Members of workforce board resign

By Timothy Pratt

Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2004 | 9:48 a.m.

Five of the Southern Nevada Workforce Investment Board's 52 board members recently resigned and said the board has got problems.

The 4-year-old public organization distributes about $15 million in federal funds annually to different nonprofit organizations in the Las Vegas Valley that help people get jobs.

Letters of resignation distributed to the board at or after the Sept. 22 meeting expressed reasons ranging from concerns about management of those funds to retirement from the public sector, but several of those who resigned said they thought there were problems with the board's direction.

"I know that they've got issues and that's been true since day one, so I learned to expect that," said Bob Cooper, economic development manager for the City of Henderson -- whose letter of resignation marked the second time he had joined and dropped off the board.

Cooper's letter said he was too busy to give the board his full attention and in a phone interview he said he served on 28 boards, committees and task forces.

Still, he said, the workforce investment board was "always dealing with crises ... (and) I didn't feel we were making much progress."

"I'm concerned about the amount of time spent at board meetings with issues almost administrative in nature -- whereas my interest is more where to direct the funding and how to contribute to economic development," Cooper added.

Ross Whitacre, deputy administrator for the state department of employment, training and rehabilitation, wrote in his letter that he was resigning because he was retiring from the public sector and so could no longer fill the congressionally-mandated spot on the board for a state employee.

But he also said he had concerns with the board's way of doing business.

"One of the things they need is a board less concerned with crossing the T's and dotting the I's and more concerned with setting policy," Whitacre said.

He said a board needs to have full confidence in its staff to pull off that kind of change.

Louis Overstreet, executive director of the Urban Chamber of Commerce, said he was "getting out while the getting's good" and that he thought "there's going to be some more" resignations.

Overstreet and another board member, Mujahid Ramadan, had allegedly accepted a trip on another nonprofit organization's dime -- a nonprofit organization that also receives money from the board.

A report on the issue was handed down at last week's meeting reminding board members of the group's conflict of interest policies and concluding that the nonprofit organization had not paid for Overstreet's trip, but had paid for Ramadan's trip.

Overstreet said that incident "was a contributing factor (to his resignation) but it wasn't the main reason."

His resignation letter detailed a series of concerns, including a recent audit that said the board's staff had been "unavailable and uncooperative," that there had been "an excessive amount of travel" by senior staff and a board member and that the organization had repeatedly given grants to the same agencies.

Richard Blue, manager of the board's day-to-day affairs and its top staff member, said he only agreed with the first allegation, which he said is "no longer an issue."

"I'm responsible for it ... (and) took appropriate action," Blue said, referring to the auditing agency's concern about its difficulties in obtaining information about the board. He declined to elaborate.

As for the trips, he said "they were all appropriate ... both the expenditures and the destinations."

And he would not respond to Overstreet's other complaints.

But Cooper said the the board had to focus more on the needs of the community before deciding what agencies should get grants.

"They should do some strategic planning -- where you want to go, what you want to do -- and then decide how you want to do it," he said.

As things are going, he said, "the end result is you're not as efficient as you could be ... and not reaching all the people you could."

Chester Richardson, who was elected vice chairman of the board at the Sept. 22 meeting, said he hoped to "refocus the board's strategic plan ... and have a more business-oriented approach to how to distribute funds."

He also said the board would not replace those who had resigned and hoped to see the board further reduced in the future.

Whitacre listed the group's size as another of its ills.

"It's too big ... and almost unwieldy," he said.