Clark County is holding back federal money from the local Urban League because a recent review found double billing, problems with receipts and a lack of proof that one of the organization’s programs was actually helping the poor pull their lives together.

At issue is a grant of $67,000 that was to be used to help people who were having trouble paying utility bills or rent. The county found that the Urban League paid only part of what clients owed on their bills. The nonprofit organization then asked those clients to pay back 60 percent and billed the county for the same cases. The Urban League issued no receipts to some clients. At other times, clients got receipts but the organization entered the payments under “miscellaneous income.”

And still another finding: There were no plans for helping clients get back on their feet, a condition of the grant.

The Urban League has to correct most of the problems within 30 days to draw again from the grant, said Shawna Parker, analyst at Clark County Community Resources Management, the division that oversees the federal money.

Parker said the problems with the program are serious, adding there are “concerns about whether the organization can manage the money.”

“There is no accounting or justification of the taxpayers’ money, no assurance it is being used wisely and for the purposes it was intended,” she said. In sum, “the goals of the services are in doubt.”

If the money is cut off, it will be the third time in the past four months that a local government has taken back federal dollars from the Urban League. In all three cases, the nonprofit group failed to meet terms of contracts attached to grants, officials said.

Previously, the poverty-fighting organization had trouble meeting the milestones for a $95,000 grant to help seniors repair their homes. The Urban League failed to spend half the money by January. The organization told officials “the program had fallen apart” and suffered excessive turnover, said Tim Whitright, development manager of the Las Vegas Neighborhood Services Department. So the city extended the deadline to March 31. When that deadline wasn’t met, the city took back nearly $70,000 in late May, “a matter of making sure the funds get out to the community,” Whitright said.

The city is managing nearly $5.3 million in federal Community Development Block Grants this year, but hasn’t had a problem of this size with any other nonprofit organization, Whitright said.

North Las Vegas found the Urban League couldn’t spend $57,000 from the same federal source, also meant for repairing the homes of seniors. North Las Vegas took back its money in June.

Parker also discovered more than $110,000 in unspent money for seniors from a $150,000 grant nearly 15 months old. If the money is not used by Dec. 31, it will also be taken back, she said. Further, the county discovered that the $40,000 spent to date went to one contractor. Federal rules require that the work be bid out.

At the Urban League’s board meeting in June related troubles were on the table as board members discussed the need to prepare a plan for cutting programs. In building up its budget to about $4.5 million during the second half of its four-year history, the organization apparently took on too many grants without sufficient qualified staff to handle them.

Executive Director Ray Clarke said in June that his staff would have the reduction plan ready in 30 days.

On Friday, Clarke had no comment on any plan to cut programs, the county’s findings, or the earlier pullbacks of funding.

Instead, he encouraged taking a firsthand look at “the positive impact that the Las Vegas-Clark County Urban League is having in the community,” adding that he is “very encouraged by the progress (the organization) continues to make.”

From the Las Vegas Sun

At the Urban League’s September board meeting, the first since June, a state official showed up with a list of things the poverty-fighting organization had to do to keep receiving $2.6 million a year in federal funds.

But the board put off the official and the list for another day, one of the latest examples of the organization’s recent tendency to miss deadlines and avoid dealing with problems.

The to-do list was put together in April and May, but at least four items were months overdue, including one on financial oversight — the heart of the board’s responsibility.

Gary Gobelman, the state official, said to the nine board members present, “It’s important for you to understand this.”

But within five minutes, board Chairman Raymond Specht tabled the item for at least another month, “out of respect for the time of everyone here.” It was 5 p.m., quitting time, according to the agenda.

First he asked whether anyone had any questions about the state’s three-page, 13-item list — three times. Board member Napoleon McCallum replied, “I just got this today.”

A few board members said they thought several of the problems had been fixed. Later, Gobelman, whose job it is to make sure the federal funding is properly handled, said they hadn’t been fixed.

The official said he was “surprised and disappointed” by the experience.

He pointed out that the “issues were out there” for months before the meeting, and that he’d expected the board to dedicate some time to them.

“It’s very important for the board to have an understanding of these issues, and I saw this as an opportunity for the board to have a dialogue,” he said.

It’s also important because the state is one of four Nevada governments in recent months to confront problems with the nonprofit organization’s handling of public money. Since May, Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Clark County have withdrawn or frozen funding because of those problems.

This has a snowball effect among sources of public funding as they begin to compare notes. For example, the Southern Nevada Workforce Investment Board, which receives federal money to help with job training and education, has been considering the Urban League for a grant of about $200,000.

The investment board is taking a close look at the nonprofit organization’s finances before making a decision and plans to meet with its staff to address concerns.

“We know local governments have had fiscal management issues (with the Urban League) in the recent past,” said John Ball, executive director of the investment board.

“We’re dealing with public money ... and this puts the issue on the radar screen for other potential funders.”

At the Urban League’s Sept. 24 board meeting, one item on the state’s list noted that the board was supposed to develop procedures for overseeing the organization’s funding by July 18 and had yet to do so. The procedures were to deal with cash flow, budget approval, appropriateness of expenditures, spending plans, and methods for fixing fiscal problems. Gobelman said the Urban League had sent him a letter saying it would have board Treasurer William Raihl sign a monthly “financial certification form” — but that’s not enough.

“We need a complete picture of the procedures the board will use to maintain oversight,” Gobelman said.

The Sun’s repeated attempts to reach Specht to ask about the meeting and the state’s list, particularly the item dealing with board responsibilities, were unsuccessful.

