Last November, voters in East Baton Rouge Parish narrowly approved a 2.25-mill dedicated property tax that will generate nearly $8 million a year over the next 10 years for the East Baton Rouge Council on Aging.
As Business Report details in its new cover story, the millage was somewhat controversial before the vote. Opponents—among them, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber—pointed out that a 2015 audit of the organization found numerous instances of sloppy bookkeeping and a deficit of more than $200,000. They questioned how an agency that couldn’t manage a $3.2 million annual budget would be able to handle one more than twice that size.
The COA did little to allay those concerns; it didn’t even present a plan for how it would spend the money if the tax passed.
Now that the tax has passed, the issue has become even more controversial. The Louisiana Legislative Auditor is conducting an audit into questionable activities that the COA allegedly engaged in during the campaign. Critics say the agency directed COA resources to campaign for the tax in violation of its tax-exempt status as a nonprofit organization.
The allegations are disturbing if true. What’s equally troubling, though, is the fact that the COA has a decades-long history of financial mismanagement that has gone seemingly unchecked by state or local government. Since the 1990s, audits have routinely questioned the agency’s accounting procedures and lack of oversight, yet the flow of public dollars to the dysfunctional organization has continued.
The current executive director, Tasha Clark-Amar, has blamed the agency’s recent financial troubles on her predecessor, and it’s true she inherited a mess when she took over in mid-2011. But Clark-Amar has been at the helm of the organization for more than five years, and as recently as 2015 things had not improved much. Perhaps they will now that the COA has a dedicated funding stream, but the agency’s track record isn’t very encouraging.
The new tax will generate an estimated $7.9 million a year. The COA will also be eligible to continue receiving annual appropriations from the state through the Governor’s Office of Elderly Affairs, as well as a portion of the proceeds from a rental car tax passed in 2016.
In fact, if state funding remains relatively unchanged over the next year, the COA could have revenues in 2018 that top $10 million, nearly all of which will come from public funds.
That’s a lot of government money for a nongovernmental organization, or NGO, that doesn’t have to report to the city-parish and only has to answer to the state for the state money it receives.
Neither Clark-Amar nor the COA’s board chairman, Brandon Dumas, would be interviewed for the cover story. In the wake of the allegations that surfaced after the election, the board hired an attorney, Murphy J. Foster III, and referred all questions about the agency to him. Foster declined requests for a face-to-face interview but responded to some questions in writing.
Officials with the state defend the organization and the current administration. They say there’s more oversight than it appears and that the COA is working to right its financial ship.
“They’ve made some bad decisions,” acknowledges Karen Ryder, director of the Governor’s Office of Elderly Affairs, which directs state and federal funds to local COA offices. “But they have given us a plan of how they are going to pare down their deficit. We watch them closely, but let me say this: Their heart is in serving the people. It truly is.”
Read the full cover story, and check out a related story about the legislative auditor’s investigation into allegations that the Council on Aging illegally promoted the passage of its tax in the November election. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.
