Thanks to an unholy alliance between Florida's Democrats and Republicans, gerrymandering has reduced Florida's Democratic influence in Congress since 1992, when Rep. Corinne Brown's congressional district was created.
Her 300 mile long district become a virtual sinecure until the Fair Districting Amendment was enacted by informed voters and enforced by the Florida Supreme Court. Its existence cabined minority voters in one district, reducing the chances of electing Democrats in adjoining districts, which became sinecures for dull Republicans.
Last month, federal subpoenas were served on Rep. Corinne Brown and associates. Ten days ago, the Florida Times-Union (T-U) reported on a dodgy "charity" associated with Rep. Brown, who refused to answer questions. Her Washington, D.C. office also refused my request for a copy of the subpoena. Here's the T-U article.
U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown has steered tens of thousands of dollars to unusual organization
Brown won't talk about her partnership with the obscure outfit
File photo
Over the past four years, U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown repeatedly has used her name, office and political connections to steer tens of thousands of dollars to an obscure organization in Northern Virginia that says it helps a range of charities.
Over the past four years, U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown repeatedly has used her name, office and political connections to steer tens of thousands of dollars to an obscure organization in Northern Virginia that says it helps a range of charities.
Brown has touted the group, One Door for Education — Amy Anderson Scholarship Foundation, as a charitable nonprofit when courting potential donors.
But the partnership with Brown is curious because One Door — a group unknown to some of its neighbors and several causes it says it supports — doesn’t appear to have the tax-exempt status commonly held by charities even as it has taken in substantial donations.
It’s not clear why Brown has taken such a keen interest in One Door. The normally loquacious congresswoman refused to talk about it, and One Door, based in Leesburg, Va., hasn’t returned multiple phone calls and emails.
Brown’s close association with One Door is unusual both for the extent of her financial help and the exposure to a wider audience her backing seems to offer.
One Door, based in a single-family house in an affluent suburb 40 miles northwest of Washington, has received money from political action committees, lobbyists and foundations run by people around Brown, a Jacksonville Democrat whose political franchise is advocacy for the dispossessed in Northeast and Central Florida.
Brown also sought donations for One Door as part of a 2013 golf tournament where sponsorship levels reached as high as $20,000, though it’s unclear how successful Brown’s fundraising push was. Invitations — which included One Door letterhead, the U.S. House of Representatives seal and Brown’s signature — were sent to her supporters and city officials.
The Times-Union was able to track money that came from a committee organized by Brown, from people or organizations who have also given to Brown, and from a wealthy foundation active in education that isn’t known to have past dealings with the 23-year House member.
That financial support and exposure would be important to many kitchen-table charities, totaling close to $70,000 over several years, according to campaign reports, congressional disclosure forms, tax documents and interviews.
But its bottom-line significance for One Door is unclear because the organization is unusually opaque: It hasn’t filed the sorts of publicly available tax returns legally required of nonprofits.
Other donations — like checks from most people or businesses — would not typically appear in public records.
Brown’s involvement with One Door was noticed when the Times-Union reviewed her campaign finance reports this month after federal agents served the congresswoman with a subpoena and visited one of her long-time aides. The nature of what federal investigators want to know and what they need from Brown remain a mystery. The Department of Justice has said it “generally neither confirms nor denies whether a matter is under investigation.”
There is no indication that One Door was an element in information the subpoena seeks.
But the congresswoman’s relationship to the organization is notable regardless of the subpoena.
The $10,000 contributed in April 2013 by a PAC she organized, Florida Delivers Leadership, matched the committee’s largest individual expenses for the year, including its donation to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Last year, Florida Delivers provided only $10,000 combined to all the political committees it supported, and half of that went to the congresswoman’s personal committee, Friends of Corrine Brown.
Brown’s ties to One Door go beyond financial backing. The organization’s name was attached to her golf tournament — potential participants and sponsors were told to make checks out to One Door — and multiple receptions held in her honor during Congressional Black Caucus Foundation gatherings, according to copies of invitations for those events found in city emails.
Those mentions with Brown are among the few the organization has received beyond those on its own website, where Brown appears in three of the nine photos that dominate its home page. Beyond its site, One Door has little presence.
