Where is the fortitude in Miami-Dade County leaders? Faced with budget shortfalls, they are set to punish the most vulnerable by pushing forward a proposal to cut early-morning bus routes for people who ride public transportation to or from work, long before many of us are even awake.

The mayor and county commission got an earful last week from transit advocates upset about the cuts in the proposed 2026-27 budget. But there are no powerful lobbyists arguing on behalf of the riders who rely on dozens of routes that would no longer run before 6 a.m. and after 10 p.m. The plan also calls for eliminating a dozen routes altogether.

Almost 7,000 people use early-morning buses each week, and many don’t even know their routes are about to get nixed, according to Transit Alliance Miami. What will people do if they are security guards, nursing assistants or fast-food workers, for example, who need to be at work by 5 or 6 a.m. but don’t have a car? Pay $15 to $20 for an Uber every day?

County commissioners and Mayor Daniella Levine Cava must stop kicking the can down the road and make tough, even unpopular decisions to preserve this service. There are options, such as raising the gas tax or raising transit fares for the first time in 13 years — by 50 cents to $2.75, an option the mayor proposed in the past but found politically difficult. Or they could look somewhere else in the budget to cut.

All of that takes courage and requires 13 commissioners to wade through the mammoth $14.3 billion proposed budget they received from Levine Cava’s administration. It’s hard to believe that, after a nine-hour meeting that went into the early hours of last Friday, they left the spending plan the mayor proposed largely intact, as the Herald reported. The commission has another opportunity to rethink their decision before a final budget vote on Sept. 17.

The proposed budget keeps operations at the mayor’s office and Board of County Commissioners funded at roughly the same levels as last year, up by 5%, according to a public budget document. Here’s a novel idea: The mayor and commissioners could cut some of their own expenses so that workers can ride the bus to their early-morning shifts. Those savings alone may not be enough to offset the $12.4 million needed to preserve pre-dawn buses, but they could be a start.

Miami-Dade avoided a budget showdown last year by closing a near $400 million deficit with one-time funding, so Levine Cava’s austerity budget isn’t a surprise. (She’s also proposing other savings, such as eliminating about 400 unfilled government positions, the Herald reported.)

Levine Cava proposed raising transit fares last year but changed her mind after pushback from the public and commissioners. Her latest proposal avoids that fight by focusing on route cuts instead, but she’s still warning commissioners: “Folks, we need to increase the transit fare,” Levine Cava said Friday, the Herald reported.

The problem is likely to only get worse without a longterm solution. The mayor is using reserve dollars meant for the expansion of rail countywide to plug in transit revenue gaps — money that won’t be available in 2028. If voters approve property-tax cuts under Amendment 3 in November, public transportation will be in even greater danger.

Commissioner Raquel Regalado proposed reducing the $5.5 million subsidy for MetroConnect, a service that uses private cars to provide $3.75 rides in areas with limited bus service. She told the Herald Editorial Board that MetroConnect moves about 8,000 people per year at an average cost to the county of $500 per person. The shuttles, though popular in her district, are a niche service with powerful lobbyists behind it, Regalado said.

Regalado said she doesn’t believe raising fares is the solution and that “there’s still a lot to cut” in the budget. But “it’s painful to have to go through it, line by line,” she said.

If a little more diligence is truly what’s missing in Miami-Dade’s budget process, then the commission has a short time to act before a final vote. Balancing the budget on the backs of workers and transit riders should be the last resort.

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