Now that they’ve been re-elected automatically, drawing no opposition — for the second term in a row — Miami-Dade Commission Chairwoman 
Rebeca Sosa and Commissioner Sally Heyman, who were also the only two incumbents to have no challenge in 2010, have almost half a million between them to distribute.
And they have 90 days from the qualifying deadline June 17, since nobody else qualified.
Heyman and Sosa can return the $477,000 they have accumulated together to each donor — pro-rated since they each already spent about 15 percent of their respective booties — or donate it to charitable organizations.
Typically, some of those excess funds get spent before the next deadline — specifically on “thank you” cards or TV ads or robocalls or email blasts or other such campaign cottage industry expenses. We’ve all seen candidates do it before.
But Sosa — who has the biggest bank, with $252,000 left — played nice in 2010. The only real money she paid out after that automatic re-election was just under $800 in reimbursements for office supplies and such to the wife of consultant Roly Marante,who already got $8,000 worth of computers from this campaign (so far).
Related story: County incumbents rake up campaign cash, create economy
Sosa ended up writing refund checks to 424 contributors, which looks like everyone. She had collected just $160,000 four years ago, and she was still able to make $25,000 worth of donations — never larger than $1,000 — to an elementary school PTA, a citizens crime watch group, Boy Scouts, Girls Scouts, the Coral Gables Women’s Club, Roxy Theater, La Liga Contra El Cancer Amigos for Kids and a few other very worthy groups, most or all of which are in her district.
Ladra bets she does the same thing this year, so if you’ve got a needy group, this is the time to hit her up.
Heyman, who’s got about $225,000 left, didn’t refund anyone in 2010 and gave more than four times as much as Sosa did — or $115,000 in from her contributions — to charity groups, also mostly in her district. Must be easy to be so generous with other people’s money.
A $5,000 top gift went to Best Buddies, Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, Children’s Home Society, Jewish Community Services of Florida, Lauren’s Kids (operated by the daughter of lobbyist Ron Book), Kristi House, March of Dimes,Voices for Children and the University of Miami Ear Institute, among others. Actor’s Playhouse, Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and Save Dade were in the $2,500 category and Foster Care Review, the Zoological Society and Pelican Harbor were among those that got $1,000 gifts from the Sally Heyman campaign.
But that was after Heyman paid herself back a $5,000 loan, reimbursed herself for $540 in costs for refreshments for a community event — that’s a lot of soda and fruit juice — and gave nearly $10,000 to her own district office account. She also paid her campaign consultant, Bonnie Michaels, $5,000 after the deadline came and she was re-elected automatically. But, naturally, that was money already owed to Michaels. Of course it was.
These are only two of the commissioners, but added to the other four up for re-election, our county electeds have collected a 
total of about $2 million, much of it from lobbyists and people who do business with the county or want to.
Think about what they could raise for libraries and to keep police off the street if they put their minds to it. In fact, maybe we should create a “charity account” for county departments or consider legislation that would force unchallenged incumbents to put the balance of their accounts into the general fund. After all, the people who donate are taking a risk anyway.
The county will tell you they tried that donation route, suggested months ago by Commissioner Esteban Bovo. I think a whopping $50,000 or $60,000 was collected for libraries, parks and animal services after an envelope was sent home with tax bills telling property owners that they could add any monetary amount they wanted.
Well, isn’t that smart marketing? Not! If they really wanted the concept to have an impact, they would have created categories for people to donate to (ala “your $2.50 feeds a child for a week”), explained the effort better, and guaranteed that the monies would be earmarked for and go directly to what the donor wanted, because everybody is afraid of that general fund black hole. And they would have pushed for some kind of education or awareness campaign, like they’ve done for their water and sewer department and other initiatives in the past.
If they really wanted to have an impact, though, they would have skipped the Joe Property Owner envelopes and gone straight to their donors and deep-pocket contributors, the developers and bankers and car moguls who are all too happy to fund their re-election campaigns and recalls but are MIA when it comes time to stand up and demand that our leaders do the right thing.
But Ladra is guessing those folks wouldn’t get much in return for that.
Re-elected by default: Sosa, Heyman have $500K to give away added by Ladra on
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