{"id":353397,"date":"2026-07-27T06:46:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T06:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/353397\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T06:46:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T06:46:13","slug":"chaos-at-miamis-animal-house-condo-shows-where-florida-lawmakers-went-wrong-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/353397\/","title":{"rendered":"Chaos at Miami\u2019s \u2018Animal House\u2019 condo shows where Florida lawmakers went wrong | Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Partygoers<\/p>\n

Partygoers stumble back to The Club at Brickell Bay after an evening of reveling. At The Club, 85 percent of the condos are owned by investors who rent their units on vacation booking sites, violating the city\u2019s ban on short-term rentals in multi-family residential condos, a Miami Herald investigation found.<\/p>\n

Linda Robertson<\/p>\n

lrobertson@miamiherald.com<\/p>\n

Chaotic condo<\/p>\n

Re: the July 16 Miami Herald story, \u201c\u2018Save your condo before it\u2019s too late.\u2019 How Miami condo turned into \u2018Animal House<\/a>\u2019.\u201d This happens because Republicans in our state legislature refuse to adequately fund the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR), under its Division of Florida Condominiums, the state agency responsible for regulating and supporting Florida\u2019s condominium associations.<\/p>\n

Surely many owners\u2019 complaints have been ignored and if any of those complaints were made to the DBPR, they were never acknowledged or followed-up. Florida\u2019s elected officials are more interested in servicing their billionaire benefactors and the condo management industry, than individual condo unit owners.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Miami and Miami-Dade County\u2019s elected officials are only concerned with creating a playground for the \u201csuper-wealthy.\u201d Now, unit owners are in the untenable position of retaining costly legal counsel.<\/p>\n

Joanne Tomarchio,<\/p>\n

Miami<\/p>\n

Sensor saves lives<\/p>\n

The Herald\u2019s July 7 editorial, \u201cAnother Florida hot-car death of a child: How does this keep happening?<\/a>\u201d along with the tragic story on July 13 of yet another child dying in a hot car, was deeply personal. The loss of my baby grandson changed my family forever. Every new story reminds me that this is still happening to others.<\/p>\n

Neither the story nor the editorial mentioned that a real solution already exists: radar-based occupant detection technology, which can detect tiny movements inside a vehicle and trigger escalating safety measures, such as sounding the horn, lowering the windows, activating the air conditioning, flashing the lights, or contacting parents or emergency responders. This technology can work with today\u2019s car systems.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, directing the U.S. Department of Transportation to establish a federal safety standard to help prevent hot car deaths. Yet the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) missed the November 2023 congressional deadline to issue the final rule and families are still waiting.<\/p>\n

After every tragedy, we hear the same advice, but no loving parent or caregiver believes this could happen to them. Human memory is fallible; technology should be the backup. The auto industry does not have to wait to include effective occupant detection technology and save children\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n

Marta Magellan,<\/p>\n

Kendall<\/p>\n

Polarizing politician<\/p>\n

Miami Herald op-ed columnist Mary Anna Mancuso challenged us to keep sight of Lindsey Graham\u2019s humanity. As usual, she is correct. Whatever else Graham was, he was a human being.<\/p>\n

Mancuso acknowledges that from 2016 on, the recently deceased South Carolina senator spent the last 30% of his career largely making decisions and taking actions with which she disagreed.<\/p>\n

One is left to wonder if she was intentionally channeling former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping\u2019s declaration that another former Chinese leader, Mao Zedong, was \u201c70% right and 30% wrong\u201d \u2014 strongly implying that the last 30% of Mao\u2019s life was China\u2019s national disgrace and disaster \u2014 or if that was just an interesting coincidence. After all, Mao was only human.<\/p>\n

Philip Cardella,<\/p>\n

Miami<\/p>\n

Ludlam needs leader<\/p>\n

The pathetic disappearance of $42 million, as described in the July 15 Miami Herald editorial, \u201cLudlam Trail has cost Miami-Dade taxpayers $42M. Where is it?<\/a>\u201d was meant to design and build the Ludlam Trail.<\/p>\n

Put Meg Daly, president and CEO of Friends of the Underline, in charge of the Ludlam project. She\u2019ll get it done and done right.<\/p>\n

Don Deresz,<\/p>\n

Miami<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Partygoers stumble back to The Club at Brickell Bay after an evening of reveling. At The Club, 85…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":["post-353397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}