 Special Report: After Katrina Internal audit raises questions Presbyterian Disaster Assistance sits on $12 million in relief funds By Parker T. Williamson The Layman Volume 41, Number 1 Posted January 29, 2008
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) officials say it never was their intention to spend the money on immediate needs, although its early appeals for contributions suggest otherwise. About 70 percent of those contributions were made within 90 days after the storms while PDA’s stated purpose was getting help to the victims quickly and efficiently. The seven-year stretch PDA’s decision to stretch its payout over seven years came nearly a year after the money was collected. In a news release, the agency admitted that its normal mode of operation was to spend disaster response funds as soon as possible after a crisis hits. In announcing its decision to bank Katrina funds over the long term, PDA acknowledged that this was “the first time PDA has identified needs beyond the typical two-to-three years allocated for domestic disasters.”
“PDA funds follow and do not replace governmental funds that are available in the early days of the disaster,” PDA states on its Web site. ‘Building Community’ Denominational officials also argue that providing direct relief to Katrina victims is not their priority concern. Instead, PDA says it is interested in funding efforts that “build community.” One method that the agency is using to accomplish this goal was the creation of tented areas that it called “Volunteer Villages.” The agency lists six villages, three in Mississippi and three in Louisiana. One of these villages, Gautier, continues to be listed on PDA’s Web site, but it has been defunct for more than a year since it was evicted by its host church. The idea behind PDA’s volunteer villages was to create living spaces for adult volunteer teams coming from congregations around the country. Groups of Presbyterians who would devote a week to remove debris and repair homes could apply for residence in a village. Here, they would live together, pray together and be given daily work assignments by the village managers. Although the cost of the villages is underwritten by PDA funds, the denomination seeks to replenish its coffers by putting the squeeze on volunteers. There is a $20 per day charge for room and board in the village, and volunteers are expected to spend some of their time cooking and cleaning. All of this activity is considered part of “community building.” In addition to their room and board contributions, volunteers at several sites learned upon arrival that they had no materials to work with and that they were expected to contribute to the cost of purchasing materials. Guidelines posted on PDA’s Web site suggest that volunteers bring Lowe’s Hardware cash cards with them in order to facilitate the purchase of building materials in the area where their projects are located. In its activity report through May 2007, PDA claims to have hosted 31,350 volunteers who have worked on 3,380 homes and completely rebuilt 565. These statistics and others demonstrate that the PDA program is producing measurable results on the ground. One certainly would expect so, considering PDA’s report that it has disbursed $8,100,000 for “humanitarian response” and $2,600,000, some of which was designated for “church repair.” But PDA’s literature repeatedly emphasizes that physical repair and renovation is not this program’s priority. Most important, it says, are the relationships that are developed among the workers and between the workers and those whom they serve. “It’s not about raising walls,” says a village poster, “It’s about raising hope.” “Raising hope” has been a handy slogan, broad enough to justify channeling PDA’s funds into places far removed from sheetrock and shingles. PDA helped sponsor an ideological event in New Orleans called the “Social Justice Biennial Conference” Jan. 11-14, 2007. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA), voiced its theme in a letter written to conference participants. He urged them to “launch a movement for justice, peace and human well-being in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and in the world in which we live.” The conference was heavily laced with liberal politics, showcasing the New Orleans tragedy as an occasion for lambasting a Republican administration. Conference themes included “the environment, racial tensions and economic class.” Bob Brashear – president of the Presbyterian Health, Education, and Welfare Association, a cluster of liberal lobbying groups that promote causes ranging from gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered rights to global warming and gun control – said his denominationally-funded organization chose New Orleans for the conference site because the city “has become a challenging symbol of the issues facing us as a nation today. From the abuse of the natural environment and the unpreparedness for disaster, to the racial divide and economic class issues, there is much that confronts us as people of faith seeking to build a more just and caring community.” The conference brochure picked up on PDA’s “community building” theme by urging participants to “explore, using New Orleans as our reference point, the inequities and realities of failed systems – political, social, economic.” Michael Dyson, author of Come Hell or High Water, called on participants to find “structures of justice and perpetuate the goodwill intended in charity.” Conference speakers included Bill Quigley, a social justice activist and author of Ending Poverty As We Know It: Guaranteeing a Right to a Job at a Living Wage, and the Rev. Margaret Aymer Oget, a member of the Facing Racism Strategy Team for the PCUSA. The fact that denominational headquarters is dominated by an egalitarian ideological slant is widely known, a complaint often cited by congregations decreasing their financial support and by others that are exiting the denomination altogether. Presbyterians in Mississippi who were the first responders to the Katrina crisis in their region have been particularly disturbed by signs that denominational bureaucrats superimposed that ideology onto the disaster relief program. Importing ideology The Rev. Steve Bryant, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Vicksburg, recalls an evening in which he and several Gulf Coast pastors were wading through the muck, seeking shelter for storm survivors. As they were working, his wife called him to report that PDA officials were asking questions about his activities. They wanted to know how much money his church had received from other churches and they requested a list of contributors. She replied that she could not give them that information and that her husband was unavailable due to the fact that he was in the storm area, working with a team of on-the-ground pastors. “Who are the pastors?” Mrs. Bryant remembers the caller asking. She named the ministers with whom her husband was working and was astounded by the follow-up question. “Do you mean there are no women pastors on the team?” “Now isn’t that just like a national church bureaucrat!” Bryant said. “There he/she is, sitting in his/her Louisville office, calculating gender quotas while we’re struggling to help people survive.” Another example of PDA’s ideology was voiced by the Rev. Tim Brown, who was told if he would agree to have Presbyterians from his church in Ocean Springs team up with a Jewish congregation, a $30,000 grant might be arranged. “I don’t know what they were thinking,” Brown said. “I certainly don’t have anything against Jewish people and would have been glad to work shoulder-to-shoulder with them whether or not a grant was available. But there are no synagogues in Ocean Springs. How could we possibly meet that criterion?” When PDA officials established a volunteer village in Gautier and filled it with a team of Norwegian Lutherans who showed no interest in their host congregation, Presbyterians in the area felt that the Louisville bureaucracy was using their plight in order to showcase “ecumenical community building,” an incessant theme that comes from denominational offices. “Our people felt used,” Bryant said. Beyond the ideology, Mississippians harbor some very practical concerns, not only about the cash PDA has withheld from people and churches in need, but about the manner in which the money it spent was distributed. One of those concerns emanates from the denomination’s internal audit report, dated Feb. 24, 2007.
