Friday, June 20, 2003 | 10:56 a.m.
Mayor Oscar Goodman said Thursday that officials of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in San Francisco have indicated to him that a full audit of the Las Vegas Housing Authority board "is a go."
But HUD officials in San Francisco say that while Goodman's request for an audit of the troubled agency is being taken "very seriously," they say the decision regarding such a complete scrutiny of the area's largest public housing agency has not yet been given the go-ahead.
Goodman said at his weekly news conference that it was his understanding in discussions with HUD Regional Director Richard Rainey that an audit is pending for the agency in the wake of a HUD report earlier this month critical of contracting and oversight procedures of the LVHA.
Ken LoBene, field office director for HUD in Las Vegas and Reno, who serves directly under Rainey, said the mayor's announcement was a bit premature.
"When mayors ask us to conduct audits, those requests are taking very seriously, and Mr. Rainey and I support Mayor Goodman in his request," LoBene said. "But the decision (about an audit) has not yet been made."
LoBene said a review of the findings in the report stemming from a limited audit of five contracts from 1999 to 2002 valued at $158,000 still has to be conducted by HUD's inspector general for audit.
Also, LoBene said, an ongoing operational review of the local agency has to be completed before it can be determined whether a full-blown audit is necessary.
It would be the first such major audit of the local housing authority since 1987. That audit found that the agency acted improperly by charging low-income tenants monthly rentals on refrigerators and stoves that came with their apartments.
The agency was ordered to repay the tenants $400,000. The incident also led to the forced resignation of the department's longtime executive director and the firing of two board members who supported the ousted director and had been housing commissioners for a combined 40-plus years.
Earlier this month, Goodman sent a letter to Mel Martinez, Housing and Urban Development Department secretary, calling for "a full operational audit" of the Las Vegas Housing Authority and asking HUD to "conduct a training session of the complete board within 30 days" of his new appointments of board members.
Goodman said Thursday the three new members of the board and two current members all must take the training offered by HUD or he will go through the show-cause process to remove them.
LoBene confirmed Thursday that the training session, which generally takes about three days, will be conducted in Las Vegas within the next month. He said the agency will work around the work schedules of the board that includes a constable, an attorney, a commercial developer, a Metro police lieutenant and a housing rights activist.
LoBene said the training will involve lessons in ethics, administration and operational procedures. He said it is designed to teach a board how to properly establish policy and how to interact with its executive director.
Goodman noted that one complaint had been that certain members of the board tried to "micromanage" the agency -- in other words, do the job of the executive director.
Goodman said that was not the fault of the board members, but rather a system that generally does not provide training to appointed officials. He said he would consider similar training for other city boards and commissions.
LoBene noted that Las Vegas is no different than other places when it comes to such misconceptions about serving on a board.
"It absolutely is a constant struggle to get the right balance," LoBene said. "We've seen it many times on the issue of setting policy. Sometimes it is a lack of understanding, other times it is overzealousness on the part of the board member. Still other times it is a lack of confidence in the executive director."
The two veteran board members, Vice Chairwoman Beatrice Turner and Christopher Hoye, have sought to fire the authority's Executive Director Parvis Ghadiri, who had been appointed in January after a nationwide search in the wake of the death last year of director Frederick Brown, who was criticized in the HUD report for employing unacceptable contracting procedures.
A special hearing recently was called to consider ousting Ghadiri, but failed for a lack of a quorum of three when just Turner and Hoye were present.
Earlier this week, Goodman replaced board members Robert Forbuss and Dewain Steadman, whose four-year terms expire this month, with commercial developer Don Davidson and Federal Public Defender Franny Forsman. Each will serve a four-year term.
Las Vegas Constable Robert "Bobby G" Gronauer was chosen to fill the unexpired term of former City Councilman Michael McDonald, who resigned. That term will expire in June 2004.
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