Miami-Dade committee punts hard on Kionee McGhee’s non-profit slush fund

Miami-Dade’s nonprofit industrial complex took another bow this week, and — ay, Dios mío — County Hall is starting to look less like a government building and more like the green room for a very special episode of The Price Is Right.
Because once again, commissioners were asked to sign off on a brand-new pot of money for their favorite nonprofits. And once again, the numbers didn’t add up. And once again, the appropriations committee did what Miami-Dade commissioners do best when they don’t want to say “no” — they kicked the can down the road so hard it bounced into the next fiscal year.
The pitch this time? A so-called CBO Trust Fund for “community-based organizations,” or non-profits that fill the gaps of service where the county can’t. But let’s not pretend it’s anything other than a slush fund starter kit.
Read related: Miami-Dade might skim a little off the top of contracts — for the nonprofits
The grand idea was dreamed up by none other than Commissioner Kionne McGhee, patron saint of Miami-Dade’s nonprofit class has had four of his own non-profit organizations and still has one, Conquering Hope Blueprint, with his whole family.
McGhee also works for Children of Inmates, a group that got $250,000 from the county just this year. About half of that will cover his salary and benefits.
It looks like that’s the formula at Miami-Dade: Kristi House, an advocacy center to prevent child sexual abuse and trafficking that serves as the central hub in Miami-Dade County for coordinating legal, medical, and social services for child victims and their families, was scheduled to get $450,000 in county grants this year. Executive Director Amanda Altman, makes a salary of just over half at $266,038.
McGhee’s proposal would have the county scrape a teeny-tiny 2% off county vendor contracts and redirect it into grants for nonprofits. A permanent revenue stream! A fountain of taxpayer love! A bottomless mimosa brunch for the advocacy class!
Except, well, the math ain’t mathing.
County budget staff estimated the plan, which would not apply to proprietary funds like the airport and seaport, would generate maybe $4 to $5 million, tops. A rounding error, considering nonprofits raked in about $80 million last year alone.
Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins cut through the fog quickly: “Not even a Band-Aid,” she said. And she was right. More like putting a Hello Kitty sticker on a gunshot wound.
But McGhee wasn’t giving up. He pushed staff — hard — to promise that vendors wouldn’t pass the cost onto taxpayers. Budget Chief David Clodfelter gave him a polite but firm “No puedo.” So McGhee turned to another senior staffer, Chief Administrative Officer Carladenise Edwards, who wisely refused to touch that political live wire.
Read related: Kionne McGhee has own Miami-Dade budget town hall to focus on non-profits
And then, because the drama levels were still too low, McGhee tried to float the idea of putting the whole thing on the ballot. On the ballot, after everyone in the room had already agreed the trust fund wouldn’t actually raise enough money to solve the problem it claimed to solve.
This is where Ladra had to resist the urge to throw a chancleta at the dais. It happens more often than you think.
Why the desperation? Why the insistence on pumping public dollars into nonprofit pipelines that clearly can’t sustain themselves without government sugar?
Well, let’s take a look at the Form 6 filings, hall we?
McGhee, who never met a nonprofit he didn’t want to sponsor, has been collecting $99,416.18 every year — down to the last penny — from Children of Inmates, a nonprofit that just so happens to have a long and cozy relationship with Miami-Dade’s budget process. That’s not consulting. That’s not occasional work. That’s a salary. A salary funded indirectly by the same ecosystem he is now trying to give a permanent revenue stream to.
If you thought McGhee was the only one auditioning for the role of “Nonprofit Whisperer,” surprise! Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez, once the fiscal conservative watchdog who barked at every penny misspent, has now curled up in McGhee’s lap like a new rescue pup. The two have been showing up to each other’s events like they’re running a buddy-cop campaign, not a county government. Insiders in the Stephen P. Clark Center say the quiet part out loud: the two have struck a mutual-support pact for chair and vice chair of the commission (more on that later).
And because nothing screams “transparency” like a backroom alliance, they’ve scheduled a Sunshine Meeting to “flush out” questions about nonprofits and the trust fund.
Ladra translation: They want to get their story straight before the rest of Miami-Dade sees the receipts.
Now, we’re heading toward the big Sunshine Meeting, which, let’s be honest, will be a carefully scripted performance dressed up as transparency. Expect glossy charts. Expect solemn speeches. Expect a whole lot of “we hear the concerns” without actually addressing who benefits from this convoluted tangle of nonprofit funding, political ambition, and personal ties.
Read related: Miami-Dade budget restores 100% funds to non-profits = self preservation
But the real questions are no longer whisper-level inside County Hall. They’re out here with the taxpayers:

Why is a commissioner who earns nearly $100K a year from a nonprofit also the architect of a permanent funding scheme for nonprofits?
Why has a former fiscal conservative suddenly become his number-one hype man?
Why are county employees raising red flags about management hires (more on that later) tied to the same nonprofit world driving this debate?
And why are taxpayers expected to foot this bill, while nobody acknowledges the conflicts staring us all in the face?

Nonprofits do important work. Ladra knows that. But they are not required parts of government. They do not have a constitutional right to taxpayer money. And Miami-Dade residents should not have to support a growing cottage industry of politically favored organizations whose leaders have one hand on the microphone and the other in the county budget.
The fact that some commissioners balked should tell you everything.
The trust fund doesn’t work. The numbers don’t work. The alliances don’t smell right. And the nonprofit industrial complex may  finally face the kind of scrutiny it has dodged for years.

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