Disability rights agency may lose funding

Friday, April 24, 1998 | 10:09 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A private, non-profit agency created to protect the rights of the disabled and mentally ill was threatened Thursday with the loss of its state funding.

The Nevada Disability Advocacy and Law Center Inc. was roundly criticized at a meeting of the Legislative Audit Committee by former center employees and clients who said it is not standing up for the disabled and mentally ill who are in institutions.

And Assembly Speaker Joe Dini, D-Yerington, said the appropriation for the Nevada Disability Advocacy and Law Center, Inc., "may disappear if we don't get cooperation and the people start being served."

Dini said the center is out of control and is asking for a legislative audit of its books.

"Nobody is happy with your agency," he told Center Director Jack Mayes.

Mayes said the records of the agency could be examined, but clients' identities must remain confidential. He said he wanted an audit to show the agency is performing, despite myriad complaints.

"We have hundreds of satisfied clients," Gloria Stendardi, attorney for the center, told reporters Thursday. "There are only a handful of clients here who are dissatisfied. Ninety-five percent of the feedback is positive."

The center received $62,373 in each of the past two fiscal years from the state and it got $667,790 from the federal government in fiscal 1996.

Legislative auditors said they were not permitted full access to the records so they could not conduct a proper examination of the operation.

Former center employees Connie Ewing and Deidre Hammon, who were fired, told the legislative committee they were ordered not to talk to the auditors. Hammon said it appeared there was a cover-up by agency executives.

"Poor leadership in this agency has led to the failure of the investigative unit to conduct appropriate investigations into the deaths of institutional clients and incidents of serious abuse and neglect resulting in bodily injury of those same clients," Ewing, who was employed as an advocate at the center, said.

Robert DeSoto-Holguin told the committee he has a disabled son and the center has defrauded him and others of services for the child. "The attorney general needs to be brought in (to the investigation)," he said.

Other parents of clients complained that service from the center has deteriorated.

In its limited review, legislative auditors said: the center paid $36,373 in severance pay to two former employees which may be disallowed by the federal government; it failed to submit required monthly financial and operational reports to the Legislative Interim Finance Committee; several key staff positions have remained open since July 1995; some cases appear to be counted for more than one grant; and the number of cases were exaggerated.

Mayes responded, however, that all but one position has been filled; cases are not miscounted; and the case count is accurate.

The audit committee accepted the report and asked the Legislative Commission to order a further review of the center, which before 1995 was a state agency.