This was the scene outside Walmart in Harrisburg on the morning of February 29, 2012. Damaged businesses like these, as well as many homes, have been rebuilt since the Leap Day Tornado…but were funds for housing properly used? A series of articles examining this question may provide answers in the upcoming months.
HARRISBURG – A couple of months ago, Disclosure’s Harrisburg correspondent attended a Harrisburg City Council meeting where some unexplained bill requests lead to a world of unanswered questions, and conspicuously vague responses to queries.
Those payments, the correspondent found out later, were payments out of the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity grants that Harrisburg received for disaster relief funds after the devastating tornado that tore the city apart on February 29, 2012. That information did not come easily, even though it was a part of a public meeting.
When asked about the payments, Commissioner Dale Fowler told our correspondent that he could not say for sure what the payments were, as he was only delivering them on behalf of Commissioner John McPeek. In the end, Disclosure submitted a FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) request in order to obtain the invoices of the payments.
Examination of invoices
The first seven invoices received were very clear, easy to read, and understandable. They included all of the information that was requested, including the location of homes that were worked on, names of the clients, and the contractor who completed the work.
In all, $168,659 of work had been approved and paid by the Harrisburg City Council at that meeting, yet according to Fowler they didn’t even know what they were paying, hence the need to FOIA the information.
When the first reports came out of that Harrisburg City Council meeting (in September), it was not anticipated that such inquiries would lead to something so disturbingly negligent. After discovering that the City Council had not even known what it was they had really approved for payment, a closer examination of the invoices was begun.
Some of the addresses did not appear to be within the damage path that the tornado produced, and the payments were questionable in nature. Disclosure acquired the original “cleanup zones” maps that Emergency Management had used in the hours and days following the storm, and located each address out of the seven on the map.
Two of the homes did not fit in the range of damage projected by emergency management.
Disturbing non-transparency
After those initial discoveries, Disclosure’s correspondent, Lyndi Hull Bowman (whose grandmother was one of those killed in the Leap Day Tornado) began looking further into the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity grants that Harrisburg received. What was found was that Harrisburg appeared to be pushing back, not wanting the information to be easily understood or acquired. Information that was crucial to Disclosure’s study of the grant expenditures was made nearly impossible to grasp without fighting to get it.
What is most disturbing is one simple fact: Any proceeding by a public body is public information. Public officials work for US, the citizens of their municipality. When they are handling a situation such as this that affects a large portion of the area they are supposed to represent, they should make their actions transparent and accessible. Being unhelpful, fighting back when questioned, hiding information, and not being able to explain what they are doing and why are not good practices for any public official, let alone a body of them that has had a problem with transparency.
SOMETHING is wrong…
Because of Harrisburg City Council’s actions regarding this particular situation, and an apparent lack of desire to step forward and show what it is they have been doing, it lends to the belief that something is seriously amiss. There would be no reason to make such a performance of being so incredibly difficult to sort through if no wrongdoing had been committed.
At this point, Disclosure isn’t making the statement that the City has done any specific thing wrong, because of not knowing what they aren’t showing.
It does appear, however, that SOMETHING is wrong. Even if everything turned out to be perfectly in order in regard to the expenditures of the Harrisburg Tornado Funding, the City Council would still be in the wrong for being so blatantly unclear, unhelpful, and showing no desire to speak to the people they represent regarding this matter. That is not what they were elected for; in fact it is very much the opposite.
The people see it
This statement must be added, however: there is no way that everything is kosher with the DCEO grant’s management. If it were, the people wouldn’t also be seeing what we are seeing. We received this letter last week, speaking to the problems we have been seeing:
“Dear Ms. Hull,
Some friends and I have talked over some of the rumors which have been circulating Harrisburg concerning tornado fraud in the use of funds which were supposed to be used to help tornado victims.
We have discovered, and this isn’t a rumor, that a family that had been promised repairs to their home in 2012, were told they wouldn’t get help in 2013 due to a money shortage. However, they found out that there had already been charges placed on their home as if work had been previously accomplished. No crews had come to do any restoration of any kind. This occurrence clued us in to the possibility that perhaps there are other people who were promised help, got none, and unknowingly had fraudulent charges assigned to their homes as if they had been given aid when in fact there was none. This family complained bitterly to Roy Adams and Jerry King when they got no help (and when they found out about the charges already credited to their home). Immediately Roy Adams (to shut this family up we think) sent a crew over to their home to begin the promised repairs.
Then, while one of us was shopping, she happened to run into Keith Turner, who hand-paints houses (with a brush) in Harrisburg. He lives on Largent Street, one of the hardest hit storm areas, in a dilapidated home. His roof was badly damaged in the storm, and he was told by Roy Adams after the storm that he would get help. Keith limped along all winter and in the spring Roy Adams told Keith that he and his girlfriend, Angel Ferrell, make too much money to qualify for help (!). [Keith lives with Angel, who is a waitress and cleans houses for a living]. Angel happens to clean Nanette Franks’ house, and Nanette (either out of pocket or through her church) got a new roof put on for them. Wouldn’t this address be a great place for Roy to hide deceptive charges?? We asked Keith why he hadn’t protested about Roy Adams’ unfairness, and he said he didn’t want to seem unappreciative of what Mrs. Franks had done for him and Angel.
Angel Ferrell also told me about a lady down the street from her and Keith who had all of her windows blown out during the storm. She was told by Roy Adams that she would receive help, but nobody came and by winter someone had boarded up her windows for her. All winter she lived in a dark, cold house until spring when a church offered to put new windows in for her. Have fraudulent charges been written up on her house??
The word went around Harrisburg that our prominent Dr. Larry Jones, who lives in the fanciest part of the Country Club, had all of his windows replaced by one of Roy Adams’ crews. We guess some neighbors were jealous and did some complaining around town since these neighbors had to use their insurance to repair their homes. If this is true we hate to think of the lady mentioned above who suffered through the winter with no windows, while the Joneses enjoyed their new deceitfully-gained windows. Dr. Jones is not above this kind of behavior. Everyone remembers that the rumor went through Harrisburg that he and several other wealthy businessmen had bought a piece of property for a decent price just prior to reselling the same ground to be used for the new Harrisburg Junior High building. There is a lot of property available outside of Harrisburg that might have been negotiated for a much cheaper price. This is just another example of the “kick-back system” that sociopaths use to get illegal gains in our society at the expense of the taxpayers.
We feel that Roy Adams and Jerry King should not be able to get away with stealing from the people of Harrisburg and the government. We hope that you can help to research this graft so Roy and the others will not be allowed to continue to thieve money from other communities. He is a sociopath who needs to lose his job and be brought to justice.
Thank you for helping us to right the wrongs in our town,
Some concerned citizens of Harrisburg wishing to remain anonymous.”
While Disclosure continues to research what exactly is going on with the Harrisburg City Council, Roy Adams Services, and the DCEO grant funding, this series of articles each month will be featured. Disclosure will bring you along and show you each step of the way to finding out what is going on, in an effort to provide the transparency that Harrisburg’s officials would do well to learn and practice.