The director of a women’s shelter in Prince George’s County was asked to resign this week after clients staying at the domestic violence safe house complained about rotten food, pests and mold inside the home.
The women and children staying at the Family Crisis Center Inc. of Prince George’s County were moved to other accommodations this weekend after the board of directors for the independent nonprofit group asked executive director Sophie Ford to resign Thursday.
Ford was accused by residents of neglecting their complaints about poor conditions at the home, which can house up to 55 people and is the only emergency temporary shelter for domestic violence survivors in the county.
“I know we owe the community an apology and we’ve learned some hard lessons,” said Andrea Morris, who sits on the nonprofit board and was appointed interim director of the center. She will oversee repairs during the next week.
“We regret the situation tremendously and the board realized we need to have more direct ongoing oversight of the organization,” she said.
Morris said the board had misplaced its trust in Ford, who initially denied the allegations from residents, but after both the county and state government sent officials to inspect the safe house, the board asked the executive director to step down.
The center was founded in 1981 and receives all its funding from public sources, including an annual contract with Prince George’s County, which leads the state in domestic violence-related slayings.
This is not the first time the shelter has run into problems. In 2015, the county’s Office of Ethics and Accountability received a tip that later proved credible about a lack of “quality controls” at the shelter and recommended greater oversight and a “facility repairs plan” for the facility.
The Prince George’s Department of Family Services, which contracts with the shelter, is helping the nonprofit group pay to move the more than 40 women and their children to safe locations during the holiday season. They expect to move everyone back into the home by Jan. 1 before school begins and construction work is done.
Prince George's County housing inspectors and family services officials are investigating conditions inside a county-funded safe house for domestic-violence survivors after residents reported living in mold- and pest-infested rooms, eating spoiled food and enduring cold nights without heat.
The county pays the private nonprofit Family Crisis Center Inc. of Prince George's County $385,000 a year to operate the 55-bed shelter, which is the only facility in the county that provides temporary housing for abused women and their children.
The Family Crisis Center, which also offers counseling and outreach services to domestic-violence victims, receives hundreds of thousands more dollars each year in state and local grants.
Residents of the shelter — whose location is kept private for security reasons — approached reporters during the weekend to say that their concerns had been ignored by the organization's executive director, Sophie Ford. The residents presented videos and photos of mold in bathrooms, broken windows and rust.
One young mother, who declined to give her full name out of fear for her safety, said that shelter staff members were friendly, but that there was never enough money for groceries.
"The food was like slop," said the woman, who asked to be identified by her first name, Jay. "It got so bad that my children wouldn't eat it, and I wouldn't let them. I went to the store nearby to buy whatever I could find."
Ford did not respond to requests for comment. But in a statement posted on the crisis center's Facebook page, the organization said it is investigating the complaints and making repairs to the century-old building. The statement denied that the safe house lacked heat or that any of its 46 residents consumed rotten food.
"It is our highest priority to protect our population," the statement said. "Therefore we take any and all complaints very serious. . . . These allegations strike at the core of our mission."
Elana Belon-Butler, director of the county's Department of Family Services, visited the crisis center facility on Monday and saw leaking shower heads, filthy air vents and other problems.
"I was not aware of the extent, severity and complexity of the issues," said Belon-Butler, adding that she is awaiting a complete report from inspectors. "I saw a number of things I am concerned about."
The county Department of Family Services conducts quarterly site inspections of shelters it contracts with, notifying the organizations ahead of arrival. Officials are reviewing past reports, including the one from the most recent Nov. 29 site visit. The shelter has been funded by the county since 1993.
"Specifically, what we are going to wait to see is whether or not there has been any violation of the grant agreement," Belon-
Butler said. "We are taking this very seriously."
Prince George's leads the state in domestic-violence-related homicides. The safe house is part of a network of services — including a year-old Family Justice Center focused on helping abuse victims — aimed at combating the violence.
The Family Crisis Center was paid $108,000 by the county this fall to expand services to southern Prince George's. Since 2012, the organization has won at least $630,000 in county grants. The shelter also received $1.2 million in the past two years from the Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention.
A grant coordinator from the state inspected the shelter on Tuesday after WUSA-TV reported on the residents' complaints, agency spokesman Robert James said. No major problems were reported during two site visits earlier this year.
The state also investigated complaints about the shelter in 2015, James said. After several staff members were removed, he said, conditions improved.
Keiyauna Stanley, a former manager of the shelter, said she was fired in November after contacting the organization's board of directors about conditions at the house and unpaid utility bills.
Carolyn White Williams, the head of a nonprofit that donates toys and clothes to the women in the shelter, said, "The issues have been going on for a mighty long time."
White Williams, founder of Sister 4 Sister Inc., said she complained about insufficient funds and shelter mismanagement during a recent County Council oversight hearing but did not receive a response that satisfied her.
"My heart is with those women. It makes me really, really angry," she said.
County Council Chair Dannielle M. Glaros (D) called the allegations about the shelter "disturbing and unacceptable."
"We anxiously await more details from the inspections and the results of this investigation before determining the best next steps to support the needs of the residents of the Family Crisis Center," she said in a statement.
Prince George's County State's Attorney Angela Alsobrooks (D), who is running for county executive, successfully sought state funding this year to provide additional short-term housing options for domestic-violence victims.
Her spokesman, John Erzen, said Alsobrooks was motivated in part by long-standing concerns about the crisis center.
"We wanted to try and bring another option when people are looking to get out of dangerous situations," Erzen said.
Nearly a year before the national furor over foreclosures began, Lisa Epstein, a nurse, ran into three other amateur sleuths who separately were investigating shoddy practices at mortgage companies.
While meeting for the first time in November at an old one-story law office in this city, the four strangers compared notes and began to piece together the scope of the problem: All over the United States, big financial firms might have been using fraudulent paperwork to evict struggling borrowers from their homes.
