By Jose Navarro, MBA | The Navarro Report
Voters rarely agree on anything by a margin of four to one. In August 2024, nearly 80 percent of Miami voters did: the city needed an independent inspector general with real power. Eleven months after its first inspector general was sworn in, that office has a $2 million budget, 11 of 25 planned positions filled, and a caseload that fits on an index card.
The numbers come from the inspector general’s first report, covering November 2025 through June 30, 2026. In roughly eight months, the office handled seven investigative matters, one audit, and two reviews, declined five matters, and referred four to other agencies. The office has subpoena power and authority over officials, employees, and contractors, which the old auditor general lacked. What it lacks is the staff to use that authority at scale.
Start with the budget itself. The city of Miami is adopting a $3.6 billion budget this fall. A $2 million watchdog is roughly 0.06 percent of that. The commission has committed to doubling the office to $4 million, which is the right instinct, but a commitment is not an appropriation, and 14 of the office’s 25 anticipated positions remain vacant. On November 3, voters will also decide whether to approve $450 million in borrowing for police and fire headquarters. The office that would examine how that money is spent would cost less than one percent of the bond.
Now consider how the office was designed. In October 2024, the commission approved the enabling ordinance 4-1. It limits the office to sworn, non-anonymous complaints based on personal knowledge, signed under oath. Supporters call that a safeguard against illegitimate investigations, a worry Commissioner Joe Carollo, the lone no vote, raised about anonymous allegations. Yet anyone who has handled hotline complaints knows that the people closest to waste are often employees and vendors who will not sign their names. Five declined matters in eight months invite a fair question: how many were turned away because the complainant would not put an oath on paper? The office has not said, and it should.
Independence is the other open question here. When the commission took up Inspector General Antonio Diaz’s contract last October, it deferred the vote twice. Carollo warned against “anointing a king.” Commissioner Damian Pardo answered that “if you are doing your job as an inspector general, you may very well upset four votes on this dais.” Both are right, and that tension explains why the budget matters. An office that depends on the same commissioners for its money and its tenure is only as independent as its next appropriation.
None of this is an indictment of Diaz, a 33-year Miami police veteran who spent years in Internal Affairs and has promised to follow the facts wherever they lead. The office’s report is candid about how new the operation is, and its goal of state accreditation by 2027 is the right benchmark. That goal is feasible only with a full staff, a stable budget, and a commission that treats oversight as essential rather than optional. The question is whether the city will give him the tools to reach it.
As a financial controller, I look at oversight the way I look at internal audit: coverage is a function of capacity. An audit shop with 44 percent of its staff can sample, but it cannot cover. If voters approve the bond, the city will ask the same understaffed office to watch hundreds of millions of new dollars, and sampling is a poor substitute for coverage when the stakes rise that quickly.
Three steps would close the gap. First, the commission should adopt a dated hiring schedule that fills all 25 positions, and appropriate the $4 million it has already promised before any bond proceeds are spent. Second, the office should publish a quarterly dashboard showing matters opened, closed, declined, and referred, with the reasons for each decline, so residents can judge whether the sworn-complaint rule is working. Third, the commission should settle the removal question in the ordinance itself, spelling out for-cause grounds and a clear review process, so that no future inspector general has to calculate which votes to avoid.
Miami voters did their part in 2024. They asked for a watchdog with teeth. A watchdog with teeth still needs to be fed, and the people who set its budget are the same ones it may someday investigate. Before the city asks voters for another $450 million, it should show them that the last thing they demanded is working.
Jose Navarro, MBA, is a financial controller and founder of The Navarro Report, a public finance and government accountability publication based in San Diego, California. He has more than two decades of experience in public finance, nonprofit management, and government contract compliance. He grew up in Miami.
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