State Auditors Begin Examination of Troubled Anti-Poverty Agency

A team of state auditors visited the offices of Orange County’s largest anti-poverty agency this week, after an earlier audit and the resignations of at least four managers.

While officials of the state Department of Economic Opportunity denied that the visit was unannounced, Julius Cartwright, a finance director for the anti-poverty agency, said agency officials learned of the visit on Monday “and Tuesday they were here.”

Auditors were examining records of the Community Development Council’s $2-million weatherization program, state and agency officials said. That program provides free home insulation and other energy-saving devices for poor people.

Manager Resigns

Agency officials also confirmed on Thursday that Linda Gomez, a former manager in charge of the council’s food bank and program of food distribution to 117 private, nonprofit agencies, has quit and is the subject of an internal agency investigation.

“I’m investigating the food service center and its internal control systems,” Cartwright said. “If in the investigation I discover any wrongdoings, I will bring it to the attention of the executive director and the board. At this date, I don’t have sufficient evidence or facts to prove any wrongdoing on the part of Linda Gomez.”

Gomez could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Just weeks ago, the troubled agency underwent another audit--this by Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. for fiscal 1986-87--which found $92,000 in questionable expenditures and $52,000 in disallowed expenditures that might have to be repaid.

Acceptance Expected

That annual audit is expected to be formally accepted by the agency’s board of directors at its meeting Wednesday at its Costa Mesa headquarters.

State officials have withheld comment on that audit until it is accepted by the board and received in Sacramento. As a private, nonprofit agency that received about $1.3 million a year from the state, the council must be audited annually.

Meanwhile, another manager, Donald Sizemore, director of planning, and senior planner Linda Wood have resigned. Both employees Thursday attributed their reasons for leaving, in part, to growing frustration with the agency’s failure to help the poor get off welfare rolls and become self-sufficient.

Sizemore, who has been with the agency three years, said he has become disenchanted with the council’s president and chief operating officer, Clarence (Buddy) Ray, and the agency’s board of directors.

Wood said she decided to resign to relocate to her native Boston.

“It’s just not a good atmosphere to work in right now because the agency is not doing as much for the poor as we could,” she said.

Other staff employees expressed concern about what they described as the agency’s lack of leadership, morale, and growing bureaucracy which has prevented the creation of progressive programs to help the poor, they said.

As a result of the internal problems, the agency’s Meals Deals, which sells about $25 worth of groceries for $6, was discontinued for three weeks. It has since resumed but only bimonthly rather than weekly, said an agency spokesman, who added that other programs have not suffered.

One manager who left under pressure has since filed a complaint with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing alleging discrimination and unequal pay for comparable work.

“I was fired in March after I complained to director Buddy Ray that I made $4,000 less than two males with comparable positions,” Claudean Medlock said.

Medlock claimed that she was fired “without cause” after Ray discovered that she had filed a complaint--which, she said, was the same day she approached him with her suspicions about financial irregularities in the agency’s food bank operations.

Ray, who was out of town attending a conference, could not be reached for comment.

Last year, state officials examined the $7-million-a-year agency’s entire program. The officials issued 63 recommendations, 55 of which concerned agency’s financial reporting and inability to balance ledgers. Another one of those recommendations involved the weatherization program.

“One problem we found was that there was a lack of production in their weatherizations program, and we’ve put pressure on the agency to increase their weatherization projects,” said Ronald Joseph, chief deputy director for the state Department of Economic Opportunity.

Of the recent resignations, Joseph said that four resignations were “not a dramatically large or surprising number of employees” for an agency with 50 or more employees.

“Especially at a time of a change in leadership. Anytime there’s a change in leadership there is departure of the staff. As far as the state is concerned this is the first indication that I have had of these resignations,” Joseph said.

Joseph referred to Ray’s succeeding John Flores as the agency’s top official last October, 1987. Ray was the agency’s acting director since May, 1987.