Now tight-knit, the group is largely responsible for setting off the growing firestorm over foreclosures.
Epstein, a Fairfax County native who became an activist after she lost her job and became unable to pay her mortgage, launched a grass-roots movement against the country's largest banks, which are facing the prospects of billions of dollars in soured loans and legal expenses.
Joining her were Michael Redman, whose foreclosure blog drew the White House into the controversy, and Thomas and Ariane Ice, who run a boutique law firm that was the first to depose "robo-signer" Jeffrey Stephan of Ally Financial's GMAC mortgage unit in December.
In addition to trying to educate the public about the issue, the group had also been quietly passing along stacks of problematic documents to state and federal regulators, lawmakers, judges and law enforcement officials.
They pointed out that document processors such as Stephan had admitted in sworn depositions that they had signed off on up to 10,000 foreclosure documents a month, even though they had not reviewed them as legally required. They also shed light on foreclosure cases in which the paperwork appeared to have been backdated, forged or improperly notarized.
Now, at least five major mortgage companies have frozen some foreclosures. Attorneys general from each state have joined forces to investigate, and a federal task force is considering criminal charges in the matter. Some bank stocks have fallen on concerns that the issue of flawed paperwork could be a coverup for something even more serious. And economists worry that the fragile housing market, where one in four houses on sale is in foreclosure, could take a devastating hit.
Although the uproar over foreclosures might seem sudden, for the activists, it was a long time coming.
Epstein, 45, a George Mason University graduate who moved from the Washington area to Florida for the sunshine 13 years ago, first began to suspect something was wrong in February 2009 after she was served foreclosure papers without any acknowledgment that she had applied for a loan modification.
Redman, 35, said he knew there was a problem as early as January 2008, when he was trying to help his fiancee fight foreclosure and noticed that one of the key documents that proved ownership of the loan had suspicious signatures.
The Ices' eureka moment came late one night in early 2009 when Ariane was looking at the 700 cases in their database and noticed that a lot of the problematic paperwork had been signed by the same people.
As the four of them continued to investigate the issue, the months became filled with self-doubt.
"Plaintiffs' attorneys were scoffing at us; judges were laughing. You get to the point where you think, 'Maybe I'm the crazy one,' " said Thomas Ice, 50.
The group members, who are on the east coast of Florida, where nearly half of the homes on the market are in foreclosure, was soon joined by like-minded lawyers, homeowners and activists on the west coast. Together, the growing movement began to organize events at bar association meetings, host happy hours for distressed homeowners, and follow prominent public officials wherever they were speaking to get their attention. They launched Web sites to get the word out to homeowners' attorneys around the country.
Larry Schwartztol, a New York-based staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, has been working with Epstein's group to investigate whether Florida courts violated due process by short-circuiting normal procedures in foreclosure cases. He said the research the group is doing is "extremely impressive" and "indispensable."
Although there was no formal organization behind their effort, each of the activists took on distinct roles.
The Ices and seven other lawyers at their firm began deposing "robo-signers" at major mortgage companies, and, in an unusual move in the competitive legal industry, they began distributing the transcripts online.
Homeowners' lawyers nationwide began using the documents to defend their clients. Thomas Cox, a lawyer in Maine, saw Ice Legal's deposition of Stephan, the Ally robo-signer, and decided to depose him again for a case in his state in June. Cox was able to get his client's foreclosure judgment vacated.
Redman, who had been working in marketing for the online department of a local car dealership, set up a Web site, 4closurefraud.org, where he aggregated and analyzed key court documents related to faulty foreclosures. It was an instant hit - the Huffington Post of foreclosures - with Redman's snarky commentary, use of large pictures and graphics to explain complex subjects and his apparent glee - signified by an animated laughing "Jerry"- when he discovered a new way to attack the banks.
It was Redman's Web site, which is now being funded by a local lawyer, Carol C. Asbury, that took the lead in drawing President Obama into the foreclosure controversy this month by making a major issue out of a little-known notary bill, several lawyers around the United States said. Redman said that a reader had e-mailed him about the bill that had sailed through the Senate and was sitting on Obama's desk. The bill would make it easier to foreclose because notary signatures would be valid across state lines.
Epstein, a single mom who once worked as a cancer nurse, became the group's liaison to homeowners, setting up an online discussion site for them to vent their frustrations and debate strategies.
For months, she fired off up to five letters a night to officials, judges or anyone she could think of after her daughter went to sleep. Her letters were prone to hyperbole, but her explanations of the potential for fraud in various steps of the foreclosure process were laid out. In one, she wrote to the Florida Supreme Court: "I am outraged by the perfidious harvest poisoning the financial and emotional well being of individuals worldwide due to the appalling opportunism of Wall Street's historic, unrequited love affair with mortgage backed securities."
The first major lender to take corrective action on foreclosures - Ally Financial, which is majority-owned by the U.S. Treasury - has declined to comment about what prompted it to freeze foreclosures Sept. 20, but Epstein, Redman and the Ices say they and others who are defending homeowners applied so much pressure on the company that it would have been difficult for it not to act.
On April 28, one week after the four activists had staged a rally at the courthouse in the state capital, they had their first major breakthrough: The Florida attorney general's office announced an investigation into a "foreclosure mill" law firm called the Florida Default Law Group for allegedly presenting misleading or false documents to courts.
Knowing that the law firm had been hired by some of the nation's largest lenders, Epstein and Redman went to the local courthouse and began delving into its filings.
It wasn't until last month that their work began to draw national attention. The Florida Default Law Group confirmed in court filings Sept. 7 that the foreclosure documents that had been signed by Stephan, the robo-signer, "may not have been properly verified."
Redman posted the news on his Web site on Sept. 14. "ALL OF THESE AFFIDAVITS FROM THESE CHARACTERS ARE INVALID IF CHALLENGED!!!," he wrote, predicting it would affect "HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF CASES!!!"
