Feds give EOB second chance on deadline

By Timothy Pratt

Monday, Sept. 13, 2004 | 9:28 a.m.

The federal government has given the Economic Opportunity Board, the Las Vegas Valley's largest nonprofit organization, a new deadline to meet an old deadline for fixing a series of financial problems.

If that's confusing, here's the official version of how the federal Head Start bureau says it is holding the EOB accountable for handling millions of dollars in public money.

The old deadline, which the bureau said was Aug. 11, came and went without the EOB delivering a written report about how the organization had corrected the deficiencies the bureau had identified in an early April review.

So the bureau wrote to the nonprofit organization on Aug. 26, telling the group that it had until Tuesday to show that its house was in order by Aug. 11.

The EOB sent a document to the bureau Tuesday, a document which the bureau will consider along with an on-site visit later this month in order to determine if the Aug. 11 deadline was met, according to Windy Hill, associate commissioner for the Head Start bureau.

Lewis Fein, interim executive director of the Public Interest Watch, a Washington-based group that investigates potential wrongdoing by nonprofit organizations, said the government's oversight of EOB is noteworthy.

"This is ridiculous," Fein said.

The ongoing back-and-forth between the federal government, the source of most of the EOB's nearly $60 million 2003 budget, and the nonprofit organization is exemplary of a "calcified bureaucracy with a laissez faire attitude," Fein said.

"This can stretch out for years," he said. "It's a system where ... (they warn) 'If you do this again' ... (but then) there's no penalty."

But Mary Twitty, interim director of the EOB, said Wednesday that her organization "followed (the Head Start bureau's) directions," and had met its deadline -- which she thought was Aug. 7.

"We waited for them to tell us what to do," she said.

Asked if she did anything to let the federal government know on or around Aug. 7, or Aug. 11, that the organization's financial problems were fixed, she said, "Nothing happened. We did nothing."

Hill said in an e-mail Friday that her agency is "following the law and regulations relating to the deficient Head Start grantee ... with the highest degree of diligence."

"EOB was ... served legal notice that if the program continued to have uncorrected deficiencies beyond the timeframes stated for correction ... (we) will issue a letter notifying EOB of our intent to terminate its Head Start and Early Head Start grants," Hill wrote.

EOB receives about $12.2 million for Head Start and Early Head Start, programs that serve 3- to 5-year-olds from poor families. About 1,800 children participate in the programs in the Las Vegas Valley.

The review done by Hill and a team hired by her bureau was one of three conducted earlier this year because of the organization's financial, management and program problems, charged since its founding in 1964 with combatting poverty in the Las Vegas metropolitan area.

Twitty was brought in July 7 along with another consultant, both of whom subsequently were hired to work through Nov. 26 to set the organization right.

"Head Start is a pebble on my radar screen," Twitty said Wednesday. "It is one of many programs we are working on."

The problems with Head Start were summarized in a June 25 letter the bureau sent to the EOB saying the organization was a "grantee with deficiencies," a technical term meaning problems must be fixed or federal funds may be pulled.

The financial problems identified in the April review included no proof that $500,000 directed at expanding an Early Head Start program was spent for that purpose; no method for determining how money was spent on each of the two early childhood programs; and no documentation to justify renting out a Head Start kitchen to board chairman Claude Logan for his private business.

The letter said such "fiscal management" problems needed to be fixed "immediately" -- which the federal government said means "within 45 days from the date you receive the letter."

The organization also was given 90 days to make other changes.

"If your program continues to have uncorrected deficiencies beyond the time frames stated for correction, you will be issued ... a letter stating our intent to terminate your ... grants," the letter signed by Hill went on to say.

Hill said in an e-mail that 45 days expired on or around Aug. 11.

But she also said, "We did not request from EOB written certification of corrective action on or before August 11, 2004, so EOB did not send us anything on August 11, 2004."

She said she had hoped to do a follow-up site visit shortly thereafter but couldn't coordinate everyone's schedules, so she wound up writing the organization on Aug. 26 to ask them to "certify in writing that it had met the deadline" -- by Sept. 7.

"However, the September 7, 2004, deadline for EOB to certify it achieved compliance in Fiscal Management by August 11th did not change the August 11th deadline date," Hill wrote.

Because Hill still hadn't reviewed the document sent Tuesday, she said that it was "premature" to conclude that the organization hadn't met its deadline.

Fein, the interim leader of the group that monitors nonprofit organizations, said the situation surrounding the deadline and its conditions was a sign that the EOB "hasn't ever faced any serious regulatory control or competitive pressure."