Agency vows to keep better tabs on money it gives groups

Leila Navidi

John Ball, shown at a February meeting of the Southern Nevada Workforce Investment Board, of which he serves as executive director, says managing federal stimulus money is a big responsibility.

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Thursday, April 23, 2009 | 2 a.m.

A local nonprofit organization cannot prove it helped dozens of people find work with a half-million-dollar grant, so the funding agency is set to crack down.

The finding and the follow-up are important because the grant came from the Southern Nevada Workforce Investment Board, which will soon nearly triple its budget thanks to $14.8 million in federal stimulus funds. Most of that money will be passed on to local nonprofit organizations. The workforce board’s mission — training people and helping them find jobs — increases in importance as the valley suffers from a double-digit unemployment rate.

To that end, the board gave $489,000 to Native American Community Services on July 1. But in a January review and subsequent visits, the Southern Nevada Workforce Investment Board was unable to find evidence that these goals had been met.

The agency’s board will vote today on keeping tighter reins on about $189,000 in unspent money from the grant and on capping enrollment at about 100 people, until the community services organization can prove it has kept track of the money to date and helped people find jobs. Frank Bernard, the organization’s director, had no comment on the review and said a lawyer was handling the issue.

The findings include:

• Half the files reviewed contained little or no evidence of setting goals for finding a job.

• None of the files had evidence of offering training for jobs in demand.

• None of the files had receipts, invoices or other evidence of how money was spent.

• Half the files lacked evidence of whether the clients were eligible for help.

John Ball, workforce board executive director, underscored the importance of effective grant reviews.

“First of all, we’re a public agency overseeing public funds, which implies a certain accountability,” he said. “Also, there are high expectations from the president on down ... that we manage what will be a significant infusion of funds, and that brings more responsibility.”

Ball said federal officials had been at the workforce board’s offices this week to ensure the agency has the capacity to deal with that amount of money.

Ball also noted that “we have had accountability issues in the past and have a need to reestablish credibility.”

Before he took over the organization in early 2007, there were years of bad bookkeeping, millions misplaced in sloppy files and nearly $100,000 overpaid in local grants.

More recently, the agency’s 2008-09 funding was 30 percent higher than the year before, bringing its budget to $8 million. With the stimulus funds, a $22.8 million budget will be the agency’s largest to date. The Las Vegas Valley received both allocations for good reason. Southern Nevada’s unemployment rate in March was 10.4 percent, the highest in 25 years.

Helping lower that rate will be the board’s charge in months to come. Ball noted that few grants in recent history — fewer than 1 in 10 — have reached the level of problems that Native American Community Services grant has shown. Nonetheless, he hopes to use some of the agency’s fattened budget to double the number of employees who keep track of the money the board gives out.

For its part, the community service organization has to not only clean up its files, but also demonstrate that the 100 or so people who walked through its doors eventually walked out with a job.

“We’ll know exactly what happened with each client in a couple of weeks,” Ball said.