Miami-Dade says Fla. budget derails funding for commuter train on Brightline tracks

Miami Herald

5 days ago

A planned commuter train between Miami and Fort Lauderdale saw its funding plan derailed Monday by Florida's new state budget, which defunds a key source of transit dollars for the $927 million project, according to county officials.
If funded, the Northeast Corridor project — also known as the Coastal Link — would bring a version of Tri-Rail commuter trains to the heart of the Miami area's urban corridor, east of Interstate 95. Miami-Dade has been planning stations in Wynwood, Little Haiti, North Miami and other neighborhoods along the route, which would eventually stretch north to Palm Beach County.
The rail project had secured $200 million in state funding to match local tax money needed to qualify for a federal transportation grant to cover Miami-Dade's 14-mile portion of the proposed rail line, which would run along existing Brightline tracks. But the dedicated funding source for those rail dollars was all but eliminated in the $115 billion budget package passed on June 17 by the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature and signed Monday by Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to a summary from Miami-Dade's legislative staff.
Late changes to the budget language eliminated a provision in state law reserving some real estate taxes to pay for matching rail grants from the federal government. The change caught transit advocates by surprise and left them hoping for future legislation to plug the funding hole in the only Miami-Dade rail project with a short-term path to crucial federal dollars.
'I find it mystifying that the State legislature would defund a transit project that Miami-Dade's Congressional delegation has made a priority and is included in the President's budget,' Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins said in a statement.
Higgins, a candidate for mayor in the city of Miami, chairs the County Commission's Transportation committee and has been the board's main advocate of the Northeast project. 'I will be advocating for a correction to this mistake as the legislature convenes later this year,' she said.
Higgins and others are looking to Florida House Speaker Danny Perez, a Miami-Dade Republican, to make sure Miami-Dade has the needed state dollars for the Northeast Corridor project. His tax-cut agenda as the House's most powerful Republican helped shape the budget.
In a statement to the Miami Herald, Perez rejected the notion that the Northeast Corridor dollars were actually at risk and warned the DeSantis administration against attempting to cut funding in the Miami area.
'Any suggestion that these reductions would impact significant Miami-Dade projects is purely political,' he said. If the Florida Department of Transportation 'or any other entity attempts to shut down major Miami-Dade projects, the Florida House will consider launching an investigation into abuse of office and political retaliation.'
The commuter rail plan in Miami-Dade relies on federal and Florida funding
Last summer, the Florida Department of Transportation notified Miami-Dade County that the Northeast Corridor rail project qualified for $200 million in state dollars. Miami-Dade planned to contribute at least another $200 million, with the combined amount enough to meet the matching threshold for federal Department of Transportation dollars.
In October, the project got a boost when the Department of Transportation under President Joe Biden approved Miami-Dade for $389 million toward the Northeast Corridor, money requiring congressional approval that's still pending. The 2026 Transportation budget under Trump lists the Northeast Corridor as a project that could receive funding later in the budget year.
Business leaders tried to close the deal in Washington earlier this year. In April, a delegation from the Partnership for Miami business group traveled to D.C. to lobby lawmakers on the Northeast Corridor and also met with Trump's transportation secretary, Sean Duffy.
Then, just days before the June 17 budget vote in Tallahassee, county transportation planners learned of the language they say puts the Northeast Corridor budget at risk.
To reduce state spending, the new Florida budget ends a rule reserving some dollars raised in real estate transactions — known as 'documentary' or 'doc' stamp taxes — for matching transit grants.
Instead of reserving about $40 million to $50 million yearly for federally funded rail projects, the real estate dollars will instead go into Florida's general spending bucket to compensate for lost revenue from the legislature's new tax cuts.
'There was unfortunately very little time to react,' Jess McCarty, the assistant county attorney who is Miami-Dade's main lobbyist in Tallahassee, wrote in a June 24 email to a county staffer.
The lost matching money for federal rail projects came on top of another cutback in the state budget for transit funding in Miami-Dade. As part of more than $1 billion in tax cuts, the new budget includes a provision backed by Perez that eliminates a 2% sales tax that businesses pay when leasing commercial space.
By eliminating that tax statewide, the Florida budget also wipes out a small but notable portion of two voter-approved sales taxes that are only charged in Miami-Dade.
One is a half-percent sales tax to fund transportation projects. The other is a half-percent sales tax to fund Jackson Health, Miami-Dade's public hospital.
By exempting commercial leases from those taxes, the Florida budget is expected to cut tax revenue by about $27 million each for Miami-Dade transportation projects and for Jackson, according to a summary provided by the Florida Association of Counties. A $27 million cut amounts to about an 8% revenue reduction for both, according to county estimates.
While the elimination of the commercial lease tax is final, Higgins and others who have been pushing for the Northeast Corridor rail project hope Perez will help Miami-Dade find other matching dollars when the Florida Legislature reconvenes at the end of 2025. Privately, multiple people involved in the talks say Perez has said he's ready to try to replace any dollars that the budget may have taken away from the Miami rail project.
'I presume the elimination was inadvertent,' Higgins said in her statement.