NHSA
UNCOVERS FINANCIAL MISCONDUCT BY HEAD START BUREAU HEAD, CALLS FOR
RESIGNATION AND “END OF WITCH HUNT”
Cover-Up
Seen in Treatment of Bush Administration’s Point Person in Attacks on
Local Head Start Grantees; More “Cooked” Numbers Expected in Salary
Survey.
WASHINGTON, D.C.///April 13, 2004///The National Head
Start Association (NHSA) made public today documents detailing a cover-up
in which Windy Hill – the associate commissioner in charge of the U.S.
Head Start Bureau – was herself found by an independent Health and Human
Services (HHS) review to be responsible for serious misconduct involving
more than $150,000 in her capacity as the executive director of a Texas
Head Start program that she headed immediately before taking over the top
job at the federal Head Start program on January 7, 2002. The HHS review
findings were confirmed in an outside audit.
Despite the previously undisclosed findings of major problems with her
own program, Hill is leading the “witch hunt” nationwide against Head
Start grantees for infractions real or imagined. In view of the fact that
she personally benefited from a “clear double standard” that resulted in
a cover-up of her own misdeeds, the NHSA called for Hill to resign and
for the “relentless and demoralizing attacks” against local Head Start
programs to cease. NHSA also warned that the siege against local Head
Start programs would resume again as early as this week with the latest
round of “cooked numbers” from HHS, with the focus this time on Head
Start executive director salaries.
The previously unreleased HHS review and outside audit documents
implicate Hill in awarding improper bonuses to herself, cashing out
multiple months of unauthorized vacation pay, improper reimbursement of
undocumented expenses and illicit income that does not appear to have been
declared to the IRS for income tax purposes. As executive director of the
Cen-Tex Family Services in Bastrop, Texas, Hill also was in charge when
HHS rules were broken by improperly drawing down and depositing $140,115
in federal funds that Cen-Tex was not legally entitled to receive and
later was ordered to return. Since leaving Cen-Tex, Hill has repeatedly
sought out media attention and been openly critical of far less serious
problems than those in which she was involved, suggesting, for example,
that lesser violations are “criminal” and should be used as grounds to
cut off federal funds to particular Head Start grantees.
According to the documents obtained by the NHSA via a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) request and other sources, the wide range of
“material” violations related to Hill’s tenure include the following:
- Thousands of dollars in
unauthorized pay. Hill was awarded “three large bonuses ... during
a year and a half period,” with no justification to indicate the
basis for the “bonus” and no employment policy that provided for
bonuses in the first place. More significantly, the review found and
the outside audit confirmed that these bonuses where made through
Cen-Tex’s accounts payable system instead of its payroll system so
that “the funds were not taxed nor reported to the IRS as income for
the employee [Hill] nor included in the employee’s W-2 form as income.”
If Hill intentionally attempted to avoid paying taxes through this
payment scheme, she may have violated criminal provisions of the tax
code. The federal government has required Cen-Tex to pay back taxes
and penalties out of non-federal funds and pay back the amount of
the bonuses to the federal government.
- Thousands of dollars in
unauthorized vacation time. Upon leaving Cen-Tex to take her job at
the Head Start Bureau, Hill had Cen-Tex pay her 634 hours of accrued
leave – nearly four months -- even though Cen-Tex had a “use it or
lose it” policy – a policy she was responsible for enforcing, that
allowed for the accumulation of no more than 80 hours of leave and
had no policy for “buying out” leave. Moreover, Cen-Tex never
budgeted for the funds used to pay for this buyout so the funds
undoubtedly came out of program services. The federal government has
asked that the cost of this improper vacation-time buyout to be
quantified and the funds returned to the federal government.
- Nepotism and payment of
undocumented “expenses.” Numerous procurement irregularities were noted
in the federal review of Hill’s operation, including failure to
conduct open competitions and failure to “follow the procedures
prohibiting nepotism.” An outside audit report confirms that Hill
paid vendors “out-of-pocket” and made the agency reimburse her for
those payments. The report further stated that some of the
reimbursement checks “were issued with no support or insufficient
support or authorization.” The federal government has asked Cen-Tex
to quantify the amount of the impermissible expense payments and to
return the funds to the federal government. could be considered a
violation of the civil provisions of the False Claims Act since the
agency was taking money to which it was not entitled. The federal
government is seeking repayment of these improperly acquired funds.
NHSA President Sarah Greene said: “Windy Hill has been at war
with Head Start grantees from the day she stepped into her current
office. She has dragged out into the headlines every possible problem –
real or imagined, substantiated or simply alleged – and trashed programs
across the country. To think that she was, at the same time, benefiting
from a cover-up of her own misconduct during her tenure as head of a Head
Start agency is simply astonishing. This is an obvious double standard
under which HHS elected to hush up the truth about Windy Hill’s egregious
program violations. Then, they turned around and made her the point
person in their attack on Head Start grantees. I consider her credibility
and moral authority – along with those who have been working behind the
scenes to put Ms. Hill out front – to be at an absolute, rock bottom
zero.”
NHSA Director Ron Herndon said: “This is an absolute outrage.