The congresswoman’s association with the organization has added legitimacy to One Door in the eyes of donors.
Circuit Judge Virginia Norton said she sent a $100 check to One Door in July after Brown showed her a “very professional-looking” letter about supporting an upcoming youth trip. Norton, who has not donated to Brown’s campaign, said she has talked to Brown intermittently for years and that they share an interest in issues affecting young people, so she never questioned the material she received.
“I assumed, because a U.S. congresswoman handed this out. I did not research it,” Norton said.
Other aspects about One Door also raise eyebrows.
Between 2012 and 2013, One Door received $10,000 from the Gasper and Irene Lazzara Charitable Foundation, based in Ponte Vedra Beach. Gasper Lazzara was also listed on invitations to Brown’s golf tournament as a co-chair of the event, and he and other members of the Lazzara family have donated to Brown’s election fundraising.
Contacted by a reporter about One Door and difficulties verifying its nonprofit status, the foundation issued a statement days later that said: “It has come to our attention this organization was not eligible to receive tax-free donations. … When we learned this information we immediately filed an amended tax return to indicate this donation was not tax deductible and we have personally reimbursed our foundation 100 percent of the funds.”
The foundation was unable to find documents that indicate One Door was eligible to receive tax-exempt donations, a spokeswoman for the foundation said.
When asked to explain his involvement with Brown’s golf tournament, Gasper Lazzara said in a written statement that his involvement in the tournament was unrelated to the foundation.
Brown, in a short statement issued through her spokesman, had only this to say in response to a list of questions about her relationship with One Door and the work it has done: “I have no comment.”
One Door and its president, Leesburg resident Carla Anderson Wiley, did not respond to multiple phone calls and emails that included requests to see annual reports on its activities. Tax-exempt nonprofits are required to make such information available for public inspection. A woman who answered a phone number listed on a 2012 email involving One Door, and who described herself as a volunteer, said Saturday she would relay a reporter’s message to Wiley.
That’s not the case with One Door.
■ Although One Door’s original articles of incorporation say it was set up to be a nonprofit with a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt designation, the group does not appear in an IRS disclosure database for tax-exempt organizations, a separate IRS database of organizations that have had tax-exempt status revoked or in a nonprofit database compiled by GuideStar, the leading resource for information about nonprofits.
A spokeswoman with the Virginia Department of Taxation, asked if state officials could help verify One Door’s status, suggested a reporter search for the group in GuideStar, as did a spokesman with the IRS.
■ One Door specifically lists on its website 11 causes and charitable groups it supports, but the Times-Union verified tangible support in only three cases. Some organizations said One Door might have helped, but that it wasn’t reflected in the groups’ records and they hadn’t heard of the organization, which apparently stayed below the radar in its home county.
The founder of One.Love.Loudoun, a nonprofit created last year to help other local charities and build volunteering in Virginia’s 374,000-person Loudoun County, said she hadn’t heard of One Door until a reporter contacted her.
■ Although One Door describes itself as a scholarship foundation — in addition to its other charitable focuses — it provides no information about any scholarships it has awarded. An online calendar item said the group was scheduled last year to host a forum about career choices for teenage girls along with Loudoun County’s NAACP branch, but it’s not clear whether that was connected to scholarship opportunities. Representatives of the Loudoun NAACP could not be reached for comment.
One Door’s website says that Amy Anderson, the organization’s namesake, was a “30-year retired Loudoun County School teacher, who believed that it was opportunity and love of the field that creates good teachers — not just good grades.” An Amy Anderson owns the house One Door uses as a mailing address, according to property records. It’s not clear if Anderson is related to Carla Anderson Wiley, the group’s president and registered agent.
■ Brown directly solicited donations and silent auction items for One Door as part of a golf tournament at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra she organized in 2013. One document that included her signature and the House of Representatives seal on One Door letterhead calls the organization a nonprofit.
Prospective participants were encouraged to contact Von Alexander to RSVP. Alexander, who has worked for Brown as a spokeswoman, was visited by federal agents the same day Brown received a subpoena. The event invitations said proceeds from the golf tournament would benefit the local chapter of the Conference Of Minority Transportation Officials and “other community nonprofits,” but donors were asked to write checks to One Door.