One week later, Ally Financial announced that it would halt foreclosure sales in nearly two dozen states. At least four other major mortgage companies followed suit.
Bank of America announced on Monday that it would resume home foreclosures in nearly two dozen states, despite the running controversy over how banks handled tens of thousands of cases of homeowners facing eviction.
Bank of America, the nation’s largest bank and the servicer of roughly one in five American mortgages, insisted that it had not found a single example where a foreclosure proceeding was brought in error.
The move is also likely to encourage other giant lenders, like JPMorgan Chase, to resume the foreclosure process that threatens two million homeowners.
Meanwhile, GMAC Mortgage, whose procedures helped prompt the controversy when one its executives testified that he had signed 10,000 documents in a month, is also proceeding with foreclosures.
“We announced a temporary suspension of evictions and foreclosure sales in the 23 judicial states several weeks ago so we could commence the appropriate review,” said Gina Proia, a spokeswoman for GMAC. “As cases are being reviewed and, when needed, remediated, the foreclosure process moves forward as appropriate.”
Guy Cecala of Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry publication, said: “This draws a line in the sand that the banks expect this problem will be over in relatively short order and it will be back to business as usual. If Bank of America can do it, certainly the smaller ones will follow suit.”
Bank of America plans to begin filing new paperwork for 102,000 foreclosures by Monday.
Consumer advocates and lawyers for homeowners expressed skepticism that Bank of America could complete a review of the paperwork so quickly. But the banking industry has come under increasing pressure from investors to resolve the problem.
Investors have fled bank stocks in recent days, worrying that the foreclosure halt would cost banks billions of dollars and inflict further harm on the nation’s struggling housing market. Bank of America is scheduled to report its latest quarterly results on Tuesday. Its shares have suffered more than those of other big banks, so any sign that the crisis is easing is likely to be greeted favorably by shareholders.
Reports of improper procedures at mortgage servicers, like having officials sign thousands of documents a month — so-called robo-signers — also have set off a political furor. On Wednesday, all 50 state attorneys general announced an investigation of mortgage servicing.
Bank of America said it would resume foreclosures in the 23 states where judicial approval was required after an internal review turned up no evidence that cases were filed in error.
However, Bank of America’s suspension will remain in effect in the 27 other states that do not require a judge’s approval to foreclose, as the bank’s paperwork review proceeds state by state. It was the only bank to initiate a nationwide freeze.
“We did a thorough review of the process, and we found the facts underlying the decision to foreclose have been accurate,” said Barbara J. Desoer, president of Bank of America Home Loans. “We paused while we were doing that, and now we’re moving forward.”
In the other 27 states, Ms. Desoer said, she expects foreclosures to resume within weeks.
Bank of America was careful to note that the major holders of mortgages — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — as well as private investors had signed off on its decision and had been consulted during the review. Of the 14 million mortgages it services — about $2.1 trillion worth — about half are owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant mortgage holding companies now controlled by the Treasury.
About 30 percent are owned by institutional investors, like hedge funds, pension funds and insurance companies, while Bank of America holds 20 percent.
“We voluntarily paused our process in the 23 judicial states, not because there was evidence of problems — there was not — but because we wanted to ensure our customers they are being treated fairly,” said Dan Frahm, a bank spokesman.
Even as Bank of America and GMAC signaled their resumption of foreclosures, a Citigroup executive said the company was confident in its procedures. “The integrity of Citi’s foreclosures process is sound,” John C. Gerspach, Citigroup’s chief financial officer, said on a conference call.
In Bank of America’s case, the foreclosures are resuming in the 23 states where judicial procedure is required because the halt was initiated there first, on Oct. 1. It was extended to the other 27 states on Oct. 8.
From the beginning, Bank of America signaled that it did not expect the review to go on for an extended period. On Oct. 8, its chief executive, Brian Moynihan, promised a quick conclusion.
Angelo R. Mozilo, the founder and former chief executive of Countrywide Financial, once the nation’s largest mortgage lender, agreed to pay $67.5 million Friday to settle a civil fraud case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission last year.
The settlement came just days before the case against Mr. Mozilo and two former colleagues was scheduled to go to trial before a jury in Los Angeles.
The two colleagues settled their cases Friday as well. David Sambol, the former president of Countrywide, agreed to pay $5.52 million, and Eric Sieracki, the former chief financial officer, consented to $130,000.
Under the agreement, the three men did not admit wrongdoing.
Mr. Mozilo’s agreement with the government represents a humbling moment for one of most audacious and flamboyant chief executives in the financial industry. The son of a Bronx butcher, Mr. Mozilo started Countrywide in 1969 with David Loeb, a business partner; together the men built the company into a behemoth with $11.4 billion in revenues at its peak in 2006.
But Countrywide’s foray into subprime lending and other risky loans led to its downfall, and in early 2008, hobbled by mounting losses on loans, the company was purchased by Bank of America in a fire sale. Mr. Mozilo left the company shortly thereafter.
In its complaint filed in June 2009, the S.E.C. had accused Mr. Mozilo, Mr. Sambol and Mr. Sieracki of hiding from investors the growing risks in Countrywide’s operations. The complaint also contended that Mr. Mozilo and Mr. Sambol improperly generated profits on insider stock sales even as they were alerted to the company’s widening woes.
Mr. Mozilo was not present for the court hearing.
Mr. Mozilo’s trial had been widely anticipated because it represented one of the few public prosecutions of a case against a major participant in the mortgage crisis. Still, both the defense and the prosecution faced big risks if they lost at trial, legal experts said, and this may have propelled the recent negotiations to bring about the deal. The settlement was approved by John F. Walter, the federal judge overseeing the case.
