‘The invoice has no detail’: County accountants flagged foundation’s check request

On a recent morning this month, Miami-Dade accounting manager Gloria Hurtado flagged a bare-bones request to issue a $200,000 check to a charity called the A3 Foundation for expenses related to an annual springtime rodeo at Tropical Park. 

The A3 invoice submitted by the county’s budget office had no financial details, only the phrase “Payment for CountryFest2025.” 

“We need more detail/description of what they are billing us for,” Hurtado wrote in a July 3 email to staff members of the Office of Management and Budget, the agency that handles grant funding. “Please provide a copy of the contract to be able to verify total costs of the event.”

But a contract was never produced, according to the emails, and neither were any receipts behind the A3 invoice for exactly $200,000.

The pushback by Hurtado revealed in emails released Thursday offers the first public glimpse at someone in government questioning the county’s payments to A3 — expenditures that are now causing turmoil for two of the most powerful officeholders in Miami-Dade: Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and Commission Chair Anthony Rodriguez, who hosts CountryFest. 

Recent reporting by the Miami Herald questioned the roughly $2 million in state and county funds that have gone to A3. The charity formed two years ago and is still headquartered in a West Miami townhouse, with no public record of charitable work — but a top city of Miami official as its paid director. 

Francisco Petrirena, chief of staff to Miami City Manager Art Noriega, is A3’s president, and he told the Herald last week he was earning an $80,000 salary for his work with the nonprofit.

He has declined interview requests since, and the A3 Foundation has not responded to Herald requests for the charity’s tax returns, which must be open to public inspection under federal law. 

A3’s financial arrangement with CountryFest — serving as the clearinghouse for money that ultimately went to the events vendor Loud and Live, which puts onthe rodeo — has generated more than $1 million in county checks for A3 already, according to a log released Thursday. 

The log and emails came from the Office of the Court Clerk and Comptroller, which took over the county’s finance arm in January as a newly independent agency. 

Some of the checks have not been cashed, bringing the amount paid out to A3 to just under $1 million.

A steady stream of payments to A3 Foundation from Miami-Dade County

Following the Herald stories, Levine Cava announced Wednesday that she would block a new $5 million funding stream for A3, which county commissioners approved just last week.

The funding stream — a $250,000 yearly payment to A3 over 20 years — was a requirement for Loud and Live to secure a long-term contract to run ticketed events at Tropical Park’s equestrian center, including the yearly holiday festival that replaced the venerable Santa’s Enchanted Forest carnival. 

Levine Cava said she would not sign the version of the contract with the requirement for payments to A3, a nonprofit that separately was allocated $125,000 in the revised budget proposal the mayor sent to commissioners last fall. 

While Levine Cava’s administration negotiated the Loud and Live contract for Tropical Park, with the required donation to a charity to be named by commissioners, legislation assigning the charitable payment to A3 came from Rodriguez, whose district includes Tropical Park.

Levine Cava’s announcement was her administration’s first known effort to block county funding for A3. 

Levine Cava’s office said Thursday the $125,000 for A3 that was added to the 2025 budget was a request from Rodriguez but that a grant agreement was never executed to release the money. 

A3 was a regular recipient of county grants on the commission dais. County records also show Rodriguez and multiple commissioners used charity dollars in their offices to give A3 about $265,000 over the last two years as part of their support of CountryFest. 

CountryFest hosted and organized by Commission Chair Anthony Rodriguez

Rodriguez is the host of CountyFest each year — his name greeted visitors at the event’s main gate in April — and he’s the one who set up A3 as the clearinghouse for the county funds allocated for the festival. But the organization that actually puts on CountryFest is Loud and Live. 

Emails released by Rodriguez’s office Thursday afternoon show extensive communications between the chairman’s staff and Loud and Live executives finalizing details of the cowhand-themed event. 

“Please let us know what rides you would like to move forward with,” Fidel Urbina, director of event operations for Loud and Live, wrote in a Feb. 27 email to Rodriguez staffers, with a pricing list that ran from a cow-milking game for $2,100 to a “mega” inflatable attraction for $29,000, which carried the extra expense of having to purchase custom socks for attendees.

Rodriguez staffers held weekly calls with Loud and Live to pore over a punch list of tasks to get the festival ready to open on April 25, including chasing down county permits, finalizing the design of a bull mascot and efforts to cut costs. “I had a chat with the Chairman and I think we need to have a face-to-face and review the budget top to bottom,” Tony Albelo, president of Loud and Live, wrote to Rodriguez staffers on Feb. 6.

The emails also show the A3 Foundation having close ties to Rodriguez’s staff when it came to the money flowing into the charity. 

An April 14 invoice from Loud and Live for $200,000 was billed to the A3 Foundation but listed the charity’s contact as Rodriguez’s legislative director, Aldo Gonzalez. State records do not list Gonzalez as a board member for A3.

“Morning Aldo,” Urbina wrote in an email to Gonzalez with the A3 invoice. “Let us know when we should be receiving funds so we can start securing vendors.” 

Gonzalez and Rodriguez did not respond to requests for comment Thursday afternoon.

Weeks after Loud and Live sent the $200,000 invoice to A3 and Gonzalez, Gonzalez on May 14 sent a $200,000 bill from A3 to the county’s budget office for payment. 

That was the $200,000 invoice that eventually landed in Hurtado’s inbox just a few weeks ago. 

Emails show she and other finance staffers were concerned the $200,000 request was an error because their office had already approved the Parks Department’s request for a $300,000 CountryFest payment to A3 in April. 

Erica Olson, a division director in finance, wrote in an email to colleagues that the previous $300,000 invoice from Parks had some general references to CountryFest expenses, including rides, restrooms and tents, unlike the latest one she was reviewing.

“The invoice has no detail as to what is being billed like the Parks one did,” she wrote of the $200,000 bill that only listed “Payment for CountryFest.”

The finance staffers asked for backup material, like a contract, to show how much money the foundation was authorized to receive. 

Instead of a contract, the county’s budget director, David Clodfelter, intervened, writing to say that the $200,000 was a legitimate A3 payment requested by Rodriguez’s office. 

“Hi. Happy Holidays. Please help with the payment of this,” Clodfelter wrote the morning of July 4. “If additional information is really needed, I will reach out to the Chairman’s Office.”

On Thursday, Clodfelter told the Herald that lack of backup material for the A3 invoices was authorized under legislation that commissioners passed in 2024 waiving county purchasing rules for CountryFest. Rodriguez had sponsored that legislation.

“The Board of County Commissioners passed a resolution waiving all procurement and bidding rules, including market research, related to CountryFest. This waiver allowed payments to be made without the traditional competitive and research processes,” wrote Clodfelter, who works for Levine Cava.

The emails show Clodfelter’s staff asking him for help getting past the pushback by finance staffers, who work under Juan Fernandez-Barquin, the county’s elected clerk and comptroller. 

“Finance is having an issue with approving the CountryFest invoice because [of a] lack of description on the invoice,” budget staffer Connie Hernandez wrote a colleague, John Sarduy, the morning of the county’s Fourth of July holiday, which fell on a Friday this year. She suggested a note from Clodfelter or Rodriguez’s office might be enough to resolve the issue. 

Sarduy forwarded the email to Clodfelter, with a note: “We need your help with this repayment request.” 

This story was originally published July 25, 2025 at 5:00 AM.