It’s not known how much money Brown’s golf tournament raised and how much went to COMTO or any other nonprofit.
■ One Door filed articles of incorporation with the Virginia State Corporation Commission in 2011, but state officials terminated One Door’s incorporation the following year for failing to file a routine annual report. One Door filed for reinstatement in June 2014.
■ One Door’s terminated status and apparent lack of 501(c)(3) designation didn’t deter organizations from committing substantial sums to the group between 2012 and mid-2014.
In addition to Florida Delivers, donors included the Community Leadership PAC, a group with financial ties to the cruise industry that has given Brown previous financial support. The PAC gave $25,000 to One Door in 2012.
In addition to the donation from the Lazzara Foundation, another $2,500 came from the Beaver Street Foundation in Jacksonville, a fund run by the Frisch family, which includes the owner of the city’s soccer team. A foundation official said that was done at Brown’s request. Frisch family members have also contributed to Brown’s election fundraising.
By contrast, the Washington-based Ludwig Family Foundation gave another $10,000, but the family is not known to have helped Brown financially. The foundation did not respond to questions about its donation.
Those donations from the Association of American Railroads and CSX Corp. were reported on House lobbyist disclosure reports from 2013 that listed Brown as the “honoree.”
A railroad lobbyist didn’t respond to a request for an interview about the spending.
A question to a CSX lobbyist was forwarded to a spokesman, Gary Sease, who said the company “has a broad philanthropy program” supporting causes tied to safety, education, wellness and the environment. Sease said the company announces sponsorships it offers to some national groups, but otherwise CSX doesn’t discuss details about donations.
One Door’s name has also been used at events connected to Brown.
Each September from 2012 to 2014, invitations sent on behalf of One Door to city officials told them of plans for receptions in Brown’s honor during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s legislative conference, a big political event that one invitation said attracted 20,000 people over several days. The 2012 invitation said Brown’s reception in the grand ballroom of the Washington Marriott at Metro Center was being sponsored by the Association of American Railroads.
A similar 2015 One Door reception for Brown was reported in Onyx Magazine, an Orlando-based publication, but invitations apparently weren’t sent to Mayor Lenny Curry’s office, as they had been to aides to his predecessor, Alvin Brown.
Two groups that One Door names on its list of supported causes, the nonprofit Community Coalition for Haiti and a charity called HelpHOPELive, vouched for One Door’s support, with HelpHOPELive saying it “did make a donation to our nonprofit in honor of one of our clients.” HelpHOPELive would not disclose the amount of the donation or which client it helped.
The Washington, D.C., YMCA also listed One Door as a donor in the $1,000-to-2,499 range in 2014, although the YMCA is not on One Door’s list of supported organizations on its website.
But other organizations, from the Community Table of Loudoun to organizers of the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual event involving members of Congress and thousands of guests, said they didn’t know of any help One Door provided but couldn’t discount the possibility.
“I am not familiar with this organization, or the help it may have given to the town,” Cathy Williams, the town clerk for Eatonville, a historic black community in Central Florida, said about the town’s inclusion on One Door’s list.
One Door does not specify the nature of its support for the groups, which are spread between Virginia and Florida.
“I have never heard of the organization you reference though it’s possible people from the organization volunteer at one of our dinners,” said Kurt Aschermann, founder of Community Table of Loudoun, a loose conglomerate effort by faith organizations in and around Leesburg to provide food to needy people.
One Door also claims on its website to have helped Jones High School, which it erroneously identifies as a school in Jacksonville.
There is a Jones High School in Orlando, but a spokeswoman with the Orange County School District, after checking with the school system’s charitable foundation and officials at Jones High, said “no one seems to have any record of any type of donations or any involvement” with One Door.
Some of the causes the Virginia-based One Door says it supports align with Brown’s interests in Florida.
Brown’s district has included Eatonville, and in 2012 Friends of Corrine Brown contributed $1,250 to an Eatonville preservation organization. Florida Delivers provided the same amount in 2013 for the Zora Neale Hurston Festival, a yearly event in Eatonville.
Friends of Corrine Brown also donated $220 in 2014 to the I.S. Hankins-F.A. Johnson Education Foundation, an Orlando organization that One Door said it supports. Messages to the foundation weren’t returned.
