarily the homeless.
Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Antonio Arzola ruled that the city commission had the authority to reject Referendum 8 and not accept the election outcome. The referendum question is already on the ballot and more than 20,000 voters have cast ballots in early voting.
Miami Beach commissioners voted 4-3 Wednesday on a resolution to scrap the referendum question that sought voter approval to allow the city to collect a 1% tax on food and beverage sales, levied on businesses that sell alcohol on-premise and earn at least $400,000 per year. It excluded hotels and motels.
The money was designated towards funding programs for residents who lack housing through the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, as well as programs for domestic violence victims.
Commission members voting to kill the measure said the city did not stand to gain anything and risked having no control over the money.
In their complaint, nearly a dozen plaintiffs argued that the city commission had violated the law and were ignoring voters just days before Tuesday's election. Early voting has been underway since Oct. 21.
"In trying to remove the measure from the ballot weeks into voting and six days before the November 5 General Election, the City Commission has thwarted the voters’ opportunity to be heard, cast the election into chaos at the most sensitive time, and imposed an almost impossible burden on election officials," says the complaint.
The plaintiffs accused the city commission of violating the law because the ballot measure — known as Referendum 8 — was "mandated" by a city ordinance approved in July 2023.
"This cannot be done," write the plaintiffs. "Moreover, in attempting to undo its earlier actions calling for the election once that election is underway, the City Commission has broken its own governing rules."
READ MORE: Miami Beach scraps ballot item on homeless and domestic violence tax — after voting has begun
"Even if a majority of City Commissioners are afraid of a public vote in favor of a modest tax to support services for the unhoused and victims of domestic violence, they should not be allowed to stop a lawful election that is already underway," notes the complaint. "There is no precedent in this County for such an action."
City commissioners are using “Venezuelan-style tactics to suppress democratic actions just days before Election Day," said the plaintiffs in an email to WLRN, in a direct reference to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government's refusal to disclose voting results of the disputed July 28 presidential election.
It's estimated the sales tax would have generated $10 million per year to help fund the construction and operation of housing for homeless people and domestic violence centers, as well as shelter, food, clothing, medical care, mental health treatment, training and education.
Following the commission vote on Wednesday to invalidate the ballot item, Commissioner David Suarez sent a public email describing Referendum 8 as a “heavily-funded push from billionaire developers and lobbyists seeking to impose an additional 1% ‘homeless restaurant tax.”
His colleague, Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, who joined him to not count votes, wrote in an email that the $10 million a year was for “lobbyist Ron Book's Homeless Trust slush fund that had been placed on the ballot more than a year ago by the former commission, forgotten by all of us, and never mentioned again.”
Ron Book, the chair of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, slammed the allegations. Book is not among the plaintiffs in the complaint but supports it.
“Anyone who would criticize philanthropic charitable participation in a referendum that works to help end homelessness is really just simply wrong,” he told WLRN in a telephone interview. "Compare what we have in unhoused people living on the streets to other urban communities in America, and tell me we shouldn't continue to fight and fund what has otherwise worked to keep our community from becoming a homeless haven."
Commissioner Tanya Katzoff Bhatt is one of three commissioners who voted against invalidating the referendum question. She acknowledged the concern from the dais during Wednesday's commission meeting of interfering with the public's vote underway.
“Irrespective of the subject of the ballot question, this attempt at abrogation is a subversion of the process. It is taking the power of people’s votes away from them and I will never be for that,” she wrote to WLRN by text message.
In the meantime, the city has sent out a public email to notify residents that: “Any vote cast for this public measure will not count for approval or rejection of the public measure,” the email reads.
The nearby Village of Bal Harbour has a similar item on its Nov. 5 ballot. If it approves the tax, Miami Beach and Surfside will be the only municipalities in Miami-Dade that do not contribute to the county's homeless and domestic violence tax program.
Late Wednesday, the Miami Herald Editorial Board slammed commissioners for the "anti-democratic" move.
"The 11th-hour move to rescind a question on the November ballot that would ask voters whether to authorize the tax smacks of an anti-democratic effort by commissioners to cancel a potential electoral outcome they disagree with."
The influential Board had recommended voters in Miami Beach and Bal Harbour approve the ballot items.
