Miami-Dade budget restores 100% funds to non-profits = self preservation

Well, it looks like the mayor blinked.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has closed the $400-million gap in the 2025-26 budget and still somehow restored every single dollar to the community-based organizations, the nonprofits whose funding has more than doubled in eight years and that every commissioner suddenly pretends is the only thing standing between Miami-Dade’s most vulnerable residents and total collapse.
Never mind that she warned everyone, over and over, that this is not recurring money. That these are one-time funds. That this is not sustainable.
But hey, what’s another budget gimmick when you’ve got lobbyists in the chambers, nonprofit directors whispering doomsday tale in everyone’s ears, protestors outside County Hall and commissioners who would rather write checks than take responsibility for actually providing services?
Never mind that the county already shot itself in the foot with two straight years of property tax cuts, fat union raises, $46 million for the World Cup circus, and extra pandemic goodies for charities. The money pit was already dug. And when the mayor tried to patch it by cutting nonprofit funding, the commission balked. Too messy. Too many friends. Too many lobbyists.
Too much political fallout.
Who’s going to vote against abused women? Or homeless seniors? Or hungry families?
Read related: Kionne McGhee has own Miami-Dade budget town hall to focus on non-profits
Commissioner Kionne McGhee had a budget town hall specifically for CBO leaders to make their arguments. Commissioner Natalie Milian Orbis asked for a report on who gets picked and why. She’s new here. As the Miami Herald has reported, the same nonprofits get funded year after year. The “competitive process” fizzled out long ago, replaced with commissioners’ pet groups and a wink-wink system that rewards connections.
Commissioner Eileen Higgins said at the first budget hearing that she understood the impact that the constitutional offices had made on the $12.9 billion budget, but that the county had to do better by the non-profits.
“Since July, things have improved,” Higgins said. “We’ve got to make government a little bit skinnier without harming the most vulnerable people in our community and I think we are not there on this funding of our community-based organizations.”
Before restoring 100% of the funds, Levine Cava had nearly cried on the dais about cutting those fund because of her history and background with the groups.
“I am personally heartbroken,” DLC said at the first public budget hearing Sept. 4. “Many of the organizations that have presented today are organizations that I either founded or served on the board or collaborated with for decades. It is personally painful to me to be in a situation where I had to choose between running buses, filling potholes or providing for our nonprofit partners.”
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But La Alcaldesa is not the only one who is elbows deep in the non-profit world. Oliver Gilbert and Kionne McGhee recused themselves from the budget vote at the first public hearing, because both are actually employed by non-profits, Kristi House and Children of Inmates, respectively. But almost every single commissioner is involved in a CBO one way or another. Some are involved in more than one.