It’s not clear whether the congresswoman exerts any influence over One Door’s financial choices.
Nate Monroe: (904) 359-4289
Christopher Hong: (904) 359-4272
Steve Patterson: (904) 359-4263
Brown has touted the group, One Door for Education — Amy Anderson Scholarship Foundation, as a charitable nonprofit when courting potential donors.
But the partnership with Brown is curious because One Door — a group unknown to some of its neighbors and several causes it says it supports — doesn’t appear to have the tax-exempt status commonly held by charities even as it has taken in substantial donations.
It’s not clear why Brown has taken such a keen interest in One Door. The normally loquacious congresswoman refused to talk about it, and One Door, based in Leesburg, Va., hasn’t returned multiple phone calls and emails.
Brown’s close association with One Door is unusual both for the extent of her financial help and the exposure to a wider audience her backing seems to offer.
One Door, based in a single-family house in an affluent suburb 40 miles northwest of Washington, has received money from political action committees, lobbyists and foundations run by people around Brown, a Jacksonville Democrat whose political franchise is advocacy for the dispossessed in Northeast and Central Florida.
Brown also sought donations for One Door as part of a 2013 golf tournament where sponsorship levels reached as high as $20,000, though it’s unclear how successful Brown’s fundraising push was. Invitations — which included One Door letterhead, the U.S. House of Representatives seal and Brown’s signature — were sent to her supporters and city officials.
The Times-Union was able to track money that came from a committee organized by Brown, from people or organizations who have also given to Brown, and from a wealthy foundation active in education that isn’t known to have past dealings with the 23-year House member.
That financial support and exposure would be important to many kitchen-table charities, totaling close to $70,000 over several years, according to campaign reports, congressional disclosure forms, tax documents and interviews.
But its bottom-line significance for One Door is unclear because the organization is unusually opaque: It hasn’t filed the sorts of publicly available tax returns legally required of nonprofits.
Other donations — like checks from most people or businesses — would not typically appear in public records.
Brown’s involvement with One Door was noticed when the Times-Union reviewed her campaign finance reports this month after federal agents served the congresswoman with a subpoena and visited one of her long-time aides. The nature of what federal investigators want to know and what they need from Brown remain a mystery. The Department of Justice has said it “generally neither confirms nor denies whether a matter is under investigation.”
There is no indication that One Door was an element in information the subpoena seeks.
But the congresswoman’s relationship to the organization is notable regardless of the subpoena.
The $10,000 contributed in April 2013 by a PAC she organized, Florida Delivers Leadership, matched the committee’s largest individual expenses for the year, including its donation to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Last year, Florida Delivers provided only $10,000 combined to all the political committees it supported, and half of that went to the congresswoman’s personal committee, Friends of Corrine Brown.
Brown’s ties to One Door go beyond financial backing. The organization’s name was attached to her golf tournament — potential participants and sponsors were told to make checks out to One Door — and multiple receptions held in her honor during Congressional Black Caucus Foundation gatherings, according to copies of invitations for those events found in city emails.
Those mentions with Brown are among the few the organization has received beyond those on its own website, where Brown appears in three of the nine photos that dominate its home page. Beyond its site, One Door has little presence.
The congresswoman’s association with the organization has added legitimacy to One Door in the eyes of donors.
Circuit Judge Virginia Norton said she sent a $100 check to One Door in July after Brown showed her a “very professional-looking” letter about supporting an upcoming youth trip. Norton, who has not donated to Brown’s campaign, said she has talked to Brown intermittently for years and that they share an interest in issues affecting young people, so she never questioned the material she received.
“I assumed, because a U.S. congresswoman handed this out. I did not research it,” Norton said.
Other aspects about One Door also raise eyebrows.
Between 2012 and 2013, One Door received $10,000 from the Gasper and Irene Lazzara Charitable Foundation, based in Ponte Vedra Beach. Gasper Lazzara was also listed on invitations to Brown’s golf tournament as a co-chair of the event, and he and other members of the Lazzara family have donated to Brown’s election fundraising.
Contacted by a reporter about One Door and difficulties verifying its nonprofit status, the foundation issued a statement days later that said: “It has come to our attention this organization was not eligible to receive tax-free donations. … When we learned this information we immediately filed an amended tax return to indicate this donation was not tax deductible and we have personally reimbursed our foundation 100 percent of the funds.”
