State OKs United Way deal that cuts EOB child care funds

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Friday, Dec. 10, 2004 | 9 a.m.

The state has approved a contract that would take away $17 million a year in child care grants from the Economic Opportunity Board, cutting the budget of the Las Vegas Valley's largest nonprofit organization by at least a third.

The money to pay child care centers for low-income families will be handled starting in January by United Way, according to a press release. The United Way could not be reached for comment on the change.

That money includes monthly advances, a practice that caused controversy in March when it was discovered the EOB could not account for $2.1 million of those advances.

The EOB later said the money had gone to other programs but that it lacked details on the funds since the organization uses one bank account for dozens of programs.

"I'm not going to say EOB's crisis didn't contribute (to the decision to give the contract to United Way)," said Mary Twitty, who has been brought in to run the nonprofit organization temporarily.

"It made the state look at the program and make changes in how it is run," she said.

However, the EOB will not bow completely out of the program, since the state also gave it a contract for $2.2 million a year to handle the eligibility portion of the program. So the EOB, basically, will continue deciding which families get to use the low-cost service.

The child care program in the Las Vegas Valley -- paid for by federal and state funds -- involves about 600 centers that serve about 5,000 low-income children.

The 30-month contracts can be amended if more families require the service due to population growth, said Nancy Ford, administrator for the state Welfare Division.

Ford said the state awarded the two contracts after sending out requests for proposals on how to run the program.

"As you know, there have been problems," she said.

"We were trying to include everybody in the process," she said. Ford also said the United Way will be meeting with members of the community in January -- including the child care centers -- to take ideas for improving the program.

The EOB ran the program for 14 years.

Twitty said the loss of the funds -- including the monthly advances -- will not affect the organization, since it brought "no benefit to EOB" and were just passed through to the child care centers.

Administrative fees in the organization have always been paid under the portion of the grants that fund the eligibility work, she said. Further, she said, no staff members will have to be let go because of the loss of the funds.

But Debra Santos, who was the organization's chief financial officer before being fired Jan. 30, said the EOB depended on the advances and a line of credit -- which was also lost in recent months -- to keep afloat, since many of its programs lost money.

Santos said she didn't see how the EOB could continue as a viable organization with the loss of those funds.

Santos is one of at least a half-dozen top-level staff members that were either fired or resigned since the beginning of the year.

Twitty discounted the former employee's idea of what the state's decision will mean for the organization.

She said she couldn't comment on how the advances were used in the past, but said they "came in and came out" since her arrival in July.

The new arrangement, bringing in the United Way, was a blessing of sorts, she said.

"This allows us to concentrate on what we do best -- serving low-income people."