Group Shows Little for Grant

State Controller Steve Westly said Friday that a Los Angeles group has accounted for only about 16% of a $221,000 grant it received to build a museum honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez.

Westly, investigating million of dollars in alleged pork-barrel spending, said the Colour Me Freedom Foundation had accounted for only $35,255 in spending for the museum at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles.

The money was used to buy a portable classroom in the school’s parking lot, all that exists of the project. Some photos of King and Chavez lean against an interior wall.

From 1999 to 2002, the Legislature and Gov. Gray Davis handed out nearly $25 million to Colour Me Freedom and more than 80 other groups, many of them politically connected, for parks, museums and other projects.

Westly opened a series of audits after it was reported that another group received $500,000 to build a community center in San Francisco that has not been constructed.

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley secured the funding for the San Francisco project when he was an assemblyman representing the area. An investigation of that group’s founder was begun after it was revealed that she raised $200,000 for Shelley’s 2002 campaign for his current post.

The Rev. Willie J. Bellamy, who formed Colour Me Freedom as a nonprofit corporation in the 1990s, said Friday that he remained intent on opening the facility next month. Bellamy also said he sent a package of material to Westly’s office Friday. “We have complied with what they requested,” he said.

Westly had set Friday as the deadline for Bellamy to provide details about how he spent the state money. Colour Me Freedom provided a canceled check apparently showing it had paid $35,255 for the portable classroom.

But Westly said in a statement that the nonprofit failed to document how it spent the remaining $186,370. “Auditors will meet with foundation officials to determine how the balance was used and whether the expenditures were appropriate,” the statement said.

Bellamy provided other checks totaling $32,145 and documents that said those funds were used for utility connections for the classroom. However, the building has no electricity.

State Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City), who represents the Crenshaw area and submitted the funding request, has said he was only vaguely aware of the details and was surprised when the funding was approved as part of the 2001-02 budget.

Lawmakers gave grants to Colour Me Freedom and similar groups at a time when the state had billions of dollars in budget surpluses. But the state exerted little control over how the money was used.

Westly’s statement said the California Department of Parks and Recreation, which advanced the money to Bellamy at the Legislature’s direction, “had no formal policies or procedures to track the status of projects after advance payments were made.”