State delays release of EOB report

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 | 10:59 a.m.

A state official on Tuesday refused to publicly release the results of a federally funded investigation into the embattled Economic Opportunity Board, despite providing a copy of the report to one member of the agency's board of directors.

The Sun had filed a request to obtain a copy of the report under the Nevada open records law, but Mike Willden, director of Nevada's Department of Human Resources, said he was waiting an extra day to release the report to the public in order to be "decent" with the agency.

Willden said the 17-page report makes a series of recommendations about everything from how the agency is run to its finances, and that the agency will have 10 days from Tuesday to respond to those recommendations with what he called a "corrective action plan."

If the agency doesn't come up with a plan in answer to the report, Willden said, the state will be "obligated to look into a transfer of services."

"I think it's obvious to the board, the state and the feds that things can't go on this way," he said.

Willden oversees the Welfare Division, which channels federal and state money to the EOB, including the child care program for low-income families, which is the largest of about 30 programs for the poor administered by the board. The EOB is the Las Vegas Valley's largest nonprofit agency, with a 2003 budget close to $60 million in mostly public funds.

The Sun revealed last month that the $20 million child care program could not account for $2.1 million in funds, which prompted the state to bring in the group of out-of-state consultants that produced the report.

Willden said last month the investigation cost about $17,000 in Health and Human Services Department funds, the federal agency that pays for the EOB's child care program.

The EOB was also the subject of a separate federal inquiry by the Head Start bureau, which looked into the early childhood program, the recipient of about $12 million in federal funds. That program is the agency's second largest, and has received three straight negative triennial reviews from the federal government.

Today's public meeting of the EOB's board of directors was to begin at noon at 3680 N. Rancho Drive and was expected to include discussion of the report.

But one member of the board, Chester Richardson, questioned how the board could have any in-depth discussion about the report without having more time to review it.

Richardson said he had not received the report as of Tuesday night, despite requesting it from the agency Tuesday afternoon. Willden said he was sending the report to Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, spokesman for the agency in recent weeks, who would then distribute it to the rest of the board.

Richardson, who was in San Francisco this week attending a Department of Labor-funded financial management training session, was planning to participate in the meeting via telephone.

"How am I as a board member supposed to respond to the report in a timely fashion if I don't receive it in a timely fashion?" Richardson said.

He said the state should have released it Tuesday to him and to any other member of the public who requested it.

"That report is a public document. It was paid for with taxpayers' money and the intent of the report is to give an objective overview of the challenges facing this agency and possible solutions," Richardson said.

Kent Lauer, executive director of the Nevada Press Association, said, "There is no provision in the law that allows for a state agency to delay the release of a public document.

"The state should make the report available once it has it in its hands."