For the purpose of posting, complaints to the Minnesota Attorney General have been divided into topic sections. A post regarding mismanagement is forthcoming.
Re: Morrison County United Way
Conflict of interest Policies Issues:
Morrison County United Way moved its funds from US Bank to Pine Country, former director Ted Pfohl later left MCUW and took a job with the same bank. Current board member Rob Ronning also works for Pine Country as does Gina Vetter’s husband. After conflict of interest issues were raised regarding the number of board affiliations to Pine County Bank I elected to update the organizations documentation by circulating the conflict of interest form to all board members. Despite knowing that board affiliation to Pine Country was an issue raised, none of the board members with affiliations to the bank listed the institution on the conflict of form and Rob Ronning who was the most affronted by the complaint made a point of defiantly tossing the signed document back across the table to me, leaving the form completely blank. Forms went unsigned altogether or they were turned without conflicts. Past President Curt Hansen stated at an executive committee meeting that he thought avoiding conflicts of interest in a small town was difficult and he too left off conflicts. I reported this to the board president Teresa Schmitz in June and as of the date as I was asked to resign no attempt was made to rectify the situation. Out of 16 board members I believe I got 5 forms back that were signed but not filled out properly, remaining board members ignored the document despite its necessity.
Youth as Resources (YAR)
Youth as Resources (YAR) is a youth lead board program that is overseen by Morrison County United Way. YAR provides grant funding to local youth projects and is intended to foster the development of youth leaders and volunteerism. All funding dollars available to the community ended up being given to projects that YAR board members themselves were affiliated with. Program Coordinator Mary Kenna’s daughter was on the YAR Board and funding was given to her girl scout troop, Kenna’s other daughters school was funded (this school is also board members Curt Hansen’s church, Curt’ wife Mary Beth served as a YAR Board member) and Kenna’s other youth program was given funding. While I have no argument with the use, or that some affiliations existed I could only account for 500.00 out of 13,000.00 that a relationship could not be established. Since YAR is geared towards educating local youth on how boards like MCUW’s operate I thought the fact that the dollars remained within their own pet projects was appalling especially since there is already too little funding in the community for young people. Since there was only a few thousand dollars left by the time I was hired I recommended that the UW board refer the most recent funding requests back to the YAR board along with the organizations conflict of interest policy requesting that they review the policy and reauthorize their ruling. Naturally, I was ignored which wasn’t surprising since most UW board members refused to recognize the organizations conflict of interest policy themselves.
When initial issues arose regarding YAR I held off on issuing grant payment until an evaluation could be made and issues discussed by the executive committee and or the full MCUW board. Curt Hanson, who works for the Initiative Foundation (Initiative Foundation funds YAR) called to tell me that MCUW didn’t have oversight responsibility for YAR that MCUW was just a “flow through” and that my job was to just cut the checks but that we didn’t supervise its operations, he went on to instruct me to issue the held grant payments. Given his affiliation with the programs funder I assumed Curt provided this information on good authority but since his assertion didn’t jive with previous information I searched until I located the actual signed contracts so I would know how to proceed. The contracts showed that the information Curt gave me was false and that MCUW was indeed fully responsible for the YAR program. Shortly thereafter, I discovered that Hanson’s wife was an adult member of the YAR board and one of the checks I was holding was destine for a project at his church. Curt deliberately provided false information to expedite a payment to his church using his position at the Initiative Foundation to make the information he was providing appear legitimate. While I was under the impression that Curt was gathering his information Jana Shortall at the Initiative Foundation who oversees YAR funding it is unclear as to whether or not he spoke with Jana at that time or not. This was gravely concerning since the YAR contacts were expired at the time and in order to spend the remaining grant dollars the organization first needed to vote on whether or not to request a grant extension from the Initiative Foundation. Had I sent the payments as instructed by Curt the organization would have spent dollars that we had no authority to do so. It would have also presumed a desire to continue the program without allowing the full board to decide whether or not it wished to do so. Curt was invested in seeing YAR continue and the improper issuance of grant funding would have forced the board to extend the program whether they wanted too or not.
2 Comments
December 20, 2008 at 10:02 am
Given that Morrison County is so small, having people be somehow related to funding dollars is somewhat necessary, no?
December 29, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Thank you for your comment Jerry. I’m not sure which example you are specifically referring to so my reply to you will be general. State and federal government provide for instances such as you are referring to occur… providing correct procedures have applied. By law board members are required to sign a conflict of interest statements and disclose affiliations. Should an agenda item come up that involves a personal affiliation that board member cannot vote or influence the voting on that matter.
MC United Way Board Members who had close affiliation, such as Rob Ronning an employee of Pine Country Bank refused to identified his affiliation to the bank even after a new board member objected.
As it would turn out MC United Way’s general account funds were moved from US Bank in Little Falls to Pine Country while Rob was a board member and while Ted Pfohl was director. Ted Pfohl was later given a job at Pine Country Bank and left the MC United Way.
Even after the complaint about the conflict of interest, Rob Ronning defiantly refused to identify Pine Country on his conflict of interest statement and turned the form in signed but leaving off all affilations. Obviously this is only one example but it aptly illustrates what should happen as opposed to what has been happening within that particular office.
With regard to the Youth As Resources funds, again the same conflict of interest policy should have been enforced. The additional factor involved in the 13,000.00 in youth funding that I found striking was the stated intent of the leadership. These dollars should have been made available to any and all youth project and they weren’t. By admission of the leadership, the funds were quite deliberately kept within the close circle of board members and spent on pet projects. So the funds didn’t end up where they did because the county is small, the funds ended up where they did because board member hand picked who would apply for the dollars.
I hope this helps, let me know if you have other question.