Florida has a state-created charity called the Hope Florida Foundation. It was the flagship initiative of First Lady Casey DeSantis. Its financial records used to live where you'd expect a state-created charity's records to live: inside the state's Department of Children and Families headquarters in Tallahassee.

New tax filings reported by the Miami Herald show they don't live there anymore.

They now sit in a nondescript office building in Mountain Brook, Alabama — a wealthy suburb of Birmingham. That building is home to the Crosby Ottenhoff Group, a firm that handles campaign finance compliance for conservative political committees.

It is also the building that houses Stronger Safer Nation — the main super PAC backing Senator Ashley Moody's re-election campaign, which has paid Crosby Ottenhoff Group $38,000 for campaign finance consulting.

A Florida taxpayer-created charity and the super PAC supporting a sitting Florida senator now keep their books in the same room, with the same firm.

Why that address matters

This isn't a story about a charity choosing an accountant. It's a story about which charity, and whose books.

The Hope Florida Foundation is at the center of the biggest public corruption story in Florida. It's the entity that helped route $10 million in taxpayer money from a Medicaid settlement to a political committee run by James Uthmeier — money that was then used to help defeat Florida's 2024 marijuana ballot amendment.

We covered that $10 million in detail. The short version: money owed to Florida's Medicaid program — the program that pays for care for poor kids — went to a charity, and within days that charity's money was funding political ads.

Ashley Moody was Florida's attorney general when the settlement that started all of this was drafted. Records obtained by the Herald/Times showed the healthcare contractor that paid the settlement, Centene, insisted her office be cited in the agreement to help explain the unusual decision to send $10 million of a $67 million settlement to a charity. Her chief deputy removed references to her while drafting. Her name is on the final agreement anyway.

Two months after the ballot measure went down, Governor Ron DeSantis appointed her to the U.S. Senate.

What the experts said

To be fair about it: nobody is alleging the accounting firm did anything illegal.

Eric Gorovitz, a nonprofit tax attorney, told the Herald/Times that from a legal standpoint "there's nothing culpable in hiring a known accounting firm with appropriate expertise" that also does political work — as long as the reporting is accurate.

But Nathan Goldman, an accounting professor at North Carolina State University, was asked whether this arrangement creates room for problems. His answer:

"Is this creating opportunities for nefarious behavior? I think the answer is yes."

He listed the questions nobody has answered:

"Why did they change how this is being done? Was there a competitive selection process? Are there any conflicts of interest that were considered? And is the board documenting its decision? These aren't IRS violations, but there are certainly legitimate questions that need to be asked."

Goldman's specific concern is that the same staffers could be working the books for both Hope Florida and the PAC backing Moody — which, he said, "creates opportunities for people that are doing things that they're not supposed to be doing."

Nobody answered the questions. The Crosby Ottenhoff Group didn't respond to the Herald/Times. Neither did the Department of Children and Families. Neither did the Hope Florida Foundation. The foundation's own listed email address for grant proposals bounced.

For comparison, another state-created charity — the Florida Emergency Management Assistance Foundation — runs its finances in-house.

What the tax filing actually shows the charity did

The most damning part of the new filing isn't the address. It's the accounting.

Hope Florida described itself to the IRS as a charity built to "foster community collaboration between the public and private sector, faith-based communities, and nonprofits." In 2024, here is what that produced:

• $100,000 to another state-created charity
• $87,000 split among seven individuals for Hurricane Milton recovery
• $10 million split between two groups, which within days wired $8.5 million into Uthmeier's political committee

That's essentially the whole year. The filing is the clearest public documentation yet that in 2024 the Hope Florida Foundation did little other than move the settlement money along.

Asked on the form whether it had engaged in any lobbying activity, the foundation answered "no."

It described all its grants — including the $10 million — as having been made "after an assessment of the donee organizations' mission and programmatic activities." Records previously obtained by the Herald/Times show the grant proposals from those two groups did not detail how they planned to spend the money.

Moody's answer

Moody is not legally tied to Stronger Safer Nation. In a federal race, candidates cannot coordinate with super PACs supporting them. That's a real distinction and it deserves stating.

But the PAC is where donors go to back her without hitting contribution limits. Miami billionaire Ken Griffin put $2.5 million into Stronger Safer Nation earlier this summer.

And on the underlying scandal, Moody's office is still pushing it away. Her communications director said the settlement was an agreement the state health agency "chose to negotiate and settle through AHCA-lawyers and outside counsel almost two years ago," and that she had no role in the grand jury investigation.

Fine. Then answer the question everyone keeps asking.

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried put it directly this week: "Ashley needs to stop keeping secrets from the people of our state. It's time she owns up and shows up."

Her leading opponent, Alexander Vindman, said corruption will be central to the race and called this one "particularly heinous."

Moody's office says she "would certainly have no issue with the public release of any report" from the grand jury. That's not the same as calling for its release. It's the passive voice of a person who would prefer the subject change.

What this adds up to

Take a step back and look at the arrangement.

A charity created by the state of Florida took $10 million of taxpayer money out of a Medicaid settlement negotiated while Ashley Moody was attorney general. It passed the money along to groups that within days funneled most of it into a political committee. That committee spent it defeating a ballot measure the governor opposed. The governor then gave Moody a Senate seat.

And now that charity's financial records have quietly relocated from a Florida state building to a Republican compliance shop in Alabama — the same shop, in the same building, that keeps the books for the super PAC working to keep Moody in that seat.

Every single piece of that has a paper trail. What's missing is anyone in power willing to explain it.

We deserve better.

Source

Claire Heddles, with Romy Ellenbogen, Hope Florida Foundation hires political firm linked to pro-Moody Super PAC, Miami Herald / Herald-Times Tallahassee Bureau, July 31, 2026 (updated August 1). Photo: Matias J. Ocner / Miami Herald.