Maybe it’s because she’s new. But on Tuesday, freshman Miami-Dade County Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava showed that she does something 
other Miami-Dade Commissioners find it hard to do: She listens to the voters.
Levine Cava sponsored an item to urge the legislature to set aside $500 million for land acquisition and Everglades restoration from somewhere, preferably by implementing the funding mechanism in Amendment 1, approved by 75% of the state and county voters.
But it almost didn’t make it. The item was approved 7-5 after Commissioners Jose “Pepe” Diaz, Juan “Zorro” Zapata and Esteban Bovo complained loudly and almost nonsensically about sending mixed messages and possibly hurting other county priorities if we make this “ask,” as it is called.
“In my time in the legislature, we spent a lot of time fighting for funding,” said Zapata, a former State Rep along with Bovo and Heyman, citing the timing, not the subject, as the issue.
“The last thing I want to do is somehow take any action that could actually put us at a disadvantage. We have a lot on the line. We have a lot of asks for a lot of things. Folks up there misinterpret things we do here,” Zapata said, worring about “pushback on other things we are trying to accomplish.”
“I think in a special session as contentious as things are right now, it doesn’t send the right message and could do damage,” Zapata said, adding that most legislators had “already made up their mind. So for us to press a policy that somehow the legislature is going against… I agree with the subject but not the timing.”
Diaz worried about runoff from the Everglades restoration
flooding areas in adjacent to it in the west of the county and how that would affect the agriculture industry. Much of his district has historically suffered from floods.
“Right now, all the safeties are not in place to prevent the flooding,” Diaz said.
Bovo asked why it hadn’t been addressed in the regular session. Well, maybe because you didn’t make it a priority from the get-go, which you should have.
“We don’t want to vote against the Everglades, but at the same time we have priorities at the legislature,” he said, echoing Zapata’s argument. “But you vote against it and you are labeled as being againt the Everglades which is ridiculous.”
Um, not so much. Chairman Jean Monestime and Commissioner Javier Souto also voted against the Everglades. And us against us. Against the majority who voted for Amendment 1.
These are the same commissioners who allowed the Pet’s Trust Initiative, a mandate of 65% of the county voters, go unfunded. Old habits die hard.
But, this time, it died on the dais. Even after Monestime suggested Levine Cava soften the language (read: take out the specific dollar figure). The others agreed that they could be supportive of something, well, weaker.
Read related story: Legislators let clock run on Everglades — and ignore our vote
Levine Cava said the $500 million figure was suggested by Sen. Joe Negron — who, she reminded her colleagues, is to become Senate Majority Leader — “as a reasonable number to purchase the land we need for filtration.” She added that 
she “consulted with our lobbyists and this would not interfere, according to them, with the items we have now.”
Even though the South Florida Water Management District has not endorsed the purchase of 46,000 acres just south of Okeechobee which the state has an option to buy from U.S. Sugar Corp. — and which Ladra believes the state dragged their feet on intentionally — there are other options. “They may not be the final authority,” Levine Cava said. “The idea is to have enough land.”
Bravely, she called the question without taking her more-seasoned colleagues suggestion of watering it down. “I don’t know how to do an urging without urging,” Levine Cava said.
Guess she knew she had the votes. Because she stuck to her guns.
“Any of the weakening in the proposed language would make it ineffective,” she told Ladra after the meeting. “I was open, as I said on the record, if they
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