Miami-Dade County, Florida, USA
#00171
Case study of
#00183 Create a funded municipal heat office with an annually updated heat action plan
Implementer
Miami-Dade County, Chief Heat Officer Jane Gilbert
Timeline
Since Jan 1, 2021
Location
Description
In 2021 Miami-Dade County appointed the world's first Chief Heat Officer (Jane Gilbert), a post seeded by an Arsht-Rockefeller grant. The county declared an official Heat Season and published an Extreme Heat Action Plan in 2022, combining awareness campaigns, home AC retrofits, and tree programs with a flagship regulatory proposal: a local heat protection standard for outdoor workers. That regulatory measure was preempted in April 2024 when Florida passed HB 433, barring local governments from setting their own worker heat protection rules. Non-regulatory programs (AC retrofits, trees, Heat Season communications) continue. This is the defining example of state-level preemption limiting a municipal heat office's statutory reach.
Metrics
1Funding
Lessons learned
- An advisory heat officer without protected statutory authority is vulnerable to state preemption; audit the preemption landscape before building a plan around local regulation.
- Non-regulatory tools—retrofits, tree programs, a declared Heat Season, public communications—survive preemption and keep the office delivering services.
- Philanthropy-seeded posts need conversion into permanent county budget lines to outlast their founding grant.
Documented Jul 24, 2026