SACRAMENTO — Four years after securing $2.2 million from the state to buy land for a soccer complex, a nonprofit Los Angeles group is being asked to return money that went to the executive director's sons, and California officials' monitoring of taxpayer funds is being questioned.
One of 80 projects paid for with "pork-barrel" grants that have drawn the attention of state auditors, the soccer site -- a clay field with six nets at Slauson Avenue and Main Street -- is far from the 800-seat recreation center envisioned by the nonprofit group Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles.
The state took $1.3 million back from Concerned Citizens last year, after discovering that the group already had bought the land with a grant from the city.
And state Department of Parks and Recreation auditors are waiting for Concerned Citizens to repay $150,000, most of which went to the sons of Juanita Tate, the group's executive director until her death last summer. The rest went mostly to consultants and contractors, according to state documents.
The group, which advocates for economic development in South-Central L.A. and manages low-income housing, has missed three deadlines for returning the money. The last one was Nov. 30.
Tate and one of her sons, Mark Williams, co-signed many of the checks that went to him, totaling $49,500, auditors found. State records show that a $63,000 payment went to the other son, the Rev. Eugene Williams.
The state had not imposed an anti-nepotism rule. Officials said they were challenging the payments because Concerned Citizens failed to prove that the money was used for acquisition of the field, as called for in Parks Department documents related to the grant.
Carl DeMaio, head of the Performance Institute, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group in San Diego, said the payments to family members and the receipt of money from both the city and the state for the same land purchase should sound "alarm bells."
"This requires a full audit, outside of the Department of Parks and Recreation," DeMaio said.
"We need better procedures in place," said state Sen. Dave Cox (R-Fair Oaks).
Mark Williams, Concerned Citizens' youth program director, declined to be interviewed, but said in partial response to written questions that the organization "will resolve the grant balance" within 30 days. He said the project will cost $13 million, and the first phase will be completed in May.
Williams signed a contract with his mother that said he would provide "project development services." He said in his written response that he and Eugene Williams are "uniquely qualified to do what my mother spent her life training and preparing us to do" and that it was "appropriate" for Tate to hire them. "Juanita Tate's judgment was sound. Her integrity was impeccable," he said.
State records show that Tate reported paying Eugene Williams because he helped buy the land. Eugene Williams said in an interview that he never hid his arrangement with his mother and that he has been paid less than a third of the $210,000 promised him in the contract he signed with her. He also said he saved taxpayers money by persuading the land's previous owner, Mount Zion Baptist Church, to cut the price substantially.
"It is a project that is very worthwhile," Eugene Williams said. "It is something we have invested a ton of time and energy in. This is a major endeavor for us, and we want to see it happen."
Details of the financial review have emerged as auditors have sought to learn what became of millions in grants given by lawmakers and then-Gov. Gray Davis to nonprofit corporations from 1999 to 2002, when the state was flush with tax revenue from the high-tech boom.
Groups received the grants at the behest of individual legislators, and were not required to undergo the detailed examination usually required for organizations that win competitive projects. The grant to Concerned Citizens is the third in which auditors have sought significant refunds.
In one instance, a Los Angeles pastor accepted $221,000 to create a museum at Crenshaw High School honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. The pastor, the Rev. Willie J. Bellamy, placed a portable classroom in the school's parking lot, and recently hung some pictures of King and Chavez in it. But state Controller Steve Westly said Bellamy failed to justify his use of the money.
Bellamy said he spent it on expenses related to his project, including his salary.
In another case, the nonprofit San Francisco Neighbors Resource Center received $492,000 in 2001 for a community center that was never built. Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer's office has alleged that people affiliated with the group diverted $125,000 of the money, using it for campaign donations to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, who secured the grant when he was a state assemblyman from that district. State and federal authorities are investigating.