Had the S.E.C. won the case, it would have helped the agency re-establish its reputation as an investor advocate, which was badly damaged by inaction in the years leading up to the Madoff Ponzi scheme and the mortgage debacle. A loss would have been another black eye for the S.E.C.
A victory would also have been crucial for Mr. Mozilo, who would be concerned that a criminal prosecution might follow a loss in the civil case.
Sources: AP, CBS News, CNN, NY Times, Countrywide, BOFA, Youtube
The White House Tuesday rejected calls for a broad moratorium on home foreclosures, saying it feared such a step could harm the U.S. housing market and hinder a housing recovery.
"There are a series of unintended consequences to a broader moratorium," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
Disclosures that some big mortgage processors filed affidavits without proper scrutiny in thousands of foreclosure cases has drawn calls from some lawmakers and civil rights groups for foreclosures to be halted in all 50 states.
But it is not clear if any individual or single regulator has the power to impose a nationwide moratorium, with most mortgage regulation conducted on a state-by-state basis.
The health of the housing market is a major concern as the Obama administration tries to step up the economy's recovery from its worst downturn since the 1930s.
Gibbs said the administration is determined to "get to the bottom of" a problem of hasty foreclosures.
"We want to take the just and necessary steps to ensure that the process is being followed legally," he said. "At the same time, we don't want to see broader harm done to the housing market and to the housing recovery."
Lawmakers are acutely aware of voter angst over jobs and the sluggish economy with the Nov. 2 congressional election three weeks away, and regulators face heavy pressure to prevent a repeat of the 2007-2009 financial crisis that began when the U.S. housing bubble burst.
Temporary pauses in foreclosures have expanded among major lenders as the courts, lawmakers and state attorneys general investigate whether banks supplied shoddy paperwork to support evictions of delinquent borrowers.
But an investor group and industry experts warned Monday that a nationwide foreclosure moratorium could penalize pension funds, insurance companies and other investors and make new loans more expensive.
N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper is giving Bank of America until Friday to halt foreclosure proceedings in the state amid concerns the Charlotte bank and other lenders haven't properly reviewed documents.
In a letter sent to the bank, Cooper questioned why Bank of America voluntarily suspended foreclosures in 23 states that involve a judicial process but not in its home state. North Carolina requires a "quasi-judicial" process in which clerks of court frequently review affidavits submitted by banks.
"If Bank of America has halted foreclosure proceedings in other states due to flaws in its affidavit process, we do not understand why Bank of America should routinely continue with foreclosures with the same flaws in North Carolina," Cooper's office wrote.
The attorney general wants the bank's foreclosures suspended until it shows its processes are legal. Bank of America said it's responding to officials' concerns.
"Our initial assessment findings show the factual loan information underlying our foreclosures is accurate," spokesman Dan Frahm said, adding the bank continues its "exhaustive efforts to assist our customers who have been unable to make their mortgage payments."
The statement did not address how Bank of America would respond to the Friday deadline set by Cooper.
Cooper has asked 13 other large mortgage servicers to also halt foreclosures in the state until they prove compliance. Those lenders have until Oct. 12 to respond to the attorney general's questions.
North Carolina is also seeking more information about practices at Ally Financial, which has halted foreclosure-related evictions in North Carolina and 22 other states.
In an interview, Cooper said lenders could be breaking an N.C. law requiring a good-faith effort to work out loan modifications if they're improperly handling foreclosure paperwork. One of his main concerns is that homeowners get a "fair shot" at loan modifications, he said.
The attorney general has broad powers to investigate unfair and deceptive business practices, including assessing civil penalties. Cooper said he didn't want to discuss possible penalties until he has heard back from the lenders.
"We are looking to work with the lenders to make sure they get it right," he said.
Among the lenders, Wells Fargo has said its procedures are appropriate and that it doesn't plan to halt foreclosures. BB&T and HSBC also said their processes comply with the law. Citigroup said it doesn't believe a suspension is necessary because it has no reason to believe its employees haven't been following procedures. JPMorgan and Ally have said they are reviewing affidavits and will fix any problems.
SunTrust said it's reviewing the attorney general's letter, while MetLife said it intends to cooperate. OneWest declined comment. Others didn't respond or couldn't be reached.
The attorney general's move comes after Bank of America, Ally and JPMorgan Chase stopped some foreclosure-related actions in about half of the country after concerns that employees and outside lawyers signed documents without verifying information. JPMorgan's moratorium includes North Carolina.
Attorneys general in other states and members of Congress have also called for foreclosure suspensions as well as investigations of lenders' procedures. On Wednesday, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., called on bank regulators to review the foreclosure activities at Bank of America, JPMorgan and Ally.
In some cases, in a process nicknamed "robosigning," bank employees have said they have rapidly signed documents, raising questions about whether they are properly verifying information about homes that are being foreclosed upon. In a deposition obtained by the N.C. attorney general, a Bank of America employee in Texas testified that she would sign as many as 8,000 documents in a month, often in batches.
In another case, a Wells Fargo supervisor based in Fort Mill testified to signing 50 to 150 documents per day. A Wells spokesman noted a judge reviewed the bank's procedures and dismissed the borrower's case, confirming the foreclosure as valid.
Although foreclosures are traumatic for homeowners and damaging to neighborhoods, analysts say the selling off of these homes to financially stable buyers is an important step in a much-needed recovery for the housing market. "If you freeze foreclosures, the overhang in housing gets worse," said Virginia-based banking consultant Bert Ely. "The market isn't clearing."
Cooper said he hopes lenders can work quickly through the process of verifying their practices.
"We don't want to stop foreclosures that are legitimate and need to happen," he said.
"We want to make sure that homeowners are getting a fair shot at keeping their homes and the process has been done legally."
For many North Carolina homeowners, losing their homes to foreclosure was devastating. It is beyond outrageous that many banks were so cavalier with the process that employees didn't even bother to read or verify the information in foreclosure documents.
