MIAMI — The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office is continuing to change its branding from the Miami-Dade Police Department.
From patrol unit decals to uniforms and business cards, there will be a taxpayer expense, as Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz fights for her requested fiscal year budget.
That allocation reveals a possible answer: a line-item way at the bottom that says rebranding will cost $2.7 million.
“I don’t find it outrageous,” said retired Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina. “I know it sounds like such a big number. A lot of people don’t realize the Miami-Dade County Sheriff’s Office has thousands of employees, and when you start to think about the amount of things that need to be changed, it makes sense to me.”
“They should have told voters ahead of time that there’s an expense associated with their decision on switching from a police department to a sheriff’s office, right?” Colina continued. “That should have been part of the information that you as a voter get before you go and you cast your vote so you can understand the implication.”
Cordero-Stutz is the first elected sheriff in Miami-Dade County in over 60 years. The establishment of the new elected position was the result of a 2018 state ballot initiative that led to the name change.
The rebranding cost is coming at a time when the county is working to close a significant budget gap.
“But today we are facing a new and difficult fiscal reality,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said last week. “We are closing a $402 million gap.”
Said Colina: “But I think they’re also correct in saying, ‘this is what the cost is, this is what you should budget for,’ because it’s the responsible thing to do. If the county government starts questioning why and when and where, that’s going to become a little contentious. There’s a reason why that deficit exists. It’s probably because some people haven’t properly forecast it and budget it responsibly the way they should have. And that’s why these kind of things happen.
Colina added that in the police world, uniformity is important, even impacting morale.
“You need to feel like you’re part of a broader team,” he said. “When people are wearing different uniforms, even from your own agency, there’s this idea that you don’t look prepared. And by the way, you feel it yourself. If you’re wearing a uniform that is not sharp and doesn’t look good, it’s old, it’s tattered, you put in for new uniforms because you feel like I am prepared to do my job and you want the community to feel like we have a professional police department, and you feel that way just even from their mere appearance.
“So when it’s kind of like a ragtag to throw everything in and whatever fits, put it on, that’s not a good approach. That doesn’t work, it affects morale. It even affects work performance, believe it or not.”
He also suspects the sheriff’s office can find ways to mitigate the name change expenses.
A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office has previously told Local 10 News the sheriff is adding new shoulder patches to existing beige uniforms instead of ordering green uniforms, which are more typically worn by sheriff’s offices in the state of Florida.
“There’s ways to mitigate that expense. Is the number considering if you did it over time, what would the cost be?” asked Colina.
It’s a great question.
Local 10 News asked that of MDSO and we’re waiting to hear back.
According to a spokesperson for county administration, the line-item number was submitted as part of the sheriff’s office fiscal year 2025-2026 budget request to the county’s budget office.
Colina also spoke on ways to mitigate rebranding costs.
“When you get a new patrol car, that you have to wrap anyhow,” he said. “That’s an expense that’s going to exist whether you changed the name or you didn’t. Well now, instead of putting ‘Miami-Dade Police’, you would put ‘Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office.’ There’s still an expense to that, but that’s an expense that would have happened regardless.
“If you have a business card, you can still use the card that says Miami-Dade Police Department. And when it’s time to get new cards, now it’s says Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office on the business cards. So there’s ways, of course, to mitigate that expense.
“What they should have done is they should have done a budget workshop at Miami-Dade County for this. So they can anticipate and forecast what this expense would be. This is similar to what they did back when they changed it from Metro-Dade Police to Miami-Dade County.
“I believe that they’re probably going to find responsible ways of mitigating that cost.”
Local 10 News reached out to the sheriff’s office requesting an interview but have not heard back as of the time of this story’s publishing.
We have also reached out to each county commissioner’s office for a statement.
County commissioners will be voting on a final budget in September.
“The county still is the one that approves the budget for the sheriff’s office,” said Colina. “So they’re quasi-independent, but they still rely on (the) Miami-Dade County Commission to approve their budget.”
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