[Nfb-or] CFB article in Portland Tribune

[T. Joseph Carter]

Another audit article for the Commission:

http://portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=131845413140259900

Text included below:

Blind agency slammed as inept
Vendors say state commission’s failures hurt their businesses
BY STEVE LAW
The Portland Tribune, Oct 13, 2011

Besieged Oregon Commission for the Blind leaders vow to improve their 
management practices after another blistering state audit – the fifth 
since 1995 – accused the Portland-based agency of sloppy money 
management and misleading state lawmakers.

In a four-hour meeting Friday, the commission’s seven-member board, 
packed with four newcomers chosen by Gov. John Kitzhaber, said it 
would take the audit seriously and try to turn it into a model 
agency.

But several board members also downplayed the audit findings, raising 
questions about their resolve to change the culture of an agency 
charged with aiding Oregon’s 19,000 blind people.

Commission Administrator Linda Mock and board Chairwoman Jodi Roth 
issued separate written responses to the Oct. 5 audit that were 
largely defensive.

Meanwhile, activists with the agency’s Business Enterprise Program, 
who have been at odds with the commission for years, are calling for 
heads to roll.

The new board should have held an executive session to review Mock’s 
performance, given the history of negative audits, said Art 
Stevenson, president of the National Federation of the Blind of 
Oregon, and a manager in the Business Enterprise Program.

“I do not feel that she should be the administrator of the Oregon 
Commission for the Blind,” Stevenson said.

In an interview Monday, Mock said she intends to remain at the helm 
of the agency. She stressed that her primary concern remains job 
training, rehabilitation services and counseling to some 1,500 blind 
people who are clients of the agency. However, she added, “we realize 
that the business practices of the agency need to support that.”

Many of the controversies revolve around the Business Enterprise 
Program, which stems from a federal law giving blind people a 
monopoly on vending machines and other food service in public 
buildings. The program employs 17 blind people.

Not tracking the money
The new audit, similar to others in 1995, 2000, 2001 and 2009, found 
a pattern of poor accounting and inept recordkeeping at the agency 
Mock has run for more than a decade. The Commission for the Blind, 
which spends $7.8 million in federal and state money each year, 
didn’t have copies of contracts, didn’t track income of the blind 
vending machine businesses, and had weak controls on spending and 
discrepancies in financial records. These were among a host of 
problems uncovered by six state auditors.

Agency leaders have failed to perform tasks that are “fundamental 
expectations of any manager” in the state, said Gary Blackmer, Audits 
Division director under Secretary of State Kate Brown.

After a scathing 2009 audit, the agency was required to report how it 
rectified the problems to a legislative committee in January 2010. 
Auditors concluded that the agency falsely claimed to have resolved 
many of its problems.

“We found something different from what they told the Legislature,” 
Blackmer says.

In the follow-up audit, the agency was asked to produce signed 
contracts with outside food and beverage companies that service state 
buildings. Some of those contracts were only signed that morning, and 
not by both parties.

Walt Reyes, manager of the agency’s Blind Enterprise Program, was 
placed on paid administrative leave in August due to irregularities 
uncovered during the audit. He is still on leave.

Tracking money from vending machines operated by blind businessmen 
was hard to do because accounting records were incomplete and 
inconsistent, said Jamie Ralls, principle auditor for the state. 
That’s especially important because those machines operate on a cash 
basis, she said. Auditors also couldn’t track the 11 percent cut that 
blind business managers are supposed to give to the agency, Ralls 
said.

“If they were doing their job, they could track all this 
information,” she said. “They could spot when something doesn’t seem 
right.”

Weak board?
Some observers say past boards overseeing the agency have been rather 
passive. Members relied on Mock and her predecessor – who resigned 
under pressure after a negative audit in 1999 – to produce board 
agendas and spoon-feed them financial reports.

“The board has in the past liked it that way,” said Kae Seth, a past 
board member and current president of the American Council of the 
Blind of Oregon.

Board meetings are only conducted every two months for two hours, 
giving members 12 hours a year to monitor the agency.

“Basically, the board meetings are like a dog and pony show,” said 
Randy Hauth, a representative of the 17 blind business managers.