The foundation was unable to find documents that indicate One Door was eligible to receive tax-exempt donations, a spokeswoman for the foundation said.
When asked to explain his involvement with Brown’s golf tournament, Gasper Lazzara said in a written statement that his involvement in the tournament was unrelated to the foundation.
Brown, in a short statement issued through her spokesman, had only this to say in response to a list of questions about her relationship with One Door and the work it has done: “I have no comment.”
One Door and its president, Leesburg resident Carla Anderson Wiley, did not respond to multiple phone calls and emails that included requests to see annual reports on its activities. Tax-exempt nonprofits are required to make such information available for public inspection. A woman who answered a phone number listed on a 2012 email involving One Door, and who described herself as a volunteer, said Saturday she would relay a reporter’s message to Wiley.
DOCUMENTATION ISSUES
Verifying basic information about charitable organizations and nonprofit groups is usually a simple task, thanks in large part to requirements that such groups file annual disclosure forms and a cottage industry that pushes nonprofits to be transparent.That’s not the case with One Door.
■ Although One Door’s original articles of incorporation say it was set up to be a nonprofit with a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt designation, the group does not appear in an IRS disclosure database for tax-exempt organizations, a separate IRS database of organizations that have had tax-exempt status revoked or in a nonprofit database compiled by GuideStar, the leading resource for information about nonprofits.
A spokeswoman with the Virginia Department of Taxation, asked if state officials could help verify One Door’s status, suggested a reporter search for the group in GuideStar, as did a spokesman with the IRS.
■ One Door specifically lists on its website 11 causes and charitable groups it supports, but the Times-Union verified tangible support in only three cases. Some organizations said One Door might have helped, but that it wasn’t reflected in the groups’ records and they hadn’t heard of the organization, which apparently stayed below the radar in its home county.
The founder of One.Love.Loudoun, a nonprofit created last year to help other local charities and build volunteering in Virginia’s 374,000-person Loudoun County, said she hadn’t heard of One Door until a reporter contacted her.
■ Although One Door describes itself as a scholarship foundation — in addition to its other charitable focuses — it provides no information about any scholarships it has awarded. An online calendar item said the group was scheduled last year to host a forum about career choices for teenage girls along with Loudoun County’s NAACP branch, but it’s not clear whether that was connected to scholarship opportunities. Representatives of the Loudoun NAACP could not be reached for comment.
One Door’s website says that Amy Anderson, the organization’s namesake, was a “30-year retired Loudoun County School teacher, who believed that it was opportunity and love of the field that creates good teachers — not just good grades.” An Amy Anderson owns the house One Door uses as a mailing address, according to property records. It’s not clear if Anderson is related to Carla Anderson Wiley, the group’s president and registered agent.
■ Brown directly solicited donations and silent auction items for One Door as part of a golf tournament at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra she organized in 2013. One document that included her signature and the House of Representatives seal on One Door letterhead calls the organization a nonprofit.
Prospective participants were encouraged to contact Von Alexander to RSVP. Alexander, who has worked for Brown as a spokeswoman, was visited by federal agents the same day Brown received a subpoena. The event invitations said proceeds from the golf tournament would benefit the local chapter of the Conference Of Minority Transportation Officials and “other community nonprofits,” but donors were asked to write checks to One Door.
It’s not known how much money Brown’s golf tournament raised and how much went to COMTO or any other nonprofit.
■ One Door filed articles of incorporation with the Virginia State Corporation Commission in 2011, but state officials terminated One Door’s incorporation the following year for failing to file a routine annual report. One Door filed for reinstatement in June 2014.
■ One Door’s terminated status and apparent lack of 501(c)(3) designation didn’t deter organizations from committing substantial sums to the group between 2012 and mid-2014.
In addition to Florida Delivers, donors included the Community Leadership PAC, a group with financial ties to the cruise industry that has given Brown previous financial support. The PAC gave $25,000 to One Door in 2012.
