A rushed effort to strip Miami-Dade County’s environmental watchdog agency of its permitting authority while re-establishing it as an independent department is raising alarms with environmentalists.

The county commission is scheduled to vote on the move Thursday, when it decides whether to approve next year’s $12.9 billion budget.

Under a proposal added after a preliminary budget hearing two weeks ago, the county’s Division of Environmental Resources Management, or DERM, would again become its own department. It would no longer fall under the Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources, a five-division super department created more than a decade ago to streamline red tape and speed up building.

But the bigger department, which includes building, zoning and planning, would retain con

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