Brightline may be days from bankruptcy court. But one of the stranger details of its financial troubles has sat in a public bond document for more than a year.
In August 2025, while reselling $985 million in what it calls “commuter bonds,” Brightline told investors that Miami-Dade’s half-cent transportation sales tax collects “approximately $5 billion annually.” The statement appears twice in the 1,300-page offering document: once in its summary and again in the section on a proposed Miami-Dade commuter train.
County records tell a different story. Miami-Dade collected about $408 million from the tax in fiscal 2024, and the county’s transit trust budgeted $396 million for fiscal 2025. Brightline’s figure is roughly 12 times higher. For comparison, the trust reports $5.6 billion in surtax spending and transfers since voters approved the tax in 2002…