Group releases more evidence of alleged wrongs by Head Start chief

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Friday, May 28, 2004 | 9:35 a.m.

A national group that represents most of the nation's 2,600 Head Start programs on Thursday released what it said is new evidence showing the alleged wrongdoing of the nation's top Head Start official.

Windy Hill allegedly misused federal funds when she led a Texas Head Start program. President Bush picked her to be associate commissioner of the Head Start bureau in January 2002.

The National Head Start Association, for the second time in two months, publicly called for her resignation this week.

In Southern Nevada, Hill also has been in the news for leading an investigation last month into the Economic Opportunity Board, the Las Vegas nonprofit organization that runs the 18 Head Start centers in the valley. Results from that four-day visit still have not been released.

In Thursday's press conference, Ron Herndon, chairman of the association's board, said that his organization had "multiple smoking guns proving that Windy Hill committed financial abuses and then tried to cover them up" when she was executive director of Cen-Tex from December 1993 to December 2001. Cen-Tex is an agency in Bastrop, Texas, 30 miles southeast of Austin, and it oversees that area's Head Start centers.

Copies of documents that the association posted on its Web site Thursday appear to show that a bank account in Bastrop for the agency dated March 4, 2002 -- after Hill took office at the bureau -- included Hill's sister, Robie Brown, as one of the signatories.

The association also alleges that Hill moved to put in place a board of directors of her choosing at the Texas agency after taking office in Washington.

The association also repeated earlier allegations that Hill received three bonuses against her agency's policies, the last of which it says came through after she took office.

Hill did not return messages seeking comment.

The association also called for "a full and fair Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigation of the Windy Hill abuses."

HHS oversees the Head Start bureau.

"If HHS already is investigating her, they need to let the world know that, rather than continuing the agency's policy of giving Hill special hush-hush treatment," said Sarah Greene, association president.

But OIG Public Affairs Officer Judy Holtz said such claims were "erroneous."

She said her office had opened an inquiry last month into the claims against Hill, one of up to 2,000 investigations open at any given time. The agency does not make public the investigations until after they are completed, Holtz said.

"We're forthcoming when we need to be and don't discuss ongoing investigations because we don't want to put them in jeopardy," Holtz said.

She also said that information and allegations leading to investigations or inquiries come from a variety of sources, including newspaper stories, associations, employees, the FBI and the Department of Justice.

"We don't automatically open an investigation -- we try to subtantiate the validity, and depending on if it is an administrative, criminal, or civil complaint, we have conversations with the U.S. attorney with jurisdiction over the case ... and see if they're willing to prosecute," Holtz said.

Holtz said the HHS oversees 300 programs with a budget of about $500 billion, and her office may investigate allegations of wrongdoing linked to "anybody that touches that money."

She also said that investigations of top-level officials like Hill are rare, with less than 10 currently open. At the same time, she said, there was no statutory prohibition against an official exercising his or her duties while under investigation.

Holtz said she realizes that some may grow impatient with the time it takes her office to finish its investigations -- up to years in some cases.

"We work in strange ways, and sometimes it just takes a little while," she said.