Posted on 08/13/2004 5:33:10 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Amid evidence that a local nonprofit organization may have funneled grant money into illegal political campaign contributions, Mayor Gavin Newsom asked the city controller Thursday to conduct an audit to determine how the organization used city grant money.
Newsom made his request after a San Francisco Chronicle investigation discovered the Neighborhood Resources Center, a nonprofit founded to assist Asian immigrants, had received nearly $200,000 in city funds to provide multilingual services but that few services had actually been provided.
Newsom asked that the city controller and the city attorney's office investigate "the validity of the allegations" contained in the Chronicle's investigation.
"As you know," Newsom said in a letter to City Controller Ed Harrington, "my administration has a zero-tolerance policy for waste, fraud and abuse in city government."
The Center, founded by Julie Lee, a Democratic Party activist and influential member of the city's Chinese-American community, also is the subject of numerous federal and state investigations to determine whether $125,000 in state grant money was illegally diverted to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley in his 2002 campaign.
"We'll go in there and review their records, look at their sources of revenue and the expenses incurred to be sure that they are consistent with their contracts for city grants," Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda said.
Meanwhile, the state Legislature's audit committee and San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daley have both launched investigations on the use of public grants.
The Chronicle's investigation has revealed that $168,000 of a $500,000 state grant to the center, which Shelley helped arrange, was paid to associates of Lee, who then made $125,000 in contributions to Shelley's campaign.
The grant money had been earmarked for construction of a community center that was never built.
Shortly after Shelley arranged the grant for Lee's center, then-Mayor Willie Brown's administration helped her get a $1-a-year-lease on the 19th Avenue property for the center, but the center was never built. In June, Newsom called for the sale of the Sunset District property to help balance the city budget.
Since 2000, Lee's organization has received nearly $200,000 in grants from the city since 2000. The money was to be used, in part, to operate a referral hot line for immigrants.
Besides running the center, Lee serves as president of the Housing Authority Commission. Brown appointed her in 1999 and reappointed her to a four-year term in 2002. Her term is set to expire in March 2006, and under state law, she can be removed only for cause.
This has not been a good week for the SF Mayor.
Where's muh hanky? ;-)
Newsome must want to make sure he got his share of illegally-donated funds.
Is anyone really surprised. Frisco is a leftest sewer where contempt for the law and scandals involving the misappropriation of public money by Democratic party hacks is the norm.
Willie Brown...Shelly...Chinese mafia. See? SOS
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