It is even more dismaying to us that one or both of Charlotte's big banks may be among the culprits in this travesty of faulty work known as "robo-signing."
Bank of America has halted foreclosures while it investigates and straightens out faulty paperwork. It's delaying foreclosures in 23 states including South Carolina. Over the weekend, questions arose about Wells Fargo's foreclosure documents. Wells said it doesn't plan to delay foreclosures because it's confident its foreclosures documents are accurate.
We're not so confident. N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper is right to ask lenders to suspend foreclosures in this state until they can show their process conforms with the law. Given how badly this state was hit with foreclosures, banks involved in lending to North Carolinians should be probing robo-signing practices.
Nationwide, Ally Financial's GMAC Mortgage unit and JPMorgan Chase have halted tens of thousands of foreclosures. Ally stopped evictions here and in 22 other states. Robo-signing is so prevalent more banks are expected to follow suit.
What are those practices? In some cases, bank employees admit they signed foreclosure papers without reading them or determining if crucial information - such as how much borrowers still owed on the property - is accurate. Sometimes documents were notarized illegally with indications that the notary did not actually witness the signing of papers.
These practices are unacceptable. Some appear to be illegal. The N.C. attorney general's office notified Ally last week that using unverified affidavits could constitute fraud. Cooper is right when he says that such practices could mean that "some N.C. homeowners may not be getting a good-faith shot at loan modifications."
This mess is exasperating. The reckless lending practices of financial institutions helped cause the foreclosure tsunami that swept over the country. That damage has been so hard to repair in part because many have been tight-fisted with money they could have loaned consumers and small businesses. Many lenders have been reluctant to modify mortgages, instead moving much too swiftly on foreclosure.
Some of that rush resulted in faulty paperwork that will be costly to fix. Courts may impose sanctions on lenders or force banks to pay borrowers' legal costs in these cases. Judges may even dismiss the foreclosures, barring lenders from refiling and awarding the home to the borrower.
These lenders deserve to be penalized if they failed to meet legal requirements before evicting defaulting borrowers from their homes. Consumers, who often also were losing their financial stability, deserved that consideration.
Belatedly, many lenders will now have to meet those requirements. Investigations by attorneys generals in several states and a probe by federal regulators are forcing them to do so. It did not have to come to this. But it is an apt reminder of why reforms and better oversight of financial institutions are so badly needed.
NC State officials say the motivation behind a no-bid contract to provide diabetes supplies for people on Medicaid was the need to cut costs in difficult budget times.
But critics - from Government watchdogs to health educators - say North Carolina may have been too quick to embrace such contracts after awarding the diabetes contract to a company whose owners have a troubled business history.
They also question whether the use of such contracts provides the sort of Transparency in government that Gov. Bev Perdue promised.
The NC State Medicaid office has signed Charlotte-based Prodigy Diabetes Care to a two-year contract to provide supplies for about 50,000 people on Medicaid who have diabetes.
Prodigy is run by two brothers, Ramzi Abulhaj and Rick Admani, who have been involved in a string of legal battles involving companies they started in Florida, including a Bankruptcy and Lawsuits Alleging Patent Piracy.
The state signed a contract with the little-known company in October, two months after Prodigy was founded. Until word leaked about the no-bid contract, competitors, retailers and diabetes educators were unaware that state officials had been talking to Prodigy's parent company for months. People with diabetes on the government health insurance program did not know they would need to get new meters to monitor their blood glucose levels.
"We weren't given all the information up front," said Andy Ingram, owner of Home Assist Medical Equipment in Laurinburg.
"We were given information in bits and pieces," said Ingram, a retailer who will distribute the Prodigy equipment to patients. "We're finding things out after they actually occurred."
The Prodigy contract is one of several no-bid deals the state Department of Health and Human Services has signed in the last few months, using special powers granted last summer by the state legislature. Legislators hoped the state agency would save money by eliminating time needed to request and evaluate bids.
Bob Phillips, Executive Director of Common Cause North Carolina, said no-bid contracting practices should be reviewed and made consistent, and the reasons for eliminating competition made narrower and more clearly defined.
"I think it sends a bad signal to the public at a time when there is already a lot of suspicion about how open things are in state government," Phillips said. "I think the governor has made great strides. There still remain questions, and this just adds to that."
DHHS Secretary Lanier Cansler has said the department is pushed to squeeze savings out of the fast-growing Medicaid program. The contract with Prodigy is estimated to save the state $4.4million over two years.
"This contract is short term and allows savings of millions of dollars," Chrissy Pearson, a spokeswoman for Perdue, said in a written statement. "The secretary has confirmed with the governor that his department is monitoring closely the quality and accessibility of this product while protecting the quality of patient care."
Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger, an Eden Republican, said no-bid contracts should be exceptions and that agencies have an obligation in those cases to make sure the state is getting quality services at competitive prices.
In circumstances where agencies want to move quickly, it may be a good idea to seek informal bids from several companies to find the best deal, Berger said.
"We're talking about taxpayers' dollars," he said. "The obligation is to be very careful with that money."
Sen. William Purcell, a Laurinburg Democrat who helps write the budget for DHHS, has fielded complaints about Prodigy and has heard that the state might face a lawsuit from those who don't like the no-bid contract.
Legislators told DHHS to wring out savings in a time when more people are signing up for Medicaid but the state budget is shrinking.
"It's hard to tell them to save money, then say we don't like what you're doing," Purcell said.
NC Health Care Advocates are questioning contracts the NC State Department of Health and Human Services awarded in recent months without competitive bidding.
Lawmakers allowed the no-bid contracts so DHHS could save time and money during a difficult budget year. Department officials maintain that the contracts are with companies with proven track records and can provide better value.
Still, some people question the fairness of the deals and the potential for conflicts of interest.
