You can track your Amazon package to the minute. You can watch your DoorDash driver turn onto your street. But try tracking how Miami-Dade spends its $12.9 billion budget – good luck.
The county will tell you the information is online – and some of it is. There’s even a tool called the “Online Checkbook.” But it’s broken, the county knows it’s broken, and officials have done nothing — not fixed it, not replaced it, not even bothered to tell the public.
That is not transparency. That is the appearance of transparency.
Not a small town operation
Miami-Dade is not a county in the traditional sense. It is a $12.9 billion enterprise — larger than the entire state budgets of Wyoming, Vermont, and Montana combined. We have 2.8 million residents, 34 municipalities, one of the world’s busiest ports, and an international airport that serves as the gateway to the Americas. At this scale, “be patient” is not an acceptable answer.
What Miami-Dade calls transparency
We tested the Online Checkbook ourselves. Here is what it actually does in 2026:
• Requires users to know already the exact vendor name they are searching for;
• Updates only once a month;
• Excludes the Police Department entirely;
• Excludes Aviation and Water and Sewer unless users know where to dig;
• Runs on a generic Microsoft reporting tool not built for public use;
• And — this is real — the county posts a warning on the page stating the data is unaudited, unconsolidated, and should not be relied upon for accuracy
The page literally tells taxpayers to “please be patient” while waiting for results. This is in 2026 for a $12.9 billion budget.
Our neighbors already solved this
This isn’t experimental; this isn’t expensive, this already is done.
Palm Beach County, just 45 minutes north, launched a real-time financial transparency dashboard in March 2025. Any resident can search spending by vendor, filter results by category, and download the data – right now, tonight, from the kitchen table.
New York City has had Checkbook NYC since 2010, and it has been ranked among the top government transparency tools in the nation.
Miami-Dade brands itself as a global city, a tech hub, a magnet for billionaires and startups — and our financial reporting operates like it’s 1994.
Mayor Levine Cava: What are we waiting for?
This isn’t about money – Miami-Dade has the resources. This isn’t about technology – the tools already exist, and neighboring counties are using them.
This is about whether transparency actually is a priority. Right now, the answer is clearly no.
Taxpayers deserve a public commitment: a platform, a launch date, and an explanation for why this hasn’t happened already. Not another explanation for why the broken system is “good enough.” It isn’t, and everyone knows it.
Miami-Dade shouldn’t just call itself a Global City. It should govern like one.
Questions or ideas? Call Grant Miller at 305-323-8206 or send email to grant@cnews.net.
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