The cleanup of won’t be complete until members of the board that oversaw the comprehensive abuses of taxpayer funding resign. And that begins with the chair and vice chair, both of whom have been with the agency for more than a decade.
Roger Schmitz and Sean Gallagher — as well as others on the board — either were oblivious to the shocking misuse of tax money (best case scenario) or were indifferent to it. Neither alternative reflects well on their capacity to continue in their current posts.
It is revealing that not a single board member attended a public meeting Thursday at RMHS headquarters in Denver at which the non-profit agency’s new management team explained what it was doing to address multiple abuses identified by Auditor Timothy M. O’Brien. And to be fair, the new team seems to be refocusing the agency and instituting changes that will bring it in line with the law and community expectations.
But the fact that board members didn’t show their faces amounts to just the latest chapter in a pattern of ducking accountability.
“The board was asleep at the switch,” O’Brien told us. “They have been difficult to deal with.” He called the board’s oversight “weak at best.”
Long before the audit was released, a Denver Post editorial writer had begun spotlighting the woes at RMHS and attempting to get answers for why its overpaid CEO Stephen Block had been relieved of his duties. No one on the board would answer his queries.
The audit’s findings are extremely serious, and raise questions about whether the district attorney should get involved.
The nonprofit overcharged Denver for administrative expenses by almost $680,000; it diverted Denver taxes for services outside the city; it misleadingly collected millions of dollars for state “matching funds” that were not being collected; and it squandered money on dubious employee perks such as memberships at Costco or home Internet use that were simply not legitimate expenses.
The stables need cleaning — and the board must not be exempt.
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