With Miami-Dade County’s Budget Meetings just a few months away, it is time we take a look at how our county spends your tax dollars. The Information Technology Department, or ITD, is the first of the budget items we’ll be talking about for the next two months.
Not to pick on any department in particular of course, but this one deserves a little attention. It was a department that didn’t exist 30 years ago. ITD now consists of almost 900 personnel.
There are two big items in ITD’s budget summary that don’t happen to be broken down. As you can see from this chart, those two items are Interagency Transfers on the revenues side and Other Operating on the expenditures side.
This is how not to present a budget breakdown. How can we expect the average resident to understand what an “Interagency Transfer” is? As it turns out, this item represents ITD charging other county departments for its services. Of the $211 million revenue stream, 64%, almost $136 million, comes from ITD charging other Miami-Dade County departments for its services.
We are still trying to find out what “Other Operating” means. But while we wait for that information, we should take a look at the biggest expenditure items: Salaries and benefits to personnel. The total expenditures of ITD add up to nearly $211 million, of which almost 60% goes towards salaries and fringe benefits: a total of about $121 million to 900 staff. I’ll let you do the math on that one.
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Xavier L. Suarez can be reached at 305-669-4003 or via email at district7@miamidade.gov.
