Editorial: State should consider an EOB takeover

Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2004 | 9:06 a.m.

One of the major local stories as 2004 got under way was the financial and administrative meltdown of the Economic Opportunity Board, Nevada's largest nonprofit agency. With a $60 million budget, the board's directors and 700 employees are charged with overseeing the expenditure of federal and state money allocated to help Southern Nevada's low-income residents.

In January the Sun disclosed that the EOB could not account for $2.1 million intended for child-care programs. The story grew after that to include $500,000 in missing Head Start funds, a $500,000 expenditure for a homeless program with no documentation of anyone being helped, a $140,000 federal grant for which there was no accounting, lax oversight of credit cards issued to employees, inefficient delivery of services, several firings and resignations of key employees and an inept board of directors that has, because of resignations and restructuring this year, shrunk from 15 to five members.

Federal and state investigations each confirmed that the financial and administrative affairs of the EOB were in disarray. Mike Wilden, director of the Nevada Human Resources Department, was blunt. "The board's a mess ..." he said in May. The federal and state investigators gave the EOB a deadline to account for the missing money and to develop a management plan. But the EOB missed the deadline. Its board of directors then turned to another option, that of spending up to $224,000 in federal funds on a team of experts to come in and straighten everything out.

In July we wrote that this was a wise decision, as the directors had demonstrated that bringing any measure of competency to the EOB was beyond their own abilities. The board hired a management team provided by Mid-Iowa Community Action. Members of this group, which has the same job in mid-Iowa that the EOB has here, had participated in the state investigation of EOB. Its contract was to run from July 7 to Nov. 26, with Sept. 30 being the deadline for completing major portions of EOB's overhaul.

At a Monday meeting, however, the team from Iowa dashed any hope that the EOB would be reformed any time soon. In a "progress" report, it announced that none of the Sept. 30 deadlines had been met, including the completion of an audit for 2003 and the selection and training of new board members. A search for an executive director was supposed to have begun by Oct. 1, but that hasn't started yet either. We are under no illusions about the magnitude of the job facing the Iowa team. Its executive director, Mary Twitty, explained the missed deadlines by saying, "A lot of things have come up that we didn't anticipate." Given the mess she inherited, we believe her.

Nevertheless, the missed deadlines are a concern that should rise many levels above the incompetent EOB board, which is considering offering the Iowa team a contract extension to March 31. The state, including Gov. Kenny Guinn, should be heavily involved in deciding whether an extension is warranted. Thousands of Southern Nevadans depend on the EOB. The organization needs to be fixed and extending the contract of an out-of-state group may not be the best way to go about it. This is a team whose members are paid $650 a day. It budgeted $35,000 just to ferry its members back and forth between their home states and Las Vegas on weekends.

And for that we're getting excuses and missed deadlines, when what we need is a thorough accounting of the EOB books and guarantees that our citizens will receive efficient services. Perhaps it's time for the state of Nevada to take over the EOB until the problems can be solved. There's certainly enough justification for such an action.