Literacy Connections, county reach deal on funding group
By Steve Herring
Published in News on October 7, 2015 1:46 PM
As a condition of continued county funding, Literacy Connections of Wayne County has been required to sign a contract prohibiting it from providing services to anyone who fails to qualify as a U.S. citizen or a foreign national legally in this country.
The agreement also makes Literacy Connections liable for any legal action arising out of the contract.
The contract would entitle county officials to conduct evaluations of the agency's activities, particularly as it relates to the accomplishment of established goals and the quality and impact of services delivered.
"Basically what this is, it is just letting the citizens know we are good stewards of the their money," commission Chairman Wayne Aycock said. "Everybody is accountable.
"This is not in any saying that they are doing something wrong. This is just verifying what is going on. We are not accusing them of anything. Everybody needs to be accountable for tax dollars."
Literacy Connections officials feel they have only a few clients who have failed to meet the criteria, County Manager George Wood said.
The current county budget includes $101,232 for Literacy Connections.
The contract has been signed by Joe Boudy, Literacy Connections chairman, and is supported by the agency's executive board, Wood said.
County commissioners, with little discussion, adopted the same contract by a 6-0 vote Tuesday morning. Commissioner John Bell is recovering from back surgery and did not attend the meeting.
The motion to approve was made by Commissioner Ray Mayo.
State law allows the county to contract with and appropriate money to "any person, association, or corporation, in order to carry out any public purpose that the county is authorized by law to engage in."
But it also mandates that those private entities use E-Verify.
The county has contracts with all of the outside agencies that it funds, Wood said.
"Every agency that we give money to has a written contract," Wood said. "The terms in those contracts are pretty much what is in this one except for we are requiring documentation."
Also, all of the outside agencies provide similar reports to the ones being required of Literacy Connections, Wood said.
But, Wood said, it is the first time that complaints of providing services to illegal aliens have come up. That is the reason the documentation clause was added to the otherwise standard contract, he said.
Wood did not elaborate as to the number or type or complaints or who had made them.
Nonprofits have become a favorite target of some commissioners over the past several years, particularly Literacy Connections and WATCH (Wayne Action Teams for Community Health). Wood and some commissioners argue that taxpayers' money should not be used to provide services for people who are in the country illegally.
As a condition of agreeing to fund the $101,232, commissioners instructed Wood to work with the agency on the language of a contract prohibiting the use of county money to provide services for illegal aliens.
At that time Literacy Connections Director Pat Yates voiced concerns that such limits could be deemed discriminatory, thereby endangering funding from organizations such as United Way and AmeriCorps.
The Literacy Connections board offered a counterproposal that it would not use county funds to provide service to anyone who is not a legal resident of the county, but will still have an open-door policy.
"What we said if you do that then it is meaningless because they just use other funds to service those (illegal) people," Wood. "That was not the intent of the board. The intent of the board was that the people getting those services had to be citizens of Wayne County."
Ms. Yates was concerned as well that the only way to determine if the policy would pass legal muster was if someone sued.
Under the contract, Literacy Connections, and not the county "shall be liable, and agrees to be liable for, and shall indemnity, defend and hold the County of Wayne harmless from all claims, suits, judgments or damages, including court costs and attorney's fee, arising out of or in the course of the operation of this agreement."
"They would only be liable to the extent that we would question them," Wood said.
If the agency is making a good-faith effort, but someone lies to it and provides false documentation that is good enough not to be caught, then the agency would not be held liable to the county and would not have to return the money, Wood said.
"We are not trying to do that," he said. "We are trying to have a good system in place to the best extent possible that is serving only people who are supposed to be here."
Wood was asked about possible legal action against Literacy Connections by a client or other group such as AmeriCorps even though the county is setting forth the conditions of the contract.
"All the county is doing is contracting for this service through Literacy Connections, so the county is not the one providing the service," Wood said. "I don't know anybody who could sue and say, 'I am entitled to a service,' which is being provided by a nonprofit corporation, and they are not even supposed to be in the country.
"I mean if AmeriCorps comes back and says it won't give them any funds if they adhere to what we want, then they need to decide do you want the AmeriCorps people or do you want the money from the county."