"No-bid contracts are bad government," said Adam Searing, director of the North Carolina Health Access Coalition, a group that advocates health care reform to benefit uninsured people.
Searing notes that DHHS Secretary Lanier Cansler was a lobbyist before Gov. Beverly Perdue picked him in January to run the state's largest agency. Three of the five no-bid contracts awarded in recent months have gone to clients of his former lobbying firm: two to the Carolinas Center for Medical Excellence and one to SAS Institute.
CCME's contracts, valued at $29 million total, are to review personal care services and outpatient therapies for determination of clinical necessity. DHHS officials estimate they will save the state at least $24 million.
SAS has an $800,000 subcontract on a $229 million Medicaid information systems contract that was awarded through a competitive bidding process in 2008.
DHHS spokesman Brad Deen said Cansler "has taken deliberate actions to abstain himself from dealings and negotiations involving former clients." He cited a June 9 memo Cansler issued to Deputy Secretary Allen Feezor in which Feezor and other officials were instructed to handle any contract decisions involving Cansler's former clients.
"I don't think, from what I've seen, anything untoward is going on from (Cansler's) perspective, but it gives the appearance of favoritism. That's the problem with these no-bid contracts," Searing said.
Another of the no-bid contracts went to Charlotte-based Prodigy Diabetes Care LLC, which makes diabetes testing equipment. Officials estimate the two-year, $27 million contract will save taxpayers $4.5 million.
Raleigh pharmacist Mike James said he never heard of Prodigy before its blood glucose meters started showing up on his shelves in recent months. Now, the company's monitoring products are the only ones that his customers on Medicaid can buy.
"It is concerning to me. We haven't seen any history on this product," James said.
Federal records show the owners of Prodigy previously ran a company called Vitalcare that filed for bankruptcy after getting sued for patent infringement. The FDA also issued safety warnings for Vitalcare's manufacturing plant in China.
Charlotte used incentives to convince Prodigy's parent company, Diagnostic Devices Inc., to move its headquarters and manufacturing to the Queen City. With the new state contract and tax incentives, the company has promised to add space and jobs.
James said the lack of a track history for Prodigy raises questions for him.
"Is the product going to be in the pharmacies as people need them because of the toughness in supply?" he said. "Is the product going to work efficiently?"
The fifth no-bid contract went to MedSolutions to reduce redundancies and inefficiencies in radiological imaging. The two-year, $230 million deal is expected to save the state $77 million, DHHS officials said.
President Barack Obama on Friday is making his promised hard pivot to Jobs, following up the morning’s release of December Unemployment figures with an East Room announcement at 2:40 p.m. ET about stimulus dollars going to clean-tech jobs.
A White House official said: “The President will announce new Recovery Act funding for clean technology manufacturing jobs. The funds will be awarded to deserving projects that will support tens of thousands of high quality clean energy jobs and the domestic manufacturing of advanced clean energy technologies including solar, wind and efficiency and energy management technologies.”
Also, the White House is expected to focus on events on the economy next week.
The president will be pushing Congress to pass several new jobs measures that he’ll be rolling out in the run-up to his State of the Union address, likely in early February.
The key elements were foreshadowed in a Dec. 8 speech at the Brookings Institution: Infrastructure improvements, green jobs and small-business incentives for hiring and investment. All that will fit into a middle-class agenda that is designed to boost Democratic congressional candidates in a dicey political environment.
As the second part of a one-two administration economic punch, Attorney General Eric Holder has chosen Palm Beach — ground zero for Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme – for a major speech at lunchtime today setting out a marker that financial security will be a priority, in addition to national security.
This is the most specific the attorney general been about his determination to target mortgage, security, and bailout and stimulus fraud.
From the attorney general’s prepared remarks, to be delivered at 12:15 p.m. in West Palm Beach, to the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches:
“In times of recession, when every dollar counts and each dollar is counted, financial wrongdoing comes to light. Unbalanced books are revealed. Pyramid schemes collapse. We need a bold strategy equal to the challenge – a comprehensive, coordinated plan of action that strikes at the core of financial fraud schemes wherever they may be found.
This is precisely what our new, national effort will accomplish. The Department of Justice, working in concert with the White House and a network of government agencies, will use every tool at our disposal – including new resources, advanced technologies and communications capabilities, and the very best talent we have – to prevent, prosecute, and punish financial fraud.
“The cornerstone of this work is a new, Interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. This Task Force was established by Executive Order of the President. It was launched in December and is led by the Department of Justice.
At the core of the Task Force’s mission is a more robust and strategic law enforcement effort. Through this effort, critical information will be shared in real time across the federal government – and with our state and local law enforcement partners – so that we can stop fraud schemes in their tracks.
We will focus on four key types of financial crime:
Mortgage Fraud) — from the simplest of ‘flip’ schemes to systematic lending fraud in our nationwide housing market;
Securities Fraud) – from traditional insider trading,
Ponzi Schemes):, Ex: Accounting fraud, to misrepresentations to investors;
Recovery Act and Rescue Fraud) – including the theft of federal stimulus funds and the illegal use of taxpayer dollars intended to shore up our financial institutions; and Financial discrimination – including predatory lending practices in minority communities and the sale of financial products that exploit the elderly and disadvantaged.”
The economy lost more jobs than expected in December while the unemployment rate held steady at 10 percent, as a sluggish economic recovery has yet to revive hiring among the nation's employers.
The Labor Department said Friday that employers cut 85,000 jobs last month, worse than the 8,000 drop analysts expected.
A sharp drop in the labor force, a sign more of the jobless are giving up on their search for work, kept the unemployment rate at the same rate as in November. Once people stop looking for jobs, they are no longer counted among the unemployed.
When discouraged workers and part-time workers who would prefer full-time jobs are included, the so-called "underemployment" rate in December rose to 17.3 percent, from 17.2 percent in October. That's just below a revised figure of 17.4 percent in October, the highest on records dating from 1994.