Expenditures questioned Auditors determined total expenditures from the construction account were $820,337.47, of which “$491,946.46 contained appropriate supporting documentation. However, the office was unable to provide appropriate supporting documentation for expenditures totaling $328,391.01.” PDA sent money directly to the presbytery to fund Disaster Recovery Coordinator and Assistant Coordinator positions. No one in the presbytery could or did question that these grants were appropriate expenditures of disaster assistance money. But other grants filtered through the Synod of Living Waters did raise eyebrows. The Rev. Michael Herrin was the chairman of the presbytery’s finance committee in 2006. Herrin remembers a meeting of his committee in January 2006 during which they struggled over an operating budget for that year. Katrina relief and recovery was not one of their concerns, for these matters were handled by a special Disaster Recovery Commission that had direct connections to PDA. But the finance committee knew that the presbytery’s operating budget also would be affected. Congregations along the coast had been ravaged and contributions could be expected to decrease. “We knew it was going to be tight,” he remembers, “but after we made our cuts, we felt that we could handle it, maybe with a $30,000 deficit.” Budgeting for bureaucrats All operational items were in that budget, including the executive’s $80,000 salary. At the presbytery meeting when the proposed budget was to be presented, however, the Rev. Terry Newland, executive of the Synod of Living Waters, came bearing gifts. He announced that the synod would contribute $80,000 to fund the presbytery executive’s salary. The money, he said, would come from PDA funds. Later, regarding the 2007 budget, the synod office provided a $50,000 gift “for extra administrative expenses.” Still later, Presbytery Executive Bill DePrater announced that his 2008 salary line item would be subsidized by the synod in the amount of $60,000. From Newland’s announcement, members of the presbytery know that PDA provided the first $80,000, and they also suspect that the additional money came from PDA. Because the money was filtered through the synod office, they can’t be sure. What they do know is that the Synod of Lakes and Prairies has severe income problems of its own. In light of the fact that PDA’s direct grants to the presbytery are funding two staff people whose task is disaster assistance coordination, one may assume that DePrater’s duties are not totally devoted to Katrina relief. So, what else might he be doing with time being funded by PDA? One of DePrater’s activities is known. The presbytery executive is spearheading an expensive lawsuit against Bryant’s congregation in an attempt to seize its property. Fed up with the PCUSA’s theological pluralism and its institutional hierarchy, Bryant and his people changed denominations. They are now Grace Chapel Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Mississippi Presbytery initially declared that any of its congregations that wished to move to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church with their property could do so to the presbytery’s sorrow, but also with its blessing. Presbytery leaders, including DePrater, signed court documents to that effect, stating that the presbytery would not challenge congregational property claims. It is unclear as to why presbytery leaders changed their minds and decided to sue Grace Chapel. It also is unclear where the money for this litigation is coming from since there is no line item in its budget to cover such costs. What is known is the fact that the Synod of Living Waters, encouraged by lawyers at denominational headquarters, is insisting that departing congregations have no right to their property and it is advising presbytery officials to prosecute. Speculation Grace Chapel Presbyterians do not have access to documents that follow the money, so they can only speculate what might have happened. What they know is that neither Mississippi Presbytery nor the Synod of Living Waters was flush with cash before Hurricane Katrina hit. They do not contest direct grants that came from PDA to storm-stricken congregations in the presbytery – although, considering PDA’s huge surplus, they wish those grants had been more generous – and they do not contest PDA grants to the presbytery for disaster relief coordination. But they do wonder about PDA grants that may have been provided through the third-party synod to prop up a bureaucracy that appears intent upon filing lawsuits. One might call that a disaster as well. |
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