Mayor Carlos Gimenez made two promises that related to expanding access to county government records online.
We gave Gimenez a Promise Kept for posting the mayor's calendar on the internet. Separately, we are tracking his promise to "make most records available online." We previously rated this promise In the Works after Gimenez unveiled a transparency website in 2011 that has a county checkbook and other financial documents.
We decided to check on Gimenez' progress at the beginning of 2014 -- about two and a half years after he was first elected mayor. (He was initially elected in June 2011 after a recall and re-elected in August 2012.)
In December, the county added Gimenez's memos online. Some of the memos, posted multiple times each month, are about routine matters, for example about the annual holiday toy drive or salary schedules for lifeguards. But the website also contains memos about hot topics, like the library budget during the budget battle this past summer and memos showing monthly crime statistics.
In January 2012, Commissioner Bruno Barreiro proposed that Gimenez expand county records. Several months later the county announced a website expansion plan and the county finished the first phase, which included posting employees' salaries.
The second phase, which will cost about $500,000 to implement, includes adopting a new content management system, transferring 50 million older electronic records into the new system and posting public records requests and documents that require Gimenez's signature. The county has the software for the second phase, but it will be implemented as individual county departments find the money to implement and manage it for their departments.
We've noted in the past that Miami-Dade has yet to follow neighboring Broward County's lead on posting certain key documents online such as county commissioners' financial disclosures. But unlike Broward, where the nine county commissioners elect one of their own as mayor each year, Miami-Dade has a countywide elected mayor. The Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners is one of a dozen departments not under Gimenez' purview, so that means that commissioners would have to decide to post documents about themselves online.
The county has a plan to expand online access and has taken some important steps to get there -- most recently by adding Gimenez's memos in one easy to find spot online. But the county still has more work to do, so we leave this promise rated at In the Works.