The Urban Affairs Coalition is in a legal battle with a subcontractor who alleges financial mismanagement

The Urban Affairs Coalition is suing one of its subcontractors in federal court for defamation and revealing transaction secrets after she alleged its executives turned a blind eye to misspending of cabinet grant funding UAC runs homeless shelters and other programs for the city of Philadelphia and serves as an umbrella organization for more than smaller nonprofits It is asking a federal judge to bar system consultant Karen Nicholson from disparaging it and is demanding at least in damages UAC filed the lawsuit May It comes after Nicholson spent more than a year making online posts and filing complaints with ruling body agencies related to her claim that she is owed for tool work she did for UAC plus additional compensation she alleges was skimmed from her paychecks Nicholson who is based in Ohio was hired and paid by a contractor for UAC She says he fired her in August after she complained about her paycheck bouncing She says she later determined evidence that the contractor skimmed hundreds of thousands of dollars that should have gone to her and other workers She alleges that UAC should compensate her for what she s owed and should have been a better steward of the millions of dollars in populace funds it manages She also points out that the contractor Delaware program company owner Jacques Latoison has been sued repeatedly over the past decade for unpaid local state and federal taxes It boggles the mind that our tax dollars are given to a tax cheat and everybody knows it and nothing can be done Nicholson reported in an interview Urban Affairs was responsible to make sure that they didn t give money to somebody irresponsible An Urban Affairs Coalition spokesperson stated any dispute Nicholson has is with Latoison not UAC and her asserts are without merit She has launched a smear campaign based on demonstrably false and defamatory claims spokesperson Anthony Campisi disclosed This includes creating a website containing stolen and misrepresented information and contacting members of the media in an attempt to spread these falsehoods Latoison did not respond to requests for comment A storied history and previous complaints Nicholson commented she went after the Urban Affairs Coalition in part because she believes Latoison has no money to compensate her and because she was a de facto UAC employee She says she rarely had direct contact with the contractor and mainly communicated to two UAC executives The organization she s targeting is politically prominent and has a storied history Formed in by Philadelphia society leaders to coordinate capital in Black and other disadvantaged communities it celebrated its th anniversary in November with a banquet at the Pennsylvania Convention Center that drew nearly attendees They included Mayor Cherelle Parker who received an award and keynote speaker Gov Josh Shapiro the Philadelphia Tribune announced UAC now calls itself A Home for Nonprofits and says it serves as a fiscal sponsor for more than organizations That means it essentially absorbs them manages their grant funding personnel matters legal affairs and taxes and collects fees for providing those services It also helps launch new nonprofits administers grant programs for city agencies runs a summer youth employment initiative and gives away turkeys at Thanksgiving among other initiatives The organization s programs were budgeted to receive million from the city over the past year including million to oversee homeless shelters and million for the Region Problem Intervention Project an anti-violence activity Through its Economic Progress Projects EDP division UAC also earns revenue by tracking contractor diversity on projects at countless of the city s most of prominent institutions and businesses such as Children s Hospital of Philadelphia the Philadelphia Museum of Art SEPTA and the school district It s often hired to collect details showing the organizations are meeting governing body grant requirements and is paid for that work with residents dollars UAC communicated receiving million in grants and other revenues in and million in The EDP division has over the years helped manage projects worth more than billion according to its website Including workers at the nonprofits it manages UAC has more than employees The organization has previously faced scrutiny over its financial affairs