Apparently a little known non-profit, the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence (FCADV), receiving Florida State funding, was spending excessively on staff salaries - I mean, REALLY excessive, boondoggle excessive, like $7-million over 3 years plus salary to one person. The CEO, Tiffany Carr, received a $761,000 salary per year, PLUS an additional $7-million over three years. The group also stonewalled requests for expense documents for over a year.
So, in reaction, FL Governor Ron DeSantis signed an executive order mandating reforms of contracts with many non-profits receiving State taxpayer funds.
Apparently, in this case, legislation was passed mandating that DCF had to use FCADV for domestic violence services, and Jeb Bush initiated it. So, DeSantis may review ALL similar legislation which prevents competitive bidding for future work by non-profits.
This incident also raises the issue of incompetent oversight by the responsible State agency, the Department of Children & Families (DCF). Where was their Inspector General? Didn't they have the authority to audit the non-profit?
"Gov. Ron DeSantis asked the Chief Inspector General, the Legislature and the Department of Children and Families (DCF) to review its options after an audit of the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence (FCADV). The House approved subpoenas for 14 of the group’s current and former leaders in its investigation that could turn criminal."
"But by Thursday morning, lobbying, communications and consulting firms jumped ship from FCADV, and the group’s legal counsel resigned. "
As a retired internal audit manager, I used to audit huge contracts both in and out of government, plus grants and they always were lucrative to find abuses. So I am glad that DeSantis is implementing reforms over this area. One review of a $400-million procurement contract for an oil company found so much mismanagement and inefficiencies that the oil company canceled renewals of the contract and wouldn't do business with the international contractor for at least 15 years. Years later I was an anti-corruption manager in Iraq working on the $22-billion Iraq reconstruction program, and the same contractor was there and was ranked WORST contractor in Iraq by the Special Inspector General for Iraq (SIGIR) in a report to Congress. I had learned during my first encounter with them that they were run by retired Air Force officers, which explained the utter lack of management processes to control costs.
I just recently reviewed the construction contract award for an $11-million city building and documentation of decisions was very poor, which are red flags to me. And, just like the incident above, the City staff have stonewalled written responses to my 28 questions about the contract award. Watch for my report on that (But, I have not found any evidence of intentional wrongdoing either, just no documentation to explain some decisions.)
One of the problems is that most small cities or even counties do not have coverage by internal auditors or inspector generals, thus they never get professional reviews of their control processes. Recently, the external auditor for the City of Howey-in-the-Hills resigned because the accounting was so bad it took forever to get documents to even complete the audit. Their problem is they are a small city and cannot fund a properly experienced accountant. Bad accounting controls cannot be tolerated in any taxpayer-funded agency and contracts are always subject to abuses.
Conclusion:
- Kudos to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on moving to strengthen oversight of taxpayer-funded non-profit programs. Lemons to DCF for not exercising any spending oversight on the non-profit committing the abuses.
- Clearly, any legislation hamstringing Florida agencies by mandating they can only use one external non-profit or firm for specific services without competitive bidding needs to be reversed.
- To expand on this issue at the local level, it is my personal opinion that every Florida County should have a fully independent Inspector General with the authority to audit any local or state-funded agency in the County. Yes, we have an "Inspector General" in Lake County, but she works for the Court Clerk, and only audits County programs when the County Board approves it. That is not independence, and she never audits the Constitutional Officers such as the Sheriff, or the cities or special districts. They have never had a performance audit.
It is time for Florida to grow up and implement independent Inspector Generals in each County.
Vance Jochim
FiscalRangers.com
Feb. 23, 2020
Here is a related article on the contract abuse: https://floridapolitics.com/archives/319125-ron-desantis-calls-for-domestic-violence-group-investigation-after-reports-of-abuse
Here is the Miami Times article disclosing the lack of response by the agency to document requests.
