Miami-Dade County, defending a decision to allow developers to breach the Urban Development Boundary, was up against damning evidence from compelling experts.

Those experts just happened to be on the county payroll.

''It was a funny thing,'' Miami Lakes Mayor Michael Pizzi said Wednesday, though the way the mayor said ''funny'' he was clearly not amused by the county's self-flagellation before a state administrative judge. "You have the county fighting to expand the UDB and all evidence against expansion comes from the county's professional staff.''

VETO OVERRIDDEN

Last summer, the County Commission rejected the recommendations of its own professional planners, overrode the mayor's veto and said yes to two commercial projects -- a home-improvement store and a shopping center -- on the forbidden side of the development boundary.

But the state Department of Community Affairs found the county staff's original finding plenty convincing and ruled that the two projects violated both county and state planning policies. The county staff had found ''no compelling need'' to violate the UDB and those words echoed through the hearing that ended Jan. 29.

Here was the scenario: The county attorney's office, appealing the ruling with legal help from the developers, was up against the Florida Department of Community Affairs, the regional planning council, Mayor Pizzi (representing a conglomeration of angry citizens) and a coalition of environmental groups represented by the Everglades Law Center.

Mostly, the county was up against itself.

Pizzi and Robert Hartsell of the Everglades Law Center both spoke Wednesday about taking on an opponent at war with its own expertise. ''We didn't need to hire a single expert witness of our own,'' Hartsell said.

''Our star witnesses were on the county staff,'' Pizzi said.

COUNTY PLANNERS

County taxpayers had paid for the original studies that found ''no compelling need'' to penetrate the UDB and build yet another big box store or shopping center. And the county taxpayers paid the salaries of the county planners whose testimony undermined the county legal position while paying staff lawyers from the county attorney's office to pursue the commission's bizarre compulsion to violate its own planning tenets. ''It was surreal,'' Pizzi said.

And the deeper South Florida descends into this recession, with shopping center vacancies escalating, with big box stores like Circuit City going as empty as gift boxes the day after Christmas, the commission's underlying premise seems ever more absurd. Richard Grosso, executive director of the Everglades Law Center, juxtaposed the County Commission's argument that southwest Miami-Dade County ''needs'' those two commercial projects against "the reality of all those empty storefronts that can't be rented.''

Hartsell and Grosso are both confident that the absurdity of the county's argument was not lost on the administrative judge, who's expected to send the governor and cabinet a recommended order within a few weeks.

Pizzi said that after watching county staff undermine the county's case, he's ready to bet the mortgage on the outcome.

''They should have pulled the plug on this a long time ago,'' he said.