Miami-Dade County Commission

COMMENTARY

Here’s a dirty little secret about Amazon deforestation that liberals prefer you overlook: the slash-and-burn may be ugly under right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, but it was bad when leftists controlled the rainforest, too. Under former President Dilma Rousseff, the liberal darling who ruled Brazil from 2011 until her impeachment in 2016, Amazon deforestation actually increased.

In no way does that excuse Bolsonaro’s reckless efforts to accelerate the trend – which in 2019 have resulted in an alarming 85 percent rise in Amazon fires that have destroyed more than 7,000 square miles of rainforest. What it points out is that Brazil, left or right, is and largely has been a lousy steward of an emerald ecosystem known as the lungs of the earth.

Call it much-needed traffic relief for Kendall residents or the "Everglades Snakeway" -- but it's on its way to completion.

When a group of developers wanted to build a new industrial complex on rural land just beyond Miami’s western suburbs in 2015, their zoning application to the county cited the prospect of traffic relief from a historic expansion of State Road 836 by the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority.

The five Miami-Dade commissioners seeking another four-year term were reelected Tuesday night, reasserting the power of incumbency in a summer that began with an upset win by a political newcomer.

District 12 Commissioner Jose Diaz’s constituents in Miami-Dade County comprise the largest population of Nicaraguans in the United States. On Tuesday, Diaz helped pass a resolution condemning the Nicaraguan government’s use of force against protesters. He specifically wants to see action from the U.S. Congress.

Film and TV productions will get some incentives to shoot in Miami-Dade County. A stop-gap county-based program hopes to plug some of the hole created by the state’s refusal to implement its own Florida-wide benefits.

A day after concerns about westward growth sunk a request to extend the 836 expressway into Kendall, Miami-Dade’s mayor stepped in to try to revive the proposal with county commissioners.

Mayor Carlos Gimenez called for the commission to reconsider Tuesday’s 3-2 committee vote against the proposed extension. The plan would take the busy expressway past the county’s Urban Development Boundary, which divides intense development from land with growth restrictions designed to protect the Everglades.