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SAN DIEGO: Ex-official sues CEO, directors of troubled charity
By Jeff McDonald
Staff Writer
UNION TRIBUNE
November 17, 2004
A former vice president at Episcopal Community Services has filed suit against the charity, its chief executive and its board of directors, lodging complaints about financial impropriety and mismanagement.
At least 10 other ECS executives have resigned in the past three years, with several expressing similar concerns. The Rev. David L. Norgard is the first to sue the troubled social services agency.
Norgard was recruited by ECS executive director Amanda Rutherford May in 2003 to be vice president of adult programs. He left nine months later.
According to his suit, filed last month in Superior Court, Norgard was lured from Minnesota to San Diego on the promise of succeeding May as chief executive sometime "in the foreseeable future."
Instead, he was excluded from the chain of command on decisions affecting his areas of responsibility; held accountable for things he was kept unaware of; and "placed in an ethical dilemma regarding ECS' accounting and personnel practices," the suit alleged.
The complaint said Norgard was put "in the impossible position of being responsible for finances over which he had neither control nor information."
Norgard, 46, is asking for a trial and unspecified damages.
ECS officials had no comment. Their public-relations agency steered questions to an attorney who did not return telephone messages left at his office seeking comment.
The lawsuit comes at a difficult time for Episcopal Community Services, a faith-based charity established in 1927. It spends about $20 million a year of mostly government money on counseling, housing and other services for the vulnerable and needy people of this region.
In recent months, the agency has endured a number of government audits and investigations that turned up numerous examples of lax accounting, shoddy record-keeping and questionable management decisions, among other problems.
The district attorney's office opened a criminal investigation this year into the charity's finances, based on evidence provided by former employees.
An independent committee formed by the diocese recently recommended stricter oversight of the charity and improvements to the agency's nepotism policy. It also questioned the seemingly high turnover of executive-level staff.
A 1983 graduate of Yale University, Norgard formerly ran ECS of Minnesota. After he left the San Diego ECS office, he was hired at St. Paul's Cathedral in Banker's Hill, the Episcopal Diocese's pre-eminent house of worship.
Archdeacon William Dopp declined to discuss Norgard's suit against ECS but noted that ECS is a separate corporation, distinct from the diocese. He said the diocese knew about Norgard's plans to sue ECS before Norgard was hired as St. Paul's associate for stewardship and development.
"His lawsuit against ECS is a private matter," Dopp said.
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