Leaders of Charity Investigating Rep. Molhollan Keep Their Own Books
Conservative watchdog group specializing in attacks on prominent Democrats for abusing charities itself operates as a 501(c)(3) charity.
The Washington Post reports on the investigation of Rep. Alan Mollhan (D-WV) and the economic development charities he set up. We have already talked about this over a month ago when the story first broke. But the Post story includes this intriguing bit:
Mollohan's transactions -- first reported last month by the Wall Street Journal -- were uncovered by the National Legal and Policy Center, a small research institute in Virginia that gets some of its funding from the politically conservative Scaife family of Pittsburgh. In March, NLPC turned over 500 pages of documents to the FBI alleging that Mollohan engaged in nine years of false reporting and the appearance of impropriety in his business contacts with contractors.
National Legal and Policy Centery (EIN 52-1750188 Form 990) is a full-fledged 501(c)(3) charity organization, listed in charity registries like Network for Good, where you can find out that the group's accomplishments include:
In 1993, NLPC successfully sued Hillary Rodham Clinton's secret health care task force to open its meetings and records. In 1996, NLPC secured documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) demonstrating the then-FDA Commissioner had overbilled on his expense reimbursements. In 1999, NLPC broke a major scandal involving the federally-funded Legal Services Corporation (LSC), which was inflating the number of cases it claimed it handled. In 2001, NLPC filed a formal Complaint with the IRS against Rev. Jesse Jackson's largest non-profit organization that received extensive media coverage.
But the Form 990 has some fascinating information, too. The organization has a board of five, two of the directors being chairman Kenneth Boehm with a salary of $114,544 from the organization and president Peter Flaherty with a salary of $116,630. On line 90, the organization reports a total staff of three. The other staff person has a salary of $62,675, but all of this is allocated to "program expense."
There is no provision for any accounting for this $800,000 organization, other than $1,080 for "accounting fees," not enought for real bookkeeping (it might be enough for an automated payroll service like ADP). Ordinarily if there is no staff for accounting, there will be a line for outsourced bookkeeping, but there is none in this case. Apparently the highly compensated salaried staff are also the board members and they keep their own books.
Talk about charitable accountability!
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