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Anti-drug program ripped off, probe says
04.04.07|Arizona Daily Star Online

The local administrators of a federal anti-drug task force took $182,000 away from law-enforcement efforts to pay for their own raises and falsified documents to create the impression the money was properly spent.

That is the conclusion of an 18-month state auditor general's investigation into raises given to five administrators of the High Intensity Drug Traffic Area program, which distributes more than $10 million in federal drug money to local law-enforcement agencies.

The report was sent to the state Attorney General's Office, which declined to pursue criminal charges. The attorney general is on the HIDTA executive committee, which approved the raises and which was criticized for not exercising enough oversight.

Spokeswoman Katherine Reedy said the office did not consider the decision a conflict of interest.

She said that after a thorough review, it was "decided there was no reasonable likelihood of conviction."

Pima County requested the investigation in September 2005 after the five resigned their positions with Pima County to work as independent contractors for Santa Cruz County for salaries that were 14 percent to 70 percent higher than their previous salaries.

County officials said the report vindicates their position.

Several of the former HIDTA employees, however, strongly disputed the findings, calling them "outrageous."

They said they were caught up in political disputes they didn't understand.

"With all due respect to the auditor general, I don't think anyone understood how HIDTA works," said Betty Cohen, the former finance manager for the program. "We did nothing wrong."

Pima County served as the "pass-through" agency for the federal grant money for 15 years, and HIDTA funds paid the salaries of the five officials — Cohen, Raymond Vinsik, James Lukash and coordinators James Stone and Michael Holmes.

In April 2005, the executive committee, then chaired by Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris, approved raises totaling $133,000 for the 2006 budget year, after a study found they were underpaid compared with other HIDTA officials nationwide. The committee is made up of law-enforcement officials from around the state.

That represented raises of between 14 percent and 70 percent for the five executives and brought the lowest salary to $102,782, up from $60,617.

Pima County balked, saying it could not pay the five more money than other county employees doing similar work.

The five officials then negotiated a contract with Santa Cruz County to replace Pima County as the pass-through agency, with themselves administering the HIDTA funds as independent contractors at salaries $193,000 more than their previous salaries, which was $60,000 more than even the executive committee approved. The report said they transferred $182,000 from other programs to cover the majority of the $193,000 increase.

"There was nothing unusual in any of this," said former Deputy Director Lukash. "Everything that I'm aware of was aboveboard. We followed HIDTA guidelines."

The raises were previously called improper and the contracts declared void by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the agency that administers the HIDTA programs.

An attorney for Vinsik, the former HIDTA director, called the investigation a "royal waste of taxpayer dollars."

Vinsik retired after the contracts were processed and never collected the salary increase.

"There's a report. There will be no prosecution," said attorney Chuck Blanchard. "And that's a victory for anyone who is under investigation."

According to the report, the officials implemented their raises for 2005, a year early, even though federal officials hadn't signed off on them, and there wasn't enough money in the 2005 budget to cover them.

"In order to obtain the monies necessary to make the staff raises effective within the 2005 budget, the Director took back monies from grants that had already been awarded to law enforcement agencies for 2005," the report says.

Cohen said the reappropriated money had been unspent for years, and she frequently reallocated unused money from previous years to new initiatives. Blanchard said the money was reallocated for reasons not related to the raises.

The Pima County Board of Supervisors approved the contract in July 2005 as one of a dozen contracts on the consent agenda related to HIDTA.

"It was completely routine," Cohen said. "Everything we do has to go through the Sheriff's Department and the county attorney. Why wasn't it questioned at that time?"

County officials said at the time they didn't realize the contract between Santa Cruz County and the Arizona Alliance Planning Committee was actually a contract with their soon-to-be former employees.

When the county figured it out during a routine audit, Finance Director Tom Burke said the matter was referred to the auditor general. The five officials were placed on leave without pay in December 2005. They were fired in February 2006.

Cohen said she wonders why the employees were blamed for raises approved by the executive committee. "I was so convinced that we would be cleared that at first I didn't look for another job," she said.

The report does fault the executive committee for not exercising enough oversight and for not asking to see the contracts.

Then-Chairman Harris and current Chairman Timothy Landrum of the Drug Enforcement Administration could not be reached for comment.

Pima County Sheriff Bureau Chief Brad Gagnepain said there now are two people under contract with the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission doing the job once done by five. He did not know how much they are paid. A commission spokeswoman did not respond.

Gagnepain said the report vindicates the county's position, though he thought there should have been charges.

"We were upset by this from the beginning," he said. "We brought this to the attention of the committee and they did nothing. You name the agency, they wanted this to go away."

What to do with the auditor's findings is now up to that same executive committee, said Jeff Larson, general counsel for the auditor general.

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