In the case of Ms. Hill’s own performance as a Head Start program
director, the HHS letter bends over backwards to avoid mentioning her by
name. By contrast, Ms. Hill has been prominent in local media in
impugning Head Start program directors by name on the basis of little or
no facts or other information. She also has demanded immediate remedial
action and prompt repayment of funds on the basis of nothing more than
accusations. However, Ms. Hill has not been confronted publicly with an
audit that is far worse than most of what she has criticized in other
Head Start programs. There is every indication that HHS simply buried the
whole embarrassing situation. No news release was issued and no calls
were made to reporters to undercut Ms. Hill’s professional and community
standing. They deliberately gave her a ‘free pass.’”
The latest unfounded attack on local Head Start grantees is expected
to resume as early as this week with the release of “top 25” salary data
for Head Start executive directors.
HHS will attempt to suggest there is a salary problem, even though it
already knows that the facts do not support such a suggestion. On
February 5, 2004, NHSA highlighted a detailed analysis conducted on an
independent basis by the San Antonio Express-News of the top 100 salaries
of executive directors of nonprofit agencies that include Head Start
programs. That outside analysis found the salaries to be "about par
for charities that focus on child care, according to a study of 68,000
nonprofits by Philanthropic Research Inc." (Information about the
Philanthropic Research study is available on the
Web at www.guidestar.org/services/2003_cr_preview.pdf.) The
analysis in the February 1, 2004, San Antonio Express-News article
directly parallels the research now being wrapped up by the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) into Head Start executive
director salaries.
The San Antonio Express-News results are particularly telling since
most of the individuals cited in the survey are actually executive
directors of large, multi-purpose agencies that carry out a number of
different programs, only one of which is Head Start. No breakdown is
provided in the story on the fraction of the executive directors'
salaries that actually come out of Head Start funds, which, in many
cases, is under 50 percent. On November 25, 2003, NHSA pointed out that
local Head Start program directors (as distinct from executive directors)
are underpaid as a group. The average Head Start program director salary
is $53,114, which is well under the comparable local position of
elementary school principal. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported
in 2003 that the average pay of elementary school principals is $69,000.
In fact, 99 percent of Head Start program directors are paid under
$100,000.
The San Antonio Express-News article provides this additional
third-party perspective on the salary question: "'When you look at
it in perspective, 90 percent of your executive directors are probably
making what your average citizen would consider a normal range,' said
James Mitchell, director of the Institute of Child and Family Studies at
Texas Tech University, which trains Head Start employees and sends
consultants to troubled agencies."
In subsequent comments, Mr. Mitchell said: "This analysis
provides the first independent look at Head Start executive director
salaries and it debunks the notion that there is some kind of problem
here that needs to be fixed. Even at the nation's biggest Head Start
programs, nearly every salary is in line with what other comparable
nonprofit heads are being paid … Anyone who thinks that these executive
directors should be paid less just because this is Head Start is sending
a very clear message about the low priority they place on this crucial
program serving America's most disadvantaged children. It is particularly
cynical to fail to provide the funds needed to pay Head Start teachers
and then to turn around and blame the lack of funds on the salaries of the
highly-skilled individuals required to run these programs."
The expected distortion by HHS of the salary data is far from the
first time that the agency has “cooked the books” in a reckless effort to
manufacture a case for dismantling the Head Start program. On March 18,
2004, NHSA and Rep. George Miller reported that new Head Start monitoring
program data that has not yet been released to the news media by the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finds that 89 percent of
Head Start grantees across the United States in fiscal year 2002 had no
major compliance problems. That was an improvement over the 85
percent of Head Start grantees found to be substantially in compliance in
HHS’ previous Head Start monitoring report, which covered fiscal year
2000.
However, Miller and NHSA officials criticized the unpublicized report,
which alters the reporting categories used in previous HHS monitoring
reports for Head Start programs. The shuffling of the numbers appears to
be a clumsy and transparent attempt to invert positive findings about
Head Start grantees in order to make them look bad. Greene said that she
was “concerned, but not at all surprised” to see that Administration
officials at HHS attempted to reorganize the 2001-2002 report data in a
way that might cast local grantees in a less favorable
light. Whereas the reports for fiscal year 2000 and before had
emphasized the number of programs substantially in compliance (e.g., the
85 percent without “deficiencies” in 2000), the new report covering 2001-2002
downplays that number by focusing on the number of programs without
“deficiencies” of any kind (i.e., 14 percent in 2001 and 11 percent in
2002).
ABOUT NHSA
The National Head Start Association is a private not-for-profit
membership organization dedicated exclusively to meeting the needs of
Head Start children and their families. It represents more than 900,000
children, 190,000 staff and 2,500 Head Start programs in the United
States. The Association provides support for the entire Head Start community
by advocating for policies that strengthen services to Head Start
children and their families; by providing extensive training and
professional development to Head Start staff; and by developing and
disseminating research, information and resources that enrich Head Start
program delivery.
CONTACT: Ailis Aaron, (703) 276-3265 or aaaron@hastingsgroup.com
EDITOR’S NOTE: A copy of the unreleased HHS
report, “Report to Congress on Head Start Monitoring, Fiscal Years 2001
and 2002,” is available by contacting (703) 276-3258 or
ckraly@hastingsgroup.com. The executive summary is available via email as
a PDF file and the full text will be provided via hand/overnight
delivery.
|
