THE FILES ARE SOOOOOOOOOOO SLOPPY...AND MORE!

Occasionally over the past months I have noted here of the problems at the Polk County Opportunity Council, the community action agency which provides services to the area's low income families but is best known for operating the Head Start programme throughout much of the county. These problems led to federal auditors checking out the agency, and their Head Start Review Report of PCOC came out recently.

The Lakeland Ledger was assured by PCOC officials that the newspaper would receive a copy of the document, but after broken promises the Ledger finally got it...from federal officials. I can understand why PCOC would not want to give it out.

The report lists 14 areas that PCOC is required to correct in order to not jepordize it's $7.5 million dollars in annual federal Head Start funding. Most of those areas concern poor fiscal management and sloppy recordkeeping with both PCOC and it's property ownership arm, the Heartland Economic Development Authority.

The Florida Department of Community Affairs also has the agency under the microscope in several areas, including:

--- Providing scholarships to students, including the executive director's nephew, with "no record of enrollment or completion of class" or "no record of attendance or completion of class". Also recipients receiving more money than the classes they signed up for cost and lack of proper income verification to prove that they qualified to receive the scholarship.

--- Questionable aspects of a PCOC-sponsored trip for children to a camp in North Carolina, such as not bidding out the bus charter as required, paying for extra miles for the buses prior to the trip, drivers' overtime pay, improperly claiming the expenses as "crisis assistance", and charging parents $50 per person to attend when grant money was available instead.

--- Inaccurate inventories of equipment.

--- Double paying for services such as pest control and janitorial services at PCOC buildings. That's paying the vendor twice for the same job!

--- Poor financial controls. PCOC should maintain a seperate account for three programmes the agency provides, but instead combined them into one account.

--- Improperly accepting cash payments from clients for rent/mortgage assistance.

People getting financial help from PCOC to pay their rents or mortgages paid their portion of housing payments to PCOC instead of their landlords or mortgage companies. PCOC then combined the partial payments with agency money, writing checks for the entire payments. This was done, DCA said, so PCOC could claim the payments as "cash match.

"PCOC has to come up with cash to qualify for matching money. The usual -- and allowable -- way agencies raise matching funds is by soliciting private donations and holding fund-raisers.

"Under no circumstances should cash be received from clients and processed through the agency's fiscal office," the DCA report said.

--- The size of PCOC's board of directors.