Revisions to the previous two months' data showed the economy actually generated 4,000 jobs in November, the first gain in nearly two years. But the revisions showed it also lost 16,000 more jobs than previously estimated in October.
The report caps a disastrous year for U.S. workers. Employers cut 4.2 million jobs in 2009, and the unemployment rate averaged 9.3 percent. That's compared to an average of 5.8 percent in 2008 and 4.6 percent in 2007. The economy has lost more than 8 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007.
Most economists worry that 2010 won't be much better. Federal Reserve officials, in a meeting last month, anticipated that unemployment will decline "only gradually," according to minutes of the meeting released earlier this week. The Fed and most private economists expect the unemployment rate will remain above 9 percent through the end of this year.
(On the clip below Whitehouse Domestic Policy Adviser Melody Barnes explains to Joe Scarborough of "Morning Joe" how the Stimulus money helped save Teacher Jobs nationwide.
I guess Ms. Barnes never reads the Charlotte Observer because in Charlotte, NC almost 700 teachers were laid off this year with only about 350-400 re-hired. I wonder why the Charlotte-Meck. School district didn't use the Stimulus money to save more Teacher jobs. In fact I think most of the Stimulus Money distributed to Charlotte was pretty much wasted by regional Politicians, especially the Charlotte-Meck. County Commissioners who are notorius for wasting Federal money.
Charlotte Politicians have always seemed to care more about building Jails than Educating young people. I wonder why.)
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Peter Gorman said Tuesday night the district will fill 286 teacher positions that had been eliminated earlier this year because of budget cuts.
The news means that some of the 665 CMS teachers laid off in recent months may have a chance to rejoin the school district. Those include some teachers with four years or less of experience, part-timers who want to go full time, and retirees not drawing a pension.
But not everyone who lost their job will be brought back, Gorman told school board members. For example, the district won't rehire teachers who were laid off because of poor performance.
And teachers may also face competition from others who have applied for jobs within the district.
The 286 positions being filled will join other jobs that have already been restored by CMS. That includes career teachers with five years or more of experience who have been rehired. In addition, the district is using stimulus money for other positions.
Tuesday's announcement comes less than a week before teachers are to report to work for the new school year.
Gorman said the district planned to post general job descriptions of open positions. A breakdown of which schools will get the jobs wasn't immediately available, with school administrators planning to work with principals to settle on staffing plans.
The teacher layoffs were part of more than $100 million in budget cuts CMS leaders have announced since the spring in anticipation of receiving less money from the state and county. In all, the district has cut more than 1,175 staff positions since spring.
But Gorman said the state cuts aren't as much as originally predicted, in part because the recently adopted state budget includes a 1-cent sales tax increase. He said the state revenue package helped to spare CMS about $20.6 million in cuts.
“We planned for the worst,” Gorman said. “We hoped for the best. I cannot believe that I ever thought cuts of this magnitude would still be the best, but it is still not as bad as we originally thought.”
CMS plans to spend $13.8 million to bring back the 286 teacher positions, with money also going to hire 20 high school counselors and secretaries. About $5.7 million will be spent on technology and textbooks to offset state cuts in those areas.
Gorman cautioned the budget estimates are still preliminary until state education officials tell CMS how many teaching positions will be allocated to the system.
Then, the school board must adopt a final budget for 2009-10, a vote that could come as early as its next meeting on Aug. 25.
School board members said Tuesday they're glad the district is able to bring back some of its teachers. But some, like Tom Tate, said they wished the district could also bring back support staff, such as social workers.
Kimberly Mitchell-Walker urged school leaders to bring back teachers who are the best performers and not those who are just the most popular.
Mary McCray, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators, said she is “somewhat satisfied” with the plan to restore the teaching positions, noting that she is sad that teachers with less experience will have to re-interview for their jobs.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officials are expected to disclose plans today for how many laid-off teachers they will rehire for the upcoming school year.
Superintendent Peter Gorman also is likely to give some indications of how the system will decide which teachers will return.
Gorman is expected to outline those plans to the school board during tonight's 6 p.m. meeting at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center.
Gorman said last week that the decision by state lawmakers to increase the sales tax by 1 cent is expected to give CMS enough money to rehire "a substantial number" of the 665 teachers he laid off earlier this summer.
"We will bring back teachers -- absolutely," Gorman said late last week. "And I am thrilled about it."
Gorman said Monday that it might be several more days before state education officials tell CMS how many teaching positions will be allocated to the system, but he said the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools can't wait.
"We've got to move on this," Gorman said, noting that school starts in two weeks and teachers are due in classrooms next week.
The big questions are:
-- How many of the 665 teachers will be rehired?
-- How many will go to each school, and how will CMS decide which teachers return?
Gorman said last week that teachers who had low performance ratings, and those who were already receiving pensions, will not be rehired.
Gorman and his executive staff met for several hours Monday afternoon. He will meet later this afternoon with school principals, prior to the board meeting.
Just over 300 classroom teachers got layoff notices from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools on Friday, with more coming next week.
The layoffs, which take effect at the end of the school year, were anticipated. Superintendent Peter Gorman has been talking for weeks about eliminating hundreds of teacher jobs in anticipation of cuts in county money. He says he hopes to rehire teachers and other employees if the budget picture brightens.
But Gorman said in Friday's news release it looks like all the cuts he has outlined – just over 1,300 jobs, including 367 teachers – will be needed, “and perhaps even more.”
The CMS release, e-mailed at 5:23 p.m., says 304 teachers got pink-slipped Friday, including 178 teachers who did not meet performance standards and 58 who did not have full licensure. It was not clear what accounted for the rest. A spokesman for human resources Chief Maurice Ambler referred calls to the public information office, which did not answer phones or return calls.
Teachers who will get notices next week include part-timers, retirees who have been rehired and teachers on one-year contracts, the statement says.
