County Mayor Levine Cava Wants A Seat On Both Sides Of The Table – JP
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Miami, Florida – Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava wants to give away for nothing the county-owned land under Alligator Alcatraz to a federal board that she sits on.
When she announced on June 25 that her administration intends to transfer the county-owned land beneath Alligator Alcatraz to the National Park Service, she framed it as a historic environmental win — a chance to fold roughly 17,000 acres of Everglades wetland back into permanent conservation, after the detention facility closes. What she did not mention in that announcement is that since 2023, she has sat on the federal advisory board of the very agency to which she’s proposing to hand the land.
The Appointment
In 2023, then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland appointed Levine Cava to the National Park System Advisory Board, the body Congress created to advise the Secretary of the Interior and the Director of the National Park Service on matters affecting the National Park System. The appointment was documented in an official Department of the Interior press release at the time. It is not history — the National Park Service’s own current roster, current as of this writing, still lists her as a sitting member of the board’s 2023–2027 term, alongside appointees like Bowen Blair and Theresa Coble.
That means Levine Cava now occupies both sides of the same transaction: (1). as County Mayor, she is the official proposing that Miami-Dade County give up a piece of county land; (2) and as an NPS advisory board appointee, she holds a formal seat within the very institution positioned to receive it.
What Wasn’t Said
Levine Cava’s June 25 memorandum to the Board of County Commissioners lays out her case in detail — the environmental stewardship argument, the facility’s incompatibility with surrounding conservation lands, and the county’s own liability concerns. It does not reference her role on the NPS Advisory Board anywhere. The memo also leaves the transfer mechanism itself undecided among several options, including conservation easements, land exchanges, and fee-simple conveyance — a full transfer of ownership. No price, appraisal figure, or compensation structure appears anywhere in the announcement.
A Number She Already Rejected Once
This isn’t the county’s first negotiation over what this land is worth. In July 2025, Florida’s Division of Emergency Management offered $20 million to buy the same parcel and its rights-of-way from the county in order to build the detention facility. Levine Cava pushed back at the time, telling reporters the figure was “significantly lower than the most recent appraisal” — an independent May 2025 appraisal that put the land’s value closer to $190–195 million, roughly nine to ten times the state’s offer.
That dispute was never resolved on the record. Now, a year later, Levine Cava is proposing to convey the same land — potentially through a mechanism that involves no payment to the county at all — to an agency she personally advises. If the fee-simple option is chosen and no compensation is specified, taxpayers are entitled to ask why a $20 million valuation was unacceptable from the state, while an even lower figure, or none, might be acceptable when the recipient is tied to her own federal board seat.
Nothing Is Settled Yet
The proposal has already run into resistance at the County Commission. Days after Levine Cava’s announcement, Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a press conference that his administration had studied removing the facility years earlier and concluded it wouldn’t meaningfully help Everglades restoration, adding he wasn’t inclined to push for the transfer.
More basically, Miami-Dade doesn’t currently have the land back. The state seized the property under emergency powers to build the detention facility, and Levine Cava’s own office confirmed the state has not returned it to the county and has given no timeline for doing so. She sent DeSantis a letter on June 29 asking for an “orderly transition” of the site back to county control — meaning her sale-and-transfer proposal is, for now, aspirational.
A third party has also entered the picture. Miccosukee Tribe member Betty Osceola publicly asked that the tribe be given the land instead, citing its border with the reservation. The tribe said she was speaking for herself, not officially on its behalf.
Why It Matters Now, Not Later
Nothing has been finalized. No County Commission vote has taken place. That’s precisely why this is the moment to raise the conflict — not after a transfer is signed, sealed, and impossible to unwind. Florida law addresses exactly this kind of situation: public officers are barred from using their position for private gain, or the gain of an organization they’re affiliated with, in ways not available to the public generally. An advisory board seat inside the agency slated to receive a public asset is squarely the kind of affiliation that standard was written to catch.
Miami-Dade’s Commission on Ethics and Public Trust exists to answer questions like this one before they become bigger problems: Should County Mayor Levine Cava recuse herself from decisions involving the NPS transfer? Should she have disclosed her board seat when she made the announcement? And why hasn’t the county said what, if anything, it will receive for land it once said was worth nearly $200 million? Taxpayers gave up nothing when Levine Cava rejected $20 million as too low a year ago. They deserve to know why the number might not matter this time.
County Mayor Levine Cava is proposing to transfer county property, potentially worth up to $200 million, to an entity where she sits on the board, without telling anyone.