Lacking leader, anti-poverty group will try to sort it out

By Timothy Pratt

Friday, Feb. 13, 2009 | 2 a.m.

From outside the room, the gathering of more than 50 employees at the Urban League’s Pearson Center sounded like a rally. Cheers leaked under the closed doors at least five times Thursday morning.

Afterward, board chairman Steve Brooks said he called the meeting to meet the staff at the valley’s largest anti-poverty organization and that everyone was “extremely excited” about the work they were doing.

Oh, and one other thing: After two years as the Urban League’s chief executive, Ray Clarke resigned the night before.

So goes the latest chapter in the ongoing churn that is the Las Vegas-Clark County Urban League, which over the past two years has grown into a nearly $4.5 million collection of programs to help the poor, as unemployment rates scale to their highest point in a generation.

That churn has included massive turnover and concern from state, county and city funding sources, occasionally thin financial ledgers and ongoing bankbook rebounds.

Still, Brooks said the decision to forge ahead without Clarke was a “mutual agreement,” with “best of wishes” to the departed director, who was paid about $125,000 a year and left with no severance package.

But the move leaves behind a perplexing series of dots to connect.

First, Clarke’s name was on a flurry of recent announcements blaring new directions for the organization, including one sent this week for an event next Tuesday at the Trump Hotel. So Clarke’s decision, if that’s what it was, must have been made very recently.

Brooks would not say whether the board presented Clarke with the options of resigning or being fired.

Second, there’s the resignation of Chief Operating Officer Ken Biser only a month ago. Soon after, Biser distributed a letter to dozens of people offering a

2 1/2-year timeline in order to, as he put it, fill in knowledge gaps and aid the board “in resolving current leadership and financial challenges.”

That letter says there were four occasions in which Clarke neglected to implement Biser’s recommendations, resulting in the organization losing nearly $1 million in public money.

Earlier, there was the effort by former board Chairwoman Marie Ray to obtain a new director for the organization because she was not satisfied with Clarke’s results. She couldn’t get support from the board. Clarke didn’t want to leave. Ray resigned in August.

Which leads in to the subject of turnover.

The local Urban League has lost about 15 employees in the past year alone. That includes the two top executives, a chief financial officer and four program directors. Four of those departed employees have lodged federal complaints alleging discrimination or sexual harassment.

Brooks is the third board chairman in the past six months. At least three people have been appointed to speak on behalf of the organization to the public — a lawyer, a casino executive and, most recently, a public relations professional.

During this chaos, county and city funding sources have found problems with grants totaling about $160,000 that were due to shoddy bookkeeping. And the state — steward of the biggest chunk of change, $2.8 million in federal money — has mostly assumed an attitude of watchful waiting, ramping up training of the board and assigning staff to attend monthly board meetings.

Funding sources such as the Southern Nevada Workforce Investment Board have not come through with potential contracts, concerned about the organization’s ability to manage money. John Ball, executive director of the board, said his agency was considering a $230,000 grant to train youths for jobs. But “our primary concern is making sure financial management is sufficient to be able to meet federal regulations attached to our funds,” Ball said.

With Clarke’s departure, the issue of stability becomes part of his concern. “Management stability is always a factor,” he said.

Brooks said Thursday morning that the next step is choosing a new leader for the organization. Meanwhile, he said, he hopes to get out the message that the Urban League is fighting poverty in the Las Vegas Valley.

“We need to get out in the community more,” he said. “There are not enough people saying in public that the Urban League helped them. But they’re out there.”