A probe of Civil Rights Commission spending

By JENNIFER SERGENT Scripps Howard News Service August 22, 2001

WASHINGTON - A House committee is investigating the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and its payments to a public-relations firm to publicize several controversial reports.

The commission has paid $135,000 to McKinney & McDowell Associates of Washington since April 2000, at the same time paying the full-time salaries of two people in its press office.

The money the commission spent during fiscal 2001 is more than twice what it is allowed to spend on outside consultants under requirements of its 2001 spending allocation from Congress.

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution sent a letter to Commission Chairwoman Mary Frances Berry on Tuesday questioning those payments and the commission's refusal to turn over documents pertaining to them despite two previous requests for the information. Scripps Howard News Service first reported the payments last week.

"The commission's response and its failure to produce the documents requested appears to be a deliberate attempt to conceal from the subcommittee evidence that the commission has spent appropriated funds on McKinney & McDowell Associates in excess of those permitted under its appropriations authority," subcommittee chairman Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, wrote in a letter sent Tuesday.

The letter specified that the commission was allowed to spend only $50,000 on outside consultants from its $8.9 million budget for 2001. According to contracts that Scripps Howard requested under the Freedom of Information Act, the commission paid McKinney & McDowell $110,000 during the current fiscal year.

"As you also know, the unauthorized expenditure of appropriated funds is subject to criminal penalties," the letter said. Penalties include fines of up to $5,000 or up to two years in prison.

Chabot demanded to see all documents related to McKinney & McDowell by Tuesday, Aug. 28.

Berry was traveling on Wednesday and could not be reached for comment. But Gwen McKinney, co-president of McKinney & McDowell Associates, disputed the subcommittee's allegations.

"I'm not a consultant," she said.

Her firm is a contractor officially approved by the federal General Services Administration under the category of "marketing, media and public information services," she said.

Her firm is listed in the General Services Administration's Web site as an approved contractor. McKinney has done work for other government agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Aviation Administration, she said.

The civil rights commission's budget restricts spending specifically on consultants and does not use the term "contractor," meaning a firm that provides services as opposed to an individual adviser.

Subcommittee ranking member Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said he would question whether the spending restriction applies to contractors.

Officials with the Republican staff of the subcommittee said they did not see any distinction between contractors and consultants where the spending limit was concerned.

Chabot's letter to Berry was his fourth this summer. The letters began initially to investigate the commission's leaking its report on Florida voting irregularities, and whether Florida officials were given enough warning about the report's allegations before it became public.

Chabot's subcommittee asked about McKinney & McDowell's role in disseminating the Florida report in the context of that investigation. The commission responded that it had no role in the early leaks of the report.

-- Anonymous, August 23, 2001