Gorman has said he's targeting low-performing teachers, but as word gets out about who's losing jobs, there's bound to be debate over whether that's really happening.
“Some of them are valid,” Judy Kidd, head of the Classroom Teachers Association, said of the “action plans” that identify teachers in trouble. “But some of it's a retaliation by an administrator directed at a teacher.”
Jennifer O'Kane-Fenk, a high-school teacher who heads a group that advises Gorman, said Friday afternoon she had not heard about the notices. Teachers have been “so, so, so worried,” she said, and are unlikely to feel relieved even if they escaped Friday's cuts. An N.C. House committee has proposed cutting 6,000 classroom teacher jobs statewide, and it's unclear how that would play out in CMS if that plan passes.
“I don't think very many people think they're safe overall,” she said.
The CMS statement says teachers who have gotten layoff notices can be tapped to fill vacancies if they have good performance evaluations and a license.
Gorman's budget plan calls for eliminating 1,300 of the district's 19,000-plus jobs. Other employees who have already gotten layoff notices include assistant principals, campus security guards, school psychologists, teacher assistants and central-office staff.
The teacher layoffs are landing during a tough stretch for educators.
The state is taking a half-percent of their annual pay – $250 for someone making $50,000 – out of the final checks for this school year, just as teachers go into a summer without pay. A House committee has proposed furloughing teachers for five days in 2009-10 and 10 days in 2010-11 to save money, with the teachers working longer days so kids won't lose class time.
And the bad news comes while teachers are in the thick of year-end testing: Elementary and middle schools gave their state exams this week and high schools start next week. The state and local bonuses that have traditionally been offered for strong performance are expected to vanish.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will soon start sending out layoff notices to hundreds of teachers after the county manager said Thursday he'll recommend cutting nearly $34 million from the district next year.
County Manager Harry Jones also said he'll propose a roughly $2.4 million cut to Central Piedmont Community College when he presents his budget later this month.
The school district and college – which account for about half the county's annual spending – have been bracing for cuts for months. Both agencies were told in January to identify ways to trim their budgets by up to 10 percent below current levels.
Thursday's announcement in a memo to county commissioners helped to end some uncertainty about how deep the cuts will be, but nothing is final until commissioners approve the budget next month.
CMS Superintendent Peter Gorman said the news didn't surprise him. But, he said, “I'm sad for the students and I'm sad for the staff. These are difficult times.”
The school district was already planning to cut 534 jobs, but had planned to spare classroom teachers unless the county asked for cuts. Now, about 1,300 school employees – including more than 400 teachers – could lose their jobs.
Some jobs could be saved if the county cuts other services or raises property taxes, but commissioners say they want to avoid a tax increase. It's also unclear whether federal stimulus money could help.
“Our options are really very limited,” said commissioner Dumont Clarke. “There's really no magic here.”
Mecklenburg is facing a shortfall of at least $78.9 million in the budget year that starts July 1 because of declines in sales taxes and other revenue sources. To close the gap, Jones has recommended about $38 million in cuts to county services, including some layoffs. He also recently announced $285,000 in cuts from WTVI. The proposed cuts to CMS and CPCC means the county has almost eliminated the shortfall.
Some county commissioners said Thursday that while the education cuts are difficult, they are consistent with the cuts being asked of other county agencies. Together, the county will cuts its funding to the college and school district by about 9 percent each, the same amount, on average, as county departments.
CMS would lose more jobs
Still, the news for CMS could bring angst in many classrooms.
In recommending his budget last month, Gorman called for flat funding from the county. The plan eliminated 534 jobs, including central office staff, teacher assistants and others, but no classroom teachers.
However, Gorman also outlined four tiers of cuts to reach the 10 percent in trims requested by the county. Under that plan, a 10 percent cut would require losing 782 more jobs, including 456 teachers and 83 assistant principals.
Gorman said Thursday he expects to notify all the additional employees that they will be laid off, but he hopes to rescind the layoffs for some of them. The final payroll won't be known until this summer or later, after county commissioners and state legislators vote on spending for education and more is known about federal stimulus money. The county said CMS could receive at least $56 million in stimulus money.
It's not clear how much of the money targeted for high-poverty schools and disabled students can be used to save jobs, Gorman said. But the bigger question is an additional batch of stimulus money that must be requested and distributed by the state.
Commissioner Karen Bentley said the fact that there is stimulus money coming to CMS gives her some solace.
But commissioner Bill James said he believes the school district should get rid of some initiatives, such as the Bright Beginning pre-K program, before they cut teacher jobs. “Their charter is to provide K-12 education,” James said. “For them to threaten to layoff K-12 teachers while they're offering a pre-K program that's not part of their mission from the state is inappropriate.”
The school board will vote on the 2009-10 budget plan on Tuesday. Board Chair Molly Griffin asked board members to submit any changes they intend to propose by the end of the day Thursday, but as of midafternoon, the school board office had received no proposals.
CPCC braces
At Central Piedmont, spokeswoman Jessica Graham said the college will operate on a four-day workweek during the summer to help save money and also cut back on its maintenance and security. The college also is eliminating vacant positions, but for now it has not discussed layoffs, Graham said.
Graham said CPCC leaders understand the situation the county is in, and noted that the college is making cuts even as its enrollment grows. “We're having to do more with less, which is challenging,” Graham said. “But we're doing everything we can to adjust to the cuts as best we can.”
Commissioners Chairman Jennifer Roberts said county leaders have lots to consider in the coming weeks. She and others have said for months there is little community appetite for a tax increase, but she said not having one means there is little flexibility to make changes in the budget.
Jones will formally present his budget on May 19. He said Thursday that this budget season is “a time like I've never experienced before.”
“I wish we could do all the things that people want us to do,” he said. Staff Writer Ann Doss Helms contributed.
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