The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Local officials halt SCLC funding

Questions arise amid inquiry into Trammell.

Man, 68, drowns at Caesar Creek Lake
5/26/12
Water rescues prompt warning from health officials
5/25/12
Beach Waterpark sued for failure to deliver
5/25/12
Raleigh Trammell’s defense opens in felony trial
5/25/12
UD to move satellite campus to Dublin
5/25/12
> More headlines

By Lynn Hulsey and Tom Beyerlein
Staff Writers Updated 12:12 AM Friday, February 12, 2010

DAYTON — Thursday’s FBI raid isn’t the Rev. Raleigh Trammell’s only problem.

Local officials are scrambling to halt, delay or audit taxpayer funding for local programs his organizations operate.

“Obviously I’m extremely concerned and we want to cooperate in any way with the FBI or police if they need anything from us,” said Montgomery County Administrator Deborah Feldman.

The FBI conducted simultaneous raids on Trammell’s offices at the Dayton chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, his home, and that of his daughter, Angela Goodwine, who oversees many of the local programs funded with taxpayer dollars.

Montgomery County, state and federal governments last year provided $357,637, for programs operated by the SCLC and the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance. Since 1999, the total taxpayer contribution to those groups has been at least $3 million.

Trammell is chairman of the national SCLC, a civil rights group founded in 1957 by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He is also chairman of the Dayton SCLC chapter and executive director of the IMA.

Trammell and SCLC national Treasurer Spiver Gordon are under investigation by the national SCLC for allegedly embezzling $569,000.

National board member Art Rocker and others presented evidence to authorities in Alabama and Georgia and had planned to come to Ohio next week. Rocker applauded the FBI raid.

“It will show it’s going to be tough to pimp on the name of Dr. King any longer. This is a message to all civil rights leaders,” said Rocker, president of Florida SCLC. “If you’re not going to do your program, if you’re not going to do what you say, get out of the civil rights business.”

Local civil rights activist Keith Lander called for the local SCLC board to remove Trammell before he causes the local chapter to disband.

“I hate to see that happen just because a couple of individuals mismanaged and ran the organization into the ground,” Lander said. “You just can’t overlook this and say we can’t be bothered with this. You’ve got federal agents all over the place.”

It wasn’t the first time that Trammell’s home at 1505 Olmstead Place has been raided. In 1977, Trammell, then deputy director of the county welfare department, was indicted in a widespread probe into systemic welfare fraud and his home raided by sheriff’s deputies. He was convicted of larceny by trick and grand theft, and sentenced to 4-to-10 years in prison. He served a little over a year before being released on shock parole in 1980.

Trammell has headed the local SCLC since 1983. He became vice chairman of the national SCLC board in 1996 and national chairman in 2004.

Trammell denies the embezzlement allegations. He and Goodwine could not be reached for comment about questions over local funding.

A Dayton Daily News examination found the Dayton SCLC chapter and IMA took funding for a domestic violence shelter and food pantry that closed in August. For the last two years the county also failed to monitor the funding Trammell’s organizations received through the Dayton Urban League.

“We take full responsibility for our lack of full monitoring,” Feldman said, although she said the Urban League too failed to monitor its subcontractors.

The county funds a Family Formation case management and counseling program through the Urban League, which subcontracts with the IMA, SCLC and a third group. In 2009, $84,660 went to the IMA and SCLC for those services.

In response to questions raised by the Daily News, the county reviewed the program’s paperwork this week and found that the SCLC had failed to document whether services were provided.

Feldman said Thursday she removed the SCLC as a subcontractor, and told the Urban League it would not be paid until a plan is in place to better monitor how the money is spent.

The United Way of Greater Dayton also is auditing Federal Emergency Management Agency money that went to IMA and SCLC last year, said Jayne Klose, senior vice president of the local United Way, which oversees the funding.

The money was to pay for the shelter, the pantry and a feeding program. Since 2001 the SCLC and IMA have received $728,252 from the program, including federal stimulus money.

Officials of two local agencies that protect battered women said they had heard only vaguely about the SCLC “Safehouse,” which SCLC’s grant application claimed served 21 abused women and children.

YWCA spokeswoman Karen Dempsey Volke said simply, “The YWCA operates the only domestic violence shelter in Montgomery County. We are it.”

Patti Schwartztrauber, executive director of the Artemis Center, said, “We have not been in the practice of referring people to that safe house. I don’t know where they get their referrals. I really don’t know what it is.”

The county also spends about $40,000 a year in human services levy money for a feeding program the SCLC runs. Feldman on Thursday said she would cut off the funding in April unless the SCLC provides a full financial accounting and audit. She temporarily suspended that program Thursday and requested a health inspection after a Daily News reporter informed her about complaints made by a public assistance recipient who was sent to work at the SCLC kitchen.

“I was like ‘Oh my God, I would not eat from here,’ ” Cathy McKee of Dayton told the newspaper. “There’s leaks dripping. I don’t like working in conditions like that.”

Feldman said public assistance recipients will no longer be sent to work at the SCLC.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7455 or lhulsey@DaytonDailyNews.com.

Share this article