(The Center Square) – After weeks of controversy and leadership shake-ups, the HOPE Florida Foundation Board has approved measures it hopes will fix its problems with transparency and legal compliance.
Initially set for Thursday morning, the meeting was rescheduled for the afternoon due to cyberattacks.
Joshua Hay, who chairs the charity’s board and serves as the CEO of Indelible Solutions, led the meeting.
Hay laid out the tasks the board needed to approve. Actions the board approved included reviewing its IRS Form 990 to ensure legal compliance, adopting articles of incorporation, starting an annual budget process, and completing other paperwork necessary to comply with state law.
Hope Florida lacked an annual budget. Hay offered to work with the Department of Children and Families to draft a preliminary budget. He said the organization needs better financial planning to reach operational stability and hire staff in the future.
“As you all know, and as we’ve spoken about, there’s no staff, so a lot of those responsibilities are falling on me,” Hay said during the meeting. “I am helping out to move the Foundation forward, and I will start development of the budget in coordination with the Department.”
Hay said he would work with the Foundation’s lawyers and accountants to ensure the forms, which were prepared quickly over the past few weeks, are accurate. He said he’ll bring the necessary updates back to the board for approval.
Hay also wanted to nominate board members as vice president, treasurer and secretary so they could take on more responsibilities. However, the board members tabled the motion, contending they need more time to review the roles of said positions.
Additionally, the board agreed to meet monthly moving forward, instead of quarterly, to address some of its ongoing problems.
Board member Tina Vidal-Duart suggested that the board delegate tasks to all its members to help it address its ongoing problems at the next meeting, if Hope Florida lacks the funds to hire staff to address those problems.
“It is obviously too much work for one person to handle, and I think all of us would be willing to step up and take on responsibility for some of these things going forward,” Vidal-Duart said during the meeting.
Hay appreciated that suggestion, noting he has had to cancel several business meetings to handle the Foundation’s matters.
Hay wants to hire an executive director soon. He is also working with the Florida Department of Children and Families to possibly add more staff.
The meeting came as Mohammad Jazil, a lawyer the Foundation recently brought in to help fix compliance issues, resigned earlier in the week.
Jazil resigned after state Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, urged Hay to fire Jazil.
House members say a $10 million donation from healthcare giant Centene to HOPE Florida was used to fund the opposition to an unsuccessful ballot measure that attempted to legalize recreational marijuana in Florida last year. The $10 million donation was part of a $67 million settlement that Centene reached with the state over Medicaid billing.
Jazil worked on the no side of the marijuana ballot question, according to media reports. He served as legal counsel for Keep Florida Clean.
Amid these controversies, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has defended HOPE Florida and said Republicans maligning it are helping Democrats.
“It’s a private charity. It is not the government. This is why I think first of all, the whole thing that the House leadership is doing is a manufactured fraud. This is a hoax,” DeSantis said, as The Center Square previously reported. “So you know, for some of these Republican leaders to be joining with liberal Democrats and liberal media to manufacture smears against HOPE Florida, against me, against the First Lady. It just shows you they are not on your team. They are not doing what they said that they would do.”
First Lady Casey Harper founded Hope Florida in 2021.
