Carl Hiaasen - Kick Ass - Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

"Looks like ashes," I said.

"Ashes! Who'd dump ashes in a beveled diamond ashtray? Have you any idea what that ashtray cost?"

"Probably $9,999."

Harry Hassock eyed me suspiciously. "How did you know?"

"Wild guess," I replied. "Sergio's desk set cost nine grand. So did his credenza. All this stuff seems to run about nine grand. Why is that?"

"Because," Harry said, dropping his voice to a sly whisper, "if it cost any more, the Metro Commission would have to vote on it. In public, for God's sake—can you imagine?"

"Talk about problems."

"You bet your burlwood bookcase," Harry said. "To dodge that silly $10,000 rule, I advise county bigwigs to buy their fine furniture in $9,000 pieces. In fact, we have a little saying around here: Nine is fine, ten is trouble."

"Seems pretty sneaky," I said.

Harry Hassock rolled his eyes. "Next thing, you'll be asking why Sergio doesn't pay for this stuff out of his own pocket."

"Why not? He makes $99,500 a year."

Harry sighed impatiently. "What the public fails to understand is that in order for government to function smoothly, it must function in comfort. Comfort requires fine furniture."

Harry climbed off his desk, descended a rosewood stepladder and sat next to me on a $9,999 ottoman. "The more comfortable your government is, the more efficient it will be," he said earnestly. "Simply stated: Government needs a soft place to put its tush."

Somewhere on his colossal desk a magnesium telephone began to ring. Harry scrambled up and answered it.

"Curator of Fine Furniture," he said. "Yes—oh hello, Mr. Manager. Thanks, I knew you'd like it. What! Who said that? Well, it's not Day-Glo marble and you tell 'em that's not the least bit funny."

As Harry spoke, he expertly squirted a can of Lemon Pledge at a thumb smudge on his mink-lined credenza.

"But, Sergio, what's wrong with the desk chair you've got? Hmmmm. I see." Harry cupped a hand over the phone and asked me to step out of the office. "Just for a second," he whispered, "and try not to drag your shoes on the Burmese carpet."

Harry Hassock went back to his phone call. "A throne?" I heard him say. "What kind of throne are we talking about, Sergio?"

The same wizards who gave us Metrorail now want to spend $240 million to expand the peoplemover to both ends of downtown Miami.

They foresee a day when the cute little tram is packed to the gills with commuters and shoppers. They foresee a time in the next century when future Dade Countians will look back and marvel at what visionaries we were.

More probably, they will look back and wonder: What kind of mushrooms were those folks eating?

The logic of taking an underutilized rail system and making it bigger is baffling, to put it kindly. Since the collective memory of the political establishment seems so short, let's re-examine Dade's sterling record of mass transit (using the term loosely).

Born of the best intentions, Metrorail is a proven Megaturkey. "The laughingstock of the nation," says Harvard transportation expert Jose Gomez-Ibanez. Building it cost $250 million more than promised; operating it now threatens to break the county budget. The ridership, though improving, remains a pitiful one-seventh of projections.

It's a clean, fast system but—for a variety of reasons—commuters avoid it in droves. This year taxpayers spent $32 million running a train for a measly 14,000 daily two-way riders.

If Metrorail were a horse, it would be shot.

Enter the Metromover, inaugurated to run a loop through downtown Miami and boost (we were promised) Metrorail's popularity. It's an adorable toy, except for one problem: Only 4,500 of 60,000 downtown workers are riding the darn thing.

You'd think we'd learn our lesson. Think again. Rep. William Lehman (normally a rational man), the Metro commission and downtown property owners (surprise!) love the idea of extending the Metromover south to Brickell Avenue and north to the Omni Mall.

What we now have is a government fully mobilized to turn disaster into catastrophe.

If you were a merchant and somebody offered to run a spiffy tram to your doorstep, wouldn't you say yes? Of course you would, especially if the state, the city and the feds were sucking up 90 percent of the tab. What's another $240 million when we've already spent four times that much on Metrorail?

Forget the fact that our buses are falling to pieces. Forget the fact that routes from needy neighborhoods have been cut back, thanks partly to Metrorail's huge deficits.

The trouble with the Metromover is that it benefits the downtown lunch crowd more than the people who truly need mass transit. It will make it convenient for some of us to hop a tram from the office to the Tofutti parlor, but meanwhile thousands need reliable transportation from their neighborhoods to their jobs.

In a strategic move to derail the Metromover expansion, the head of the U.S. Urban Mass Transit Administration, Ralph Stanley, said last week he would be willing to let Dade County spend its Metromover funds on buses.

It's an unprecedented offer, and a smart one. Buses are the first crucial link of any urban transit system; almost seven times as many people ride them as ride Metrorail. The $102 million already set aside for the Metro-mover extension is enough for 728 buses, a whole new fleet. This would be a radical step in the county's transportation saga—spending money on something people would actually use.

In defense of the dream, Metromover's proponents say the new downtown legs are necessary to meet the needs of future growth. Planners predict 25,000 peoplemover riders by the year 2000.

Only two things are certain about such predictions: If it's the cost, they underestimate. If it's the ridership, they overestimate.

They've never been right. They've never even been close.

But let's say this time they are. Twenty-five thousand riders for $240 million—this is a bargain? Maybe so, if you own a bank on Brickell Avenue; maybe not, if you're standing on a hot street corner, hoping for a bus, any bus, that runs on time.

This week's Most Frighteningly Dumb True Quote conies from Miami City Commissioner Rosario Kennedy, when informed that it had cost $111,549.71 to renovate her office at City Hall:

"Nobody told me anything about a budget. I was not involved in it at all. I was involved in the colors."

Now, then, isn't this the kind of eagle-eyed public servant you want playing with your tax dollars? Where did Mrs. Kennedy think the money for the new furniture was coming from, Publisher's Clearing House?

It's quite a feat to out-Sergio our county manager and his $9,000 desk, so let's look at some of the goodies in Mrs. Kennedy's den.

You've got your pewter-gray light fixtures ($2,144), your striped pumice-colored lounge chair for $1,056 (and don't ask me what "pumice" looks like), your three gray desks ($3,625) and your 257 yards of wallpaper ($2,380). Then you've got your striped bench seat for $1,134, your six slabs of marble for $320 and your dove-colored carpet for $1,958.16 (and no, I don't have the faintest idea whether dove goes with pumice).

Add to that your six pieces of framed artwork ($959.24), your three dove-gray file cabinets for $2,299 (I wonder what the regular gray would have cost), and your standard Vegas-style mirrored wall for $505.

The Rosario hit parade continues with air-conditioning at $4,769.68. That's for one office, folks. You can install central air in a nice-sized house for about half as much. Are we talking solid-gold thermostats or what?

Then there's the little matter of "parts" for $6,602.24 (probably truckloads of Windex for all the mirrors).