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Yesterday the New York Times ran an interesting story on page A17. Excerpts and sum-up (it’s a pretty long piece):
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Apparently an internal report by an ACORN lawyer admits the possibility that there have been violations of federal law in re: to the relationships among ACORN’s partners and affiliates.
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The June 18 report, written by attorney Elizabeth Kingsley, lists concerns about the improper use of charitable dollars for political purposes; questionable money transfers among the affiliates; and potential conflicts created by employees working for multiple affiliates. In addition to these problems and all the inquiries into its voter registration efforts, ACORN also faces demands for back taxes by the Internal Revenue Service and various state tax authorities.
Ms. Kingsley’s concerns about the way ACORN partners work together are sure to fire up critics already upset over ACORN’s voter registration efforts which, as it has been pointed out, are largely underwritten by an affiliated charity called ”Project Vote.” The group hires ACORN to do voter registration work, and the two groups claim to have registered 1.3 million voters this year.
The problem is that as a federally tax-exempt charity, Project Vote is subject to prohibitions on partisan political activity…but ACORN, a nonprofit membership corporation under Louisiana law, is not bound by the same restrictions. Ms. Kingsley says that the close ties between Project Vote and ACORN make it difficult to document and show that Project Vote’s money has been used in a strictly nonpartisan manner.
Ms. Kingsley’s report also raised concerns about which organization actually controlled all the strategic decisions. She said that the very same people were deciding which regions to focus on for both ACORN and Project Vote. “As a result, we may not be able to prove that 501(c)3 resources are not being directed to specific regions based on impermissible partisan considerations,” Ms. Kingsley said.
Kingsley also took issue with the governance of ACORN affiliates including Project Vote. “Board meetings are not held, or if they are, minutes are not kept, or if minutes are kept, they never make it into the files,” she wrote. Project Vote has had only one independent director and he worked for a short two year stint. Since then the board has consisted of ACORN staff members and two members who pay monthly dues.
But two people listed as board members for 7 and 8 years, respectively, say they were not aware they were on the Project Vote board. One of them, George Hampton, said he had never even heard of Project Vote. And even though Project Vote recently assembled a new board, five of the six new members have longstanding ties to ACORN.