Gilbert is listed as a director — along with lobbyists Al Dotson, Rodney Barreto and former Miami Beach City Manager Alina Hudak — of the Greater Miami Sports Commission. Is that why he is so bullish on the $46 million that the county is handing over to the 2026 FIFA World Cup committee for parties? How much of that does Oliver’s non-profit get? Gilbert is also on the board of the non-profit Southeast Florida Regional Prosperity Institute. So are county commissioners Rene Garcia and Kionne McGhee and Pinecrest Mayor Joseph Corradino.
Marleine Bastien is founder and, while she says she stepped down, is still listed as executive director of FANM in Action (formerly Haitian Women of Miami), which gets a county grant of $180,000 a year. The organization also got $1.4 million in May for critical emergency repairs to its building. Commissioners also forgot more than $140,000 in past due rent and agreed to sell the building to FANM for a “nominal price.” Bastien also served on the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, which has not been active since 2020.
Keon Hardemon serves on the board of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, as does Miami Commissioner Christine King.
Micky Steinberg was a director at One Miami Beach, Inc., but that was when she was a Miami Beach elected. And the non-profit is inactive now, anyway.
Eileen Higgins is not listed as an officer of any non-profits in Florida corporate records that Ladra could find, but her county profile bio lists a number of organizations she has served in some capacity, including Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, People Acting for Community Together (PACT), the Miami Climate Alliance, Sierra Club, the League of Women Voters and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
Natalie Milian Orbis is an officer at Victory4Kids Foundation, where her husband Manny Obis — former chief of staff to ex Commissioner Kevin Cabrera (who Milian Orbis replaced) — is secretary. It is a family CBO with other Milians listed as officers.
Raquel Regalado shows up on the Florida Division of Corporations records as a board member of the Friendship Circle of Miami.  She says it is an honorary title.
Danielle Cohen Higgins doesn’t have her name associated with any non-profits in the state corporate records, but her campaign and bio materials list her as sitting on several nonprofit boards, such as South Florida American Heart Association, Miami Children’s Health Foundation, Take Stock in Children and Ruth’s List.
McGhee is president of two non-profits — Conquering Hope Blueprint and the Kionne L. McGhee Foundation — with several members of his family. He used to be on the board of Floridians for Equality and Fairness Coalition, the Florida Pastoral Delegation, and For a Better Tomorrow, but they are all inactive now.
Roberto J. Gonzalez was president of Living Hope Community Church of Miami, but it’s been inactive since 2011.
Anthony Rodriguez could not be linked to any non-profit though public documents. But he got into hot water WHEN after he got a $5 million gift in a county contract for A3 Foundation, a politically-connected “charity” that landed millions in county and state cash with barely a glance — until the Miami Herald called it out.
Juan Carlos “JC” Bermudez is the president and only officer listed for the Doral Community Foundation, which was founded in 2008 and reinstated in 2019.
René García sits on the board of the Southeast Florida Regional Prosperity Institute. He also founded H.O.P.E. Mission. He isn’t listed on the corporate records, but his very close friend, Terrence “T.C.” Wolfe, is president. Other friends — Miami Lakes Mayor Josh Dieguez and Jeanette Rubio, wife of the former senator and current Secretary of State Marco Rubio — are directors.

Also, Garcia and McGhee, Gilbert and Pinecrest Mayor Corradino — who are all on the South Florida Regional Prosperity Institute — are also listed as members of the executive committee of the similarly named South Florida Regional Planning Council, one of ten agencies in the state that “plan for and coordinate intergovernmental solutions to growth-related problems on greater-than local issues, provide technical assistance to local governments, and meet other needs of the communities in each region.”.
Read related: Shady charity with political ties gets $450K from Miami-Dade Commission
It’s true that many other if not most of these nonprofits do good work. Nobody’s saying they don’t. Farm Share, for example, says it can feed more people, more cheaply, than the county ever could, delivering more than $80 million in food last year
But for every Farm Share, we might have an A3 Foundation, a non-profit run by the Miami city manager’s chief of staff with barely a bank account, zero track record, a ghost website and no contact info. That’s the danger. Once politics infects the process, “charitable giving” looks a lot like patronage.
Now, McGhee has doubled down with a new trust fund idea — taking 2% off certain vendor contracts to bankroll nonprofits forever. Sounds sweet. Especially since he has a history of running non-profits. But it could easily just drive up RFP prices and hit taxpayers again. And it won’t even kick in until 2028, meaning the “one-time” scramble continues ’til then.
So yes, the mayor restored all of the CBO money. Nobody’s against a safety net. But Miami-Dade is acting like it can’t possibly build and manage services itself. Outsourcing charity work to nonprofits has become the easy way out — politically safe, lobbyist-approved, and much less messy than fixing what’s broken inside county government.
Next year, when the same nonprofits line up with their clients in wheelchairs and their cute kids and their sob stories, the $36.4 commissioners will fold again. And the mayor will be told she has to “find” the money — again.
Commissioner Regalado is at least asking the right question: What’s the return on investment? She wants a way to measure the performance of the grantees. These county grants started as a way to provide services, through the non-profits, at a cheaper cost than the county could on its own. But do they still? We need to know.
The amount of money that the county doles out to CBOs has grown dramatically from $36.4 million in the 2017-18 budget year to $73.9 million last year, according to a recent report by the county auditor. Meanwhile, the number of organizations getting funds has dropped from 139 to 114.

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