After 18 indecisive years, can the mayor fix funding flaws?

Rather than evaluate 125 organizations that plug gaps in the safety net for the needy, Miami-Dade once again took the easy way and without discussion kicked the can down the road, funding each with what it got last year plus an added 8%.

It now has been 18 years since the county reviewed which groups get money for what and whether they are doing the job properly, or whether what they do is the best use of taxes.

Over the years, commissioners themselves have acknowledged that the process is deeply flawed and highly political. The best that commissioners have done is to make sure that groups in each of the 13 districts get a slice of the more than $15 million now involved, and that each commissioner gets added funds to send to groups that aren’t among the 125.

Last week’s commission vote to just keep on doing what we’re doing came without normal committee review where decisions could be hashed out or the public heard. It was one of more than 200 agenda votes, most of which were not discussed. And it will have repercussions in the funding of 125 groups and not funding others that may be equally worthy.

The recommendation to decide not to decide came from Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who as a commissioner and former social services professional was critical of the current process. 

A memo under the mayor’s name said she will report within six months how the county should request proposals from the groups, called community based organizations. That memo is also to recommend what kinds of services to fund, the allocations, and a new process for making grants.

Meanwhile, it’s status quo.

The memo says the county was so busy meeting other needs during covid that it left the old process in place, even while many of the organizations shut down or worked virtually. The county just asked that the agencies not lay off workers. All of that is understandable – covid changed the world.

What is far less defensible is that county did nothing in the 16 prior years to rationalize its division of tax funds among organizations that ostensibly do for the community things the county cannot but still should finance.

Don’t get me wrong: no doubt most of these groups that get tax funds each year do valuable work, some quite well. But it is perfectly clear that what should be a team of 125 organizations – or whatever number is needed – is actually just a list of groups that have annual contracts with the county but little coordination. They seem geared to primarily serve 13 commission districts rather than nearly 3 million residents.

So, is it the county’s responsibility to fund organizations, or to meet residents’ needs? We trust the mayor will answer when she reports.

Realignment of dealings with community based organizations has been tried before. It just hasn’t succeeded, as the mayor’s memo makes clear.

The failure has not necessarily been in the plan, but in getting commissioners to adopt it. In 2017, a plan from Mayor Carlos Gimenez was defeated in a 7-4 vote as the county kicked the can down the road then too.

There are reasons the process is tough. Organizations that do not get county funding want it. Organizations that do get it but don’t perform well want to keep the money – and many organizations have close ties to the commission.

Indeed, in the 2017 vote two commissioners recused themselves because they had ties to groups seeking funds – Commissioner Dennis Moss was executive director of the Richmond-Perrine Optimist Club, which was being funded (he took pains to point out that he was not paid by the club). It would be hard to find many of the groups that don’t have ties to officials.

The seven largest grants go to Victory for Youth Inc. (Share Your Heart), $540,000; Live Like Bella Childhood Cancer Foundation, $540,000; Farm Share Inc., $497,000; New Hope CORPS Inc., $485,000; Kristi House Inc., $451,000; Better Way of Miami Inc., $432,000; and Little Havana Activities & Nutrition Centers of Dade County, $401,000.

There are 12 categories of service to the community, and some groups get funds in multiple categories: the Cuban American Bar Association Pro Bono Project gets $65,000 for anti-violence, $35,000 to help immigrants and new entrants, and $43,000 to help with special needs.

Imagine having to tell any of these or the other 117 groups now being funded that they would be replaced or to reallocate money to meet current needs. You can envision the commission battles. 

Kicking the can down the road is far less painful. Unfortunately, it’s also far less effective in properly using taxes to meet community needs.

In the 2017 effort to improve the process, then-commissioner Barbara Jordan noted that the county in the past had entrusted the task of allocating funds to an outside organization, the Alliance for Human Services, bypassing politics, but that disturbed some commissioners. Since then, she said, selections had been political and she did not want to go through that again. Then-commissioner Xavier Suarez added that it was not possible to continue doing the same thing and expect a different result.

Now commissioners have entrusted Mayor Levine Cava to craft a new process, as Mr. Gimenez did in 2017. His process met a commission buzzsaw and was chopped up. Can Ms. Levine Cava find a better formula to end the politicking among hundreds of competing local organizations and actually get it passed next year?