At Friday’s board meeting, when Mock and her fiscal officer, Leslie 
Jones, presented a proposal for meeting a potential 10.5 percent 
budget cut that may be required by the Legislature, board member 
Richard Phay asked why the board didn’t get individual department 
budgets in the agency.

“Honestly, we’ve just provided a summary because it’s much easier to 
grasp,” Jones said.

The full agency budget would have been too long to submit to the 
board, she said – 10 pages.

At the meeting, some members defended the agency’s management and 
were publicly dismissive of the audit findings.

“This audit looks like a witch hunt to me,” said Dr. John Wilkins, an 
ophthalmologist. “I think this is an incredible waste of taxpayers’ 
money.”

Later, he said, “We’re not accountants. That’s not the primary goal 
of our mission.”

Mock complained that the agency had requested a “quality assurance” 
staffer to resolve the financial problems highlighted in past audits, 
but said state budget writers denied the extra position. Roth, the 
board chairwoman, reiterated that complaint in her written response 
to the audit.

However, Ralls said there was a half-time person hired with federal 
stimulus funds to serve as a quality assurance officer during the 
2009-11 budget cycle, which ended in June. Roth said she wasn’t aware 
of that position.

New board member Carla McQuillen said agency leaders should stop 
arguing that the state is “picking on us” and improve their business 
management.

“Things have just been very sloppy,” McQuillen said.

Roth appears to have softened her stance after speaking with state 
auditors and Secretary of State Brown.

In an interview Tuesday, the board chairwoman said she would like to 
see “global changes” in how the agency is managed and how the board 
functions.

“I think that our role is going to be vastly different in the next 
months to come,” she said.

Clashes with blind managers
The board and Mock also face an ongoing state of rebellion by the 
blind business managers, who make a living running vending machines, 
coffee carts and other food services in state, county and city 
buildings.

The blind managers argue the Commission for the Blind doesn’t 
aggressively enforce the federal Randolph-Sheppard Act, enacted in 
1936, and the companion state law, resulting in lost opportunities 
for blind people to gain business in public buildings.

Nationally, those programs provide 2,500 jobs to blind people, 
Stevenson said. But in Oregon, the agency has neglected the program, 
not even offering training for the managers, he said.

“There has been a mindset in the Oregon Commission for the Blind not 
to expand the program,” or to use it as a “dumping ground” to place 
clients when they can’t find any other jobs for them, Stevenson said.

Auditors found the agency has paid $416,000 in legal bills since 2007 
just to respond to claims filed by the blind managers. In most cases. 
those were claims, authorized by federal law, to prod the state to 
court more contracts for the program. The managers fought to get 
control of food concessions in state prisons, in the U.S. Post Office 
in Northwest Portland, and in the SAIF headquarters in Salem, among 
other public facilities.

Seth said Stevenson has a conflict of interest as a blind businessman 
and president of the other major advocacy group, the National 
Federation of the Blind of Oregon. However, she said there had been 
poor communication between the blind business managers and the agency 
for years.

“It’s like two children fighting each other; you just want to knock 
them in the head,” Seth said.

Mock often notes that the Business Enterprise Program involves about 
1 percent of the clients served by her agency. She said that program, 
created in 1936, relies on an “outmoded model” of rehabilitation for 
blind people that is very “paternalistic,” and leads to ongoing 
friction in the state agency.

The blind business owners have a more expansive view of their legal 
rights to state and local government buildings than state attorneys 
do, Mock said.

In one sign of the dysfunction within the agency and that program, 
Stevenson is one of the business owners who is not operating with a 
signed contract. Stevenson refused to sign one, he said, because he 
didn’t think it granted him due process rights if he was terminated.

End of text.

No wonder the BE program is such a mess!  Ms. Mock shows utter 
disdain for the program.  It's provably the most effective program 
ever, and yet she declares it "outmoded".  The article points out 
that the constant legal wrangling is because the Commission is 
failing to do its job as required by law.

Taken together, this article kind of makes it look like willful 
sabotage of the BE program by Commission management.  Especially when 
you realize that Ms. Mock attempted to abolish the state portion of 
the program last year.

Joseph