Money woes continue mounting for EOB

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Monday, Feb. 27, 2006 | 7:36 a.m.

The meltdown of the Economic Opportunity Board - Las Vegas Valley's once-rich poverty-fighting organization - continues, with the state telling the group that it has violated a contract to run the area's low-income child care program.

The Feb. 17 notice of breach of contract was based on the organization receiving an eviction order at the Washington Avenue address of the child care program, indicating that its $31,518 monthly rent had not been paid.

"They cannot take our money and then not pay what they're supposed to pay," said Mike Willden, director of the state Department of Human Resources.

Earlier this month, the EOB avoided eviction at the last minute at one of its five Women, Infants and Children clinics, said Judith Wright, bureau chief for the state Bureau of Family Health Services. The organization paid the $2,350 monthly rent at the Washington Avenue and Lamb Boulevard clinic on the fifth day of a five-day eviction notice, she said.

Another EOB-run program, the Martin Luther King Senior Center, lost a contract with two companies that deliver food to the center's senior citizens because the organization did not pay the companies on time, Willden said. The group told Willden that enough food to feed seniors for the next two weeks has been located, he said.

The EOB's executive director and chairman of the board did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

The state was concerned about the situation at the $5.5 million child care program, now the organization's largest after the federal government pulled the $12.6 million Head Start program earlier this month.

The state sent a letter to the EOB on Feb. 21, Willden said, and the organization has 15 days after receiving the notice "to provide details on what they have spent the money on."

"If EOB is unable to provide evidence which proves to the satisfaction of (the state) that the breach (of contract) has been corrected," the state will terminate the contract 30 days later, the letter said.

The series of challenges facing the 42-year-old organization is an outgrowth of at least three years of negative federal and state reviews, pointing to mismanaged funds and shoddy delivery of services to the poor.

The EOB's decision last week to finally drop its appeal of the federal government's decision to withdraw the Head Start contract will have future implications, said Frank Fuentes, acting associate commissioner of the Head Start bureau in Washington.

In the EOB's letter announcing the decision to the federal government - after 13 months of appeals and an unknown cost to taxpayers - Claude E. Logan, board chairman, wrote that the move "in no way diminishes EOB's credibility."

A Denver organization, the Community Development Institute, will run the early education program - which serves about 1,800 low-income children across the valley - until the federal government puts out bids for a new local organization to run it.

At that time - which on average takes 12 months, Fuentes said - the EOB can apply for the Head Start contract again.

But "one of the major criterion will be capacity - and they have a very negative track record," Fuentes said.

"How they would overcome that in a competitive setting is anyone's guess," he said.

Timothy Pratt can be reached at 259-8828 or at timothy@lasvegassun.com.