MDX toll agency under siege, but it’s still writing those promised rebate checks

Stuck in legal limbo without a board in charge, the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority is still mailing out tens of thousands of rebate checks this month to frequent drivers of the embattled agency’s six toll roads.

The MDX started mailing about 55,000 checks last week to frequent drivers, and the agency said all checks should be received by Dec. 20. The average rebate is $110, and is calculated as 30 percent of a qualifying account’s SunPass tolls on MDX roads.

The rebate program is costing the toll-funded agency nearly $6 million in a year when revenues are down 16 percent. The agency’s annual financial report, released Monday, tied the decline in revenue to a state-mandated toll cut, a lag in a state-run billing system, and MDX’s revival of the rebate checks earlier this year during the political fight for its survival.

Rebate checks have played a role in the larger political drama involving the MDX, a toll agency run by a mix of state and county appointees now facing dissolution by Florida law if Miami-Dade loses a legal fight to overturn the legislation.

While state leaders have tapped into anti-toll backlash to push for ending the MDX, Miami-Dade’s mayor and commissioners see the legislation as a bid to dissolve the independence of an agency that collected more than $200 million in tolls this year. In the fight to kill the anti-MDX bill, the toll agency’s backers warned the legislation would doom the rebate program over mandates to impose more toll cuts.

Board members approved reviving MDX’s “Frequent Drivers” program in February, extending a rebate initiative launched in 2015 after the agency expanded tolling on the 836/Dolphin Expressway and the Airport/112 Expressway. The revival came after MDX issued no rebate checks in 2018, blaming an unexpected squeeze on revenues tied to a roughly 5 percent toll cut demanded by a state law that went into effect in the summer of 2018.

The checks that started arriving last week contain a subtle pitch for MDX’s political message that, unlike the state-controlled Turnpike system, its tolls go solely to pay for Miami-Dade projects. “MDX is your local agency that invests 100% of the tolls collected to improve your commute and provide you with travel choices in the future,” the note read, an apparent reference to the proposed $1 billion extension of State Road 836 into West Kendall.

MDX COURT FIGHT

The vote to revive the rebate program in 2019 came as MDX’s appointed chairman, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, was trying to defeat another Tallahassee bill designed to eliminate the toll agency altogether and replace it with a different board subject to more state control.

The bill, sponsored by Miami-Dade Republicans Bryan Avila, a representative from Miami Springs, and Manny Diaz Jr., a senator from Hialeah Gardens, passed and became law after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it in July.

After an early win at the trial level, Florida, the MDX and Miami-Dade are engaged in an appeals fight that has left the agency in limbo. Board members briefly resumed control of the agency in August after a Leon County judge struck down the state law, but lost that power in October when an appeal by the state automatically suspended the lower ruling.

“There is no board of the MDX right now,” Gimenez said last week.

In between the ruling and the appeal, the MDX board in August voted to reaffirm the rebate program and tweak some of the rules to more closely match eligibility criteria from 2017.

ARE YOU ELIGIBLE FOR MDX REBATE?

Only drivers who registered for the program are eligible for checks, and rebates are issued if a SunPass transponder pays at least $150 in tolls in the 12 months that ended July 1. The rebate checks are for 30 percent of SunPass tolls paid on the five MDX expressways: Airport, Dolphin, Gratigny, Don Shula and Snapper Creek.

Registration closed earlier this year for the 2019 rebate program. Once a driver registers a SunPass transponder with MDX, the registration automatically rolls over to the next year under existing rules. MDX hasn’t opened registration yet for new participants in the 2020 program.

The 2019 rebates are part of the costliest batch of checks yet, costing MDX roughly $5.98 million, according to financial reports. That’s up about 7 percent from the rebate cost of $5.6 million in 2017.

This post was updated to clarify that the rebate program applies to SunPass transponders registered with the MDX.