Gobelman said he wants to meet with the Urban League board’s finance subcommittee before next month’s full board meeting, to “make sure they understand what the status of this is and why they need to be involved.”

In any case, deadlines don’t die, and the Urban League missed another one Friday. The organization was supposed to explain its July payroll in more detail to the state, after its June bill to the state for payroll resulted in $12,000 in disallowed costs. Gobelman said the state will not pay August’s bill, which is likely to arrive any day, until July’s bill is clarified.

Two other items were due Tuesday. First, the Urban League’s financial report was due to the state. The second involved “time studies” — the Urban League has to show the state how employees are spending their time and whether they’re working in activities covered by the grants being billed.

What happens if those deadlines aren’t met?

“Nothing’s been decided on that yet,” Gobelman said.

From the Las Vegas Sun

A recent board meeting of the Las Vegas-Clark County Urban League saw a state official laud the still-new nonprofit organization for its ramped-up efforts in the past six months.

The $4.5 million organization is officially 4 years old but most of its grants have come in the past 18 months. It has added several programs since December.

Those programs include one to help former prisoners rejoin society, another for youth and still another for helping parents read with their children — all told, “an impressive amount ... to launch” in so little time, Gary Gobelman, grants administrator for the state Health and Human Services Department, told the Urban League board.

Then he launched into a three-page, 19-item report on things the organization needs to do to make sure it adequately manages the nearly $3 million the state oversees.

Nearly last but not least, Item No. 17, developing a system to track cash flow, was “the biggest, I think everyone would agree,” Gobelman said. The report said this was important because there are “concerns about agency ability to meet its ongoing obligations.”

A few days after the meeting, Gobelman said the Urban League has a system, but “we had difficulty following it.”

Until a new system is created, he said, “we aren’t going to know if there’s a cash flow issue.”

Ray Clarke, Urban League chief executive, said he agreed with the state’s assessment of the situation and added that his organization would come up with a new method to track cash flow by September.

Board members also discussed the need to consider cutting back some programs, just in case they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, financially speaking.

“We need to take a hard look at programs,” said board member Ray Specht, who is vice chairman of Toyota Financial Savings Bank. “I’m not advocating that we cut back, just, in the interest of fiscal responsibility, I think we should take a look.”

Clarke said it was important to put the issue “in context.”

“We’re not doing anything different than other nonprofits,” he added, describing the process of tying programs to his organization’s “strategic plan.”

In any case, he said, the effect of any cutbacks “on the community and the staff would be minimal.”

Staff will prepare a recommendation about programs in 30 days for the board to consider, Clarke said.

Asked if the need to track cash flow better was related to the need to consider cutting programs, the chief executive said, “they’re related because they both have to do with the budget.”

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On July 1, a government agency obtained something it needs for a lower price after shopping around as normal people do, instead of spending more just because it can.

The agency, the Southern Nevada Workforce Investment Board, found an office with rent less than half of what it had been paying since 2005. The board hands out millions in federal dollars to local nonprofit organizations to train people for jobs.

It had been paying more than $25,000 a month in rent for three times as much space as it needed for the past three years.

No longer.

The agency’s new digs, near West Lake Mead and North Rancho boulevards, will cost about $10,000 a month. Bottom line: During the next year, $187,000 in public funds will go to help out-of-work and underemployed people instead of into a landlord’s bank account.

John Ball, 16 months into his job as executive director, said he can guess only that the agency’s former cavernous and pricey headquarters was chosen in 2005 because the budget appeared flush at the time, having gotten increases in federal funding for four years running. The trend was reversed that same year, however, and funding didn’t go back up until this year — now more than $8 million.

The allotment to the agency is based on unemployment rates and lost jobs. So Ball says he’s keenly aware of what having more money means, and where it should go.

“The reason we have more funding is because citizens are in a sinking economy,” he said. “So everything we can do to help them should be done.”

What a difference $46,000 doesn’t make.

Ten months ago, the Las Vegas-Clark County Urban League, a $4.5 million nonprofit organization, spent that much money on a strategic plan.

The state Health and Human Services Department told the group to develop a blueprint for positioning itself to be the Las Vegas Valley’s largest poverty-fighting organization. So it chose Gary Stokes of Mountain Consulting to do the job. The result: 10 pages with references to strategies, outcome, three-year indicators, Year One benchmarks — but few specifics.

Now the organization’s board has decided to do it all over again — for free.

A report submitted by a committee of three at the board’s April 23 meeting noted that the strategic plan should have “more emphasis placed on results” and ensure benchmarks are attained.

Kathleen Paustian, spokeswoman for the local Urban League, says the two versions will form “an ongoing, living document — not one replacing the other.”

The first report, the $46,000 one, outlined part of the next two years for the Urban League in the following way: Complete a plan to address poverty in the first year and seek funding for it; present the plan to “the community” and “coordinate internal and external programs” in the second year.

There’s little to no elaboration on any of that. The report doesn’t say what the community is, doesn’t say what those programs are or how to determine whether they are coordinated.

Its benchmarks included “seventy-five percent or more of programs ... achieve program objectives.”

The first draft of the new plan refers to a series of specific programs, though it’s still not clear how the success of those programs will be measured.

There’s no “75 percent of the people in job training program X will find jobs within six months and hold those jobs for at least six months,” for example.

The three-person committee is awaiting opinions from the other 15 board members about the newest version of the plan. Time will tell whether the volunteers can do better than the company hired with public money.

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