A charity that received copious money from Upper Darby Township — one that had not met the township’s standard vetting process — paid five event speakers with some of that taxpayer money, including at least one elected official and at least one of the charity’s own leaders, documents indicate.

A Facebook notice of the event said five men would make speeches at the June 24, 2023 Burgers for Boys youth-mentoring barbecue at the Darby Borough Recreation Center, including Upper Darby school director and mayoral candidate Ed Brown and Joe Hinton, who is also affiliated with the charity. The gathering, hosted by Men of Action Brothers of Faith (MOABOF), also featured a performance by entertainer Bobby Zane.

Brown, a Democrat who won Upper Darby’s mayorship that year, then served as MOABOF’s business manager. Hinton now serves the charity in that capacity. 

Government record requests by Drexel Hill resident John DeMasi, an activist working on several Upper Darby fiscal and transparency concerns, turned up documents mentioning payments to MOABOF’s speakers. An invoice from the charity to Scott Alberts, the township’s economic development manager who then served as director of administrative services, requested payment of $300 to five speakers for a total cost of $1,500. A purchase order approved by the municipality indicated an expense of $1,500 for speakers. 

It is uncertain whether all five of the men who gave speeches were paid the $300 or whether Zane was also deemed a speaker and one person spoke for free. (And yes, “speakers” definitely means orators, not amplifiers; a document DeMasi obtained shows the expense described as “payments to trainer/speakers.”) But even under the most generous assumption, two people who were either MOABOF figures or government officials or both received money according to the public records. 

State Senator Anthony H. Williams also spoke at the event, but said he was not among those compensated.

“I can tell you that I never receive honorariums because it’s illegal upon the rules of the Senate,” he told Broad + Liberty. “I don’t take honorariums; I don’t take, you know, ‘in lieu of’ honorariums to donate to a charity. I don’t do any of that.” 

Williams, a Philadelphia Democrat also representing Darby Borough and other nearby communities, has served in the Pennsylvania General Assembly for 35 years. 

Neither Hinton, nor Brown, nor Alberts returned a request for comment. Barbarann Keffer, Brown’s Democratic mayoral predecessor who oversaw the expenditures, also did not respond to an emailed inquiry. 

The money for the speakers initially came from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG). As Broad + Liberty previously reported, HUD money recently funded various Upper Darby purchases including toys, Chromebook laptops, and gift cards for MOABOF’s charitable giveaways that HUD determined were “ineligible expenses.” 

In May, the agency directed the township to pay back over $40,000, including the Burgers for Boys speaking fees and food costs, to HUD; Upper Darby did so, using money from its general fund.

CDBG money typically funds priorities like housing assistance and public-facility improvements rather than the aforementioned items. But the firm Upper Darby tasks with evaluating the eligibility of such grants stated a year ago that MOABOF did not undergo that firm’s assessment process.

“I have never seen their actual Grant Proposals, and this [gift-cards invoice] is the first Invoice I am seeing because they did not follow the instructions that were provided to them that every other Subrecipient follows which tells them to forward their Invoices to our office for processing,” Kathleen Oulahan of A.J. Dunleavy Associates, Inc. told the township’s community and economic development office in a December 2023 email. “Subrecipients are also supposed to provide their services, pay for them and seek reimbursement from the Township, as I understand it from speaking to others in the Township that has not been the case with this Subrecipient.

“I understand that this may be a sensitive situation, but that is all the more reason that the rules and [sic] followed.” Oulahan concluded.

The toys and gift cards were provided to families as part of MOABOF’s annual Family Holiday Giveaways, though some Upper Darby politicians basked in the publicity of the events while others were excluded. Flyers for the 2022 and 2023 giveaways listed Keffer, five Democratic councilpersons, and (in 2023) three Democratic councilpersons-elect as event cosponsors. The announcements omitted a bipartisan Council majority who were often critical of Keffer including at-large Democrat (later Republican) Brian Burke, at-large Democrat (now independent) Laura Wentz, at-large Democrat Matt Silva, 1st-District Republican Meaghan Wagner, 2nd-District Republican Lisa Faraglia, and 3rd-District Republican Brian Andruszko.

DeMasi decried the “cronyism” of a nonprofit connected to an aspiring mayor failing to submit to the proper vetting process. 

“Why does he get special treatment when everybody else has to jump through all these hoops?” DeMasi said.

He also lamented that Upper Darby taxpayers must pay the money back now that HUD nixed its funding for the giveaways and speakers. Additionally, he said observers have no way of knowing if the latter payments actually went to all of the orators since the process the township followed in MOABOF’s case lacked verification. 

Either way, he said, it’s a scandal.

“In the middle of [Brown’s] campaign for mayor, you take federal dollars and give it to the head of the school board who’s running to be mayor and then you pay the members of the charity,” DeMasi said. “[It’s] like, okay, let’s just go have speaking engagements and just start spreading money around to our members.”

Brown has announced he will discuss Upper Darby’s HUD grant issues at tonight’s Township Council meeting at 7 p.m. at the municipal building (100 Garrett Road). 

Bradley Vasoli is a writer and media strategist in Pennsylvania. You can follow him on X at @BVasoli.