L.A. Cancels Contract Amid Investigation of Agency for Disabled

The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to terminate a $566,300 job training contract with an agency for disabled San Fernando Valley residents because it is the target of a federal investigation for double billing.

Parker Anderson, general manager of the city’s Community Development Department, confirmed that the council voted in private session to terminate its contract with the agency, Assisting the Disabled with Employment and Training (ADEPT).

Anderson refused to comment further on the council’s closed-door meeting.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, chairman of the council’s Community and Economic Development Committee, said the investigation of ADEPT is being conducted by the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Labor and involves allegations of fiscal mismanagement and failure to substantiate billings.

“It’s a very uncomfortable situation for us,” Ridley-Thomas said. “This agency serves a very deserving population and for a considerable time has had a good record of performance, and yet now substantial questions have been raised.”

ADEPT’s 1992 contract with the city calls for it to train and find jobs for 97 disabled people as part of a federally funded Jobs Training Partnership Act program. The city administers the grant for the federal government.

Anderson said his department will try to ensure that job training services to the handicapped are not disrupted by the cancellation of the ADEPT contract.

Lark Galloway-Gilliam, ADEPT’s executive director, called the allegations of fiscal wrongdoing against the agency “a travesty” and said the council action “closes us out.” The work for the city represented the agency’s major contract, she said.

“We’ve been in this field for 18 years and have an impeccable track record of handling millions of dollars of grant money,” Galloway-Gilliam said. “Now they’re terminating us without even having presented us with the allegations, without interviewing us. Where’s the due process? There’s no money missing.”

Galloway-Gilliam said she has learned unofficially that the probe centers around whether her agency double billed for 14 of its clients--charging the state Department of Rehabilitation and the federal jobs training program for serving these individuals.

The ADEPT chief denied there was any double billing.

In April, 1991, ADEPT’s chief fiscal officer, Nga Doan Thai, pleaded guilty to embezzling $140,000 from ADEPT and $147,000 from another city agency. But this matter is unrelated to ADEPT’s current difficulties with the city, a top city official said.