Nonprofit in fight with commissioner gets green light on county funding in Miami-Dade

This is an update to a story originally published on Jan. 23, 2025:

A funding fight between a Miami-Dade commissioner and an influential nonprofit leader appeared to end with a hug on Tuesday after Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s administration found two charities were mostly in compliance with county rules tied to nearly $12 million in grants and loans they have been awarded or approved for since 2021.

Commissioner Keon Hardemon on Jan. 23 won commission backing for a temporary funding freeze for the Circle of Brotherhood and the Neighbors and Neighbors Association, two charities led by Leroy Jones. The freeze came after Jones and allies packed the commission chambers to ask for more county dollars and Hardemon claimed both being threatened by the effort and comparing some of the comments to “gang activity.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, Hardemon said he wanted to end the feud.

“All that I ask for in my endeavors in this seat is accountability,” Hardemon said as Jones sat in the front row of the chambers. “I want to get to the solution. But we have to do things differently.”

Jones responded: “I don’t have anything against you — and I’ve never had anything against you. I just want to work for the people.” After the meeting, Hardemon walked down and hugged Jones.

The funding freeze was to last until Levine Cava produced a report on the two charities’ compliance with county contracts tied to grants and loans secured by Neighbors and Circle. Some of that money is passed through the charities to other nonprofits and businesses that participate in the county programs the groups run. The Levine Cava memo estimated the two nonprofits have received or been approved for $11.8 million over the last four years. Of the 19 allocations summarized in the memo, 18 were listed as in compliance.

The one not in compliance related to a $3.7 million loan to build housing on nearly three dozen surplus county lots awarded to the Neighbors group. The houses haven’t been built, and Miami-Dade can take back the land. The loan never closed, according to the memo.

The original story published on Jan. 23, 2025 is below:

A request for more grant dollars by a Miami charity went off the rails on Wednesday when the Miami-Dade County Commission instead voted to suspend all funding for the group and a related nonprofit.

The unscheduled vote to suspend funding to the Circle of Brotherhood and the Neighbors and Neighbors Association followed a claim by Commissioner Keon Hardemon that he was threatened when more than a dozen supporters of the charities showed up to Wednesday’s commission meeting to ask for more county funding.

He likened some of the group’s comments to “gang activity” for what he perceived as intimidation.

“When I saw some of the activity that was rolling in front of this dais, I recognized gang activity,” said Hardemon, a criminal defense lawyer. “What should we do to organizations that take the time to threaten elected leaders in our community?”

The Circle of Brotherhood is an organization of mostly Black men with a stated mission of addressing community problems, including gun violence and poverty. Neighbors and Neighbors Association focuses on helping businesses.

Both groups have secured county grants and contracts to run various programs, including administering small-business “Mom and Pop” grants awarded by commission district and providing staff for anti-violence efforts.

At the commission meeting, supporters of the groups urged commissioners to award more county dollars to the Circle of Brotherhood, arguing that the nonprofit’s services need more funding. Instead, commissioners voted to suspend existing funding for the Circle of Brotherhood and the Neighbors organization (often called “NANA”), pending a report from the administration of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava on how the organizations are spending Miami-Dade dollars. Leroy Jones, a leader of the two groups, told the Miami Herald he doesn’t think anybody tried to intimidate Hardemon or other commissioners.

“Nobody threatened him,” said Jones, who backed Hardemon’s challenger in the 2024 commission elections, former commissioner Audrey Edmonson. He claimed Hardemon, a former city of Miami commissioner, has been trying to steer county resources away from the nonprofits that Jones leads.

“Keon has been doing a lot of things behind the scenes against us,” Jones said.

The funding fracas captured a divide between the county commissioner representing northern parts of Miami and the politically active leader of a nonprofit with multiple streams of county funding tied to small-business support, affordable housing, reducing gun violence and other programs.

Records on the county’s online checkbook show the two nonprofits received more than $1 million from Miami-Dade in 2024.

In a brief interview after the meeting, Hardemon declined to identify what he considered the threat that spurred his legislation cutting off the tax funding for the two nonprofits. Privately, multiple county officials said the alleged threat came during comments by Lyle Muhammad, the executive director at the Circle of Brotherhood.

Muhammad had a heated exchange with the board’s chair, Anthony Rodriguez, over the one-minute time limit Rodriguez imposed on speakers, saying there were too many people signed up to address the commission to allow for the normal two-minute allotment.

“You’ve really showed your face, Chair. I’m dismayed,” Muhammad said at the start of his comments. Hardemon wasn’t in the chambers, but Muhammad said he wanted to address the commissioner on the topic of county funding. “I’m just sending out a warning to Commissioner Keon Hardemon in reference to Leroy Jones…”

As he spoke, Rodriguez jumped in and told him not to address a commissioner by name — citing a board rule against singling out individual members during public comment. The video of the meeting shows Muhammad saying a few more inaudible words to a disabled microphone. Minutes after Muhammad spoke, Rodriguez told the audience: “Threats on this chamber are taken very seriously.”

On Thursday morning, Muhammad said he was baffled at the allegation that a commissioner felt threatened by the groups’ supporters making a funding push. “Our biggest question is: What was the threat?” he said.

Rodriguez did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening.

In an interview, Edmonson accused Hardemon of political retribution for sponsoring the last-minute resolution to suspend funding to Jones’ groups.

“It’s politics,” said Edmonson, who left the commission in 2020 after hitting the county’s term-limit cap. “Nobody is out there trying to bully the politicians. It seems it’s the other way around.”

The impact of Hardemon’s resolution may be short-lived because it instructs the mayor’s administration to freeze funding to the two charities until the next commission meeting in February. At that meeting, the administration is instructed to deliver a report detailing whether the Brotherhood and Neighbors nonprofits are in compliance with existing county grant agreements and contracts.

“We have received threats from these organizations,” Rodriguez, the commission chair, said before the unanimous vote for Hardemon’s legislation. The funding freeze is “not because they are exercising their right to express their voice.”

This story was originally published January 23, 2025 at 11:02 AM.