Miami-Dade County

In a significant policy change spurred by new Florida law, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office announced it will no longer prosecute minor marijuana cases. And for amounts large enough for felony charges, police will now be required to get lab tests to confirm that marijuana is, well, actually marijuana.

To stem the exodus of poorly paid state-funded prosecutors and defense attorneys, Florida lawmakers earlier this year passed a law mandating starting pay of $50,000 a year.

But what was hailed as an important step in recruiting and keeping talented young lawyers may have an unintended, and dispiriting effect.

Broward and Miami-Dade transit planners are revving up a proposal for a monorail system that would whisk commuters between the two counties.

The federal court trial of Antwan Lenard Johnson appeared to be a clash of narratives between a handful of former juvenile delinquents and one of the officers who guarded them. In the end, jurors believed the guard.

Twelve jurors in Miami’s Wilkie D. Ferguson U.S. Courthouse found Johnson, a former detention officer at Miami’s long-troubled juvenile lockup, innocent of two charges of conspiring to violate the civil rights of a 17-year-old detainee. Elord Revolte died in August 2015 after a mob of fellow detainees beat him savagely — at the behest of Johnson, prosecutors said.

Broward’s new transportation tax could help Miami-Dade finally build a rail line north to Miami Gardens, with both counties interested in selecting a single company to build a transit link running from Miami to Fort Lauderdale.

The chairman and top executives of BYD, the Chinese company pursuing a four-mile county monorail line over the MacArthur Causeway to South Beach, met last week with a delegation of elected office holders from Broward and Miami-Dade on a joint tour of transit options in China and Japan.

Miami Beach city leaders stewed over nine ballot measures Wednesday, ultimately deciding to place six questions before voters in November, killing three other measures.

Ballot items that drew the most discussion during Wednesday’s City Commission meeting dealt with new term limits for the mayor, higher compensation for the mayor and city commissioners, and greater flexibility in filling commission vacancies.

The Miami Beach city commission unanimously approved a resolution Wednesday that outlines its reservations about a proposed tax-funded transit system across Biscayne Bay linking the city with Miami.

The measure concerns the feasibility of the “baylink” transit service and the intentions of the Malaysian casino company, Genting, which submitted an unsolicited proposal to Miami-Dade County to build the system across Biscayne Bay. Miami Beach commissioners now await Miami-Dade's final decision on the project.

If you like cute animals, Zoo Miami will not disappoint.

In the span of a week, Zoo Miami has added six newborns — all female — to its mix, including two zebras and an addax, also known as a white antelope.

“This amount of significant births in a seven-day period is extraordinary,” said Zoo Miami spokesman Ron Magill.

Read more at our news partner the Miami Herald.

A year before he partnered with the Genting casino developer to pitch the county on a monorail to Miami Beach, lobbyist Ralph Garcia-Toledo played an insider role in helping Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez defeat a $1.3 billion Metrorail extension to South Dade.

The Miami-Dade Expressway Authority moved closer to death Wednesday night when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill dissolving the toll board that’s been a target of Miami politicians for years. MDX lawyers have already sued trying to invalidate the legislation, which creates a new toll board to take the MDX’s place.

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber chided Miami-Dade leaders on Wednesday for a rushed vote on a two-month-old proposal by casino giant Genting to start a county bidding process for a monorail linking the resort city to downtown Miami.

In a letter, Gelber asked Miami-Dade commission chairwoman Audrey Edmonson to delay Wednesday’s vote to give the city time to analyze the proposal and let the county finish a tax-funded study by the Parsons engineering firm of the “baylink” commuting route.