In addition to the donation from the Lazzara Foundation, another $2,500 came from the Beaver Street Foundation in Jacksonville, a fund run by the Frisch family, which includes the owner of the city’s soccer team. A foundation official said that was done at Brown’s request. Frisch family members have also contributed to Brown’s election fundraising.
By contrast, the Washington-based Ludwig Family Foundation gave another $10,000, but the family is not known to have helped Brown financially. The foundation did not respond to questions about its donation.
DONATIONS IN BROWN’S HONOR
Two lobbyists for railroad interests also provided about $5,000 each to One Door. Brown, representing a city with heavy industry focus on logistics, has long been involved with transportation issues and holds a senior spot on a House transportation committee.Those donations from the Association of American Railroads and CSX Corp. were reported on House lobbyist disclosure reports from 2013 that listed Brown as the “honoree.”
A railroad lobbyist didn’t respond to a request for an interview about the spending.
A question to a CSX lobbyist was forwarded to a spokesman, Gary Sease, who said the company “has a broad philanthropy program” supporting causes tied to safety, education, wellness and the environment. Sease said the company announces sponsorships it offers to some national groups, but otherwise CSX doesn’t discuss details about donations.
One Door’s name has also been used at events connected to Brown.
Each September from 2012 to 2014, invitations sent on behalf of One Door to city officials told them of plans for receptions in Brown’s honor during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s legislative conference, a big political event that one invitation said attracted 20,000 people over several days. The 2012 invitation said Brown’s reception in the grand ballroom of the Washington Marriott at Metro Center was being sponsored by the Association of American Railroads.
A similar 2015 One Door reception for Brown was reported in Onyx Magazine, an Orlando-based publication, but invitations apparently weren’t sent to Mayor Lenny Curry’s office, as they had been to aides to his predecessor, Alvin Brown.
TRACKING CHARITABLE WORK
But despite the fundraising and the events, it’s not clear how much good One Door has accomplished, or for whom.Two groups that One Door names on its list of supported causes, the nonprofit Community Coalition for Haiti and a charity called HelpHOPELive, vouched for One Door’s support, with HelpHOPELive saying it “did make a donation to our nonprofit in honor of one of our clients.” HelpHOPELive would not disclose the amount of the donation or which client it helped.
The Washington, D.C., YMCA also listed One Door as a donor in the $1,000-to-2,499 range in 2014, although the YMCA is not on One Door’s list of supported organizations on its website.
But other organizations, from the Community Table of Loudoun to organizers of the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual event involving members of Congress and thousands of guests, said they didn’t know of any help One Door provided but couldn’t discount the possibility.
“I am not familiar with this organization, or the help it may have given to the town,” Cathy Williams, the town clerk for Eatonville, a historic black community in Central Florida, said about the town’s inclusion on One Door’s list.
One Door does not specify the nature of its support for the groups, which are spread between Virginia and Florida.
“I have never heard of the organization you reference though it’s possible people from the organization volunteer at one of our dinners,” said Kurt Aschermann, founder of Community Table of Loudoun, a loose conglomerate effort by faith organizations in and around Leesburg to provide food to needy people.
One Door also claims on its website to have helped Jones High School, which it erroneously identifies as a school in Jacksonville.
There is a Jones High School in Orlando, but a spokeswoman with the Orange County School District, after checking with the school system’s charitable foundation and officials at Jones High, said “no one seems to have any record of any type of donations or any involvement” with One Door.
Some of the causes the Virginia-based One Door says it supports align with Brown’s interests in Florida.
Brown’s district has included Eatonville, and in 2012 Friends of Corrine Brown contributed $1,250 to an Eatonville preservation organization. Florida Delivers provided the same amount in 2013 for the Zora Neale Hurston Festival, a yearly event in Eatonville.
Friends of Corrine Brown also donated $220 in 2014 to the I.S. Hankins-F.A. Johnson Education Foundation, an Orlando organization that One Door said it supports. Messages to the foundation weren’t returned.
It’s not clear whether the congresswoman exerts any influence over One Door’s financial choices.
Nate Monroe: (904) 359-4289
Christopher Hong: (904) 359-4272
Steve Patterson: (904) 359-4263
Nothing will happen. No matter how many crimes she has committed. The Black Politician and a lot of white Pols never are held accountable. She has been cheating the system for so many years it is the typical normal.
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