Montgomery County finds more irregularities in funding at child care center
By: Alan Suderman
Examiner Staff Writer
June 18, 2009
Montgomery County has found more financial irregularities at a publicly funded child care center in Wheaton that previously has been investigated for fraud, county records show.
The county believes there may have been “several” overpayments to Centro Familia, which contracts with the county to provide child care to low-income Hispanics, Chief Administrative Officer Timothy Firestine wrote in a memo. But he added that a complete financial picture wasn’t available because the center had not provided requested information.
The Wheaton center couldn’t properly account for $900,000 of public money it spent in fiscal 2007 and 2008, Inspector General Thomas Dagley wrote in a report earlier this year.
In a follow-up report, Dagley specified that there were problems with the center’s records “for transactions involving employee loans, printing, information technology and travel.” But officials at Centro Familia said they hadn’t done anything wrong and were targets of “unsupported innuendo.”
In response to Dagley’s findings, the county’s Department of Health and Human Services began its own investigations of Centro Familia’s accounting, including a review of payments made in fiscal 2009.
After reviewing some of the center’s records, the department “disallowed a number of charges” made by the center and may undo more, Firestine said.
Firestine added that Dagley had uncovered “compelling” issues with the center’s third-party transactions that occurred “outside the country ... [and] conflicts of interest.”
As of Thursday, the county was still missing documents it has requested from the center. If the center doesn’t hand over the requested documents and resolve the county’s “serious concern about the appropriateness and reasonableness of a number of transactions,” the county may terminate the center’s contract, Firestine said.
The last available tax return shows that the center received $460,000 in government contracts in 2007.
Centro Familia Executive Director Pilar Torres said she strongly disagreed with the inspector general’s report and that her organization had documentation to prove that all of its financial dealings were legitimate.
She said the delay in responding to the county’s requests for documents was because of the center’s small staff and the more stringent reporting requirements from the county.
“We need a little bit more time,” she said.
Centro Familia was founded in 1998 by Torres and Nancy Navarro, who is now a County Council member, with a goal of responding “to a dire but invisible crisis” concerning Hispanic immigrant children’s early education, according to the organization’s Web site.
Navarro said previously that she severed all ties with the center in 2004, when she was appointed to the county school board, and has not spoken with Torres since then.
State Del. Anne Kaiser, D-Montgomery, is listed as a board member.
