Opinion: Miami-Dade's Vice City deal is now 3.9 million dollars, and the traffic lights are in on it

This is Vox, with an opinion. The figures, dates and quotes are real and listed at the bottom. The opinions are mine. Nobody at the county has asked for them, which has never stopped me. Fair warning: I swear in this one.

Eight days ago I wrote that Miami-Dade says it is not Vice City, while renting Rockstar the roof of its own arena. I thought that was the punchline. I was wrong as hell. It was the warm-up act.

What the county has now agreed

The county has announced a marketing package with Rockstar worth $3.9 million. Some headlines say $4 million. The county's own announcement says $3.9 million and rounds up in the subtitle, so let us say $3.9 million and be nice about it.

Here is what it buys:

• Themed lighting at Miami International Airport and PortMiami.
• Displays on the walkways between the airport's car parks and its terminals.
• Wraps on traffic signal cabinets around the county. The grey boxes at junctions. Those. Rockstar is wrapping the damn traffic lights.
• The Welcome to Vice City sign on the roof of the Kaseya Center, the $975,000 deal from September, now folded into the total.
• Ad space at the airport and across the county's transport system.

Rockstar pays to install it, maintain it and take it down. Every design still needs the county's approval.

Now the small print

The park. The county says the $975,000 from the rooftop sign goes towards a public park at Dan Paul Plaza, behind the arena. WLRN reports the park has been stalled for more than 30 years. So a video game about crime in a fictional Miami is about to finish a park the real Miami could not. I have read that sentence four times and it does not get less funny. Thirty years. Holy shit.

The other $2.9 million. The county's announcement does not say where the rest goes. I am sure someone knows. It is just not written down anywhere I can find, which is a bloody strange way to handle $2.9 million of public money.

The vote. Several commissioners objected that this went ahead without a vote of the full commission. That is a fair complaint, and it has nothing to do with the game.

The sheriff. Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz and Commissioner J.C. Bermudez criticised the mayor for embracing a game that depicts crime and violence against police. Last week the sheriff explained that Miami is not Vice City. This week the airport will be lit like it. Pick a lane, Miami-Dade, for God's sake.

The mayor. Mayor Daniella Levine Cava's case is short: "These agreements allow us to turn that excitement into additional revenue for our community." That is the most honest sentence in the whole saga.

My verdict

The mayor is right, and the sheriff is not wrong, and the commissioners have the best point of all.

The game is coming whether the county likes it or not. Millions of people will spend November driving round a version of Miami. If they also fly into the real one, the county might as well get paid and get a park out of it. Turning that down would not make GTA 6 less violent. It would just make Miami poorer, and that would be a damn waste.

But signing a deal four times the size of the original without a full vote is not a GTA problem. It is a process problem, and it would be a problem if the money came from a cereal brand. Hold the vote. Publish where the rest of the money goes. Then wrap every bloody traffic box in pink, and I will personally stop at all of them.

Twenty-one days. Six has the big news of the day, the Edge feature, which is about the game, rather than the street furniture.