Commissioner boosts tax budget for tourism bureau that gave him World Cup tickets

Despite facing shortfalls in transit and law enforcement funding, the chair of Miami-Dade’s County Commission on Friday secured $5 million in property-tax dollars for a well-funded tourism bureau that has also been a donor to his political committee.

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The last-minute funding boost for the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau (GMCVB) sponsored by Commission Chair Anthony Rodriguez came three months after the bureau donated 11 skybox seats valued at $38,500 to Rodriguez’s PAC, A Bolder Florida.

The funding request passed 8-to-4, with one commissioner citing the June ticket gift as a reason to oppose giving the tourism bureau an extra $5 million to spend courtesy of the County Commission.

“It made everybody look terrible,” Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez said of the GMCVB’s donation of 11 skybox tickets to the Rodriguez PAC. Bermudez told Rodriguez he’d only consider the $5 million allocation if “there are conflict-of-interest guardrails for all of us.”

In his first public comments on the free tickets after the Miami Herald reported on them in July, Rodriguez noted it was his political committee that made the gift public — a rare disclosure on a board where commissioners are routinely spotted in exclusive areas at sporting events. “What he’s referring to happened to be probably the only commissioner that actually filed the details that needed to be filed,” Rodriguez said. “That’s how it was made known — because I did the right thing.”

The independent tourism bureau is already at the top of the funding list for nonprofits in Miami-Dade’s budget. The 2027 budget that commissioners passed early Friday morning had $37 million for the GMCVB from county hotel taxes before Rodriguez introduced legislation to shift $5 million in property taxes to the bureau, too.

Rodriguez described the $5 million as a way to boost the tourism economy by expanding the GMCVB’s ability to help attract large sporting events like NASCAR and the NBA All-Star Game.

“This motion is precisely for those special events,” Rodriguez said. “We’ll create a pot of funding.”

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That strategy would likely have the GMCVB receiving even more of the kind of free premium tickets the bureau donated to Rodriguez’s PAC. The GMCVB said it was its role as a World Cup Host Committee sponsor that allowed it to have a dozen skybox seats at each of the seven matches. Most went to volunteer GMCVB board members and travel professionals the bureau was trying to court.

The GMCVB’s $5 million allocation shifts property-tax dollars to a nonprofit that, while county-funded, is a private organization. That will likely shield some decisions on sports subsidies from the kind of public attention that brought political heat to the county for spending millions of dollars subsidizing the World Cup last summer. The new arrangement with the GMCVB appealed to Commissioner Oliver Gilbert.

“I do think it is beneficial to create a pot of money that does not create an overly political debate,” he said before voting for Rodriguez’s proposal.

Voting against Rodriguez’s funding plan were Bermudez and Commissioners Roberto Gonzalez, Raquel Regalado and Micky Steinberg. Commissioner René Garcia was not in the chambers for the vote.

In July, the tourism bureau’s director, David Whitaker, told the Herald that Rodriguez had requested the free World Cup tickets, which were for the June 27 match when Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo faced off against hometown favorite Colombia at Hard Rock Stadium for the global FIFA championship. Whitaker was not immediately available for comment after the commission’s 11-hour budget meeting Friday morning, which adjourned after 4 a.m.

The $5 million heading to the GMCVB comes from $16 million in unspent countywide property-tax dollars from the county’s independent Tax Collector’s Office. The remaining $11 million was, at Rodriguez’s request, allocated to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office. The independent law enforcement agency was seeking $56 million in county funding above the $978 million included in Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s 2027 budget proposal. Rodriguez’s legislation brought that gap down to $45 million.

Commissioners also faced pressure to find about $30 million to reverse bus-service cuts in Levine Cava’s budget proposal. While commissioners did approve using $12 million in surplus dollars to restore early-morning service, they did not find the dollars needed to restore cuts in late-night bus service or the elimination of about a dozen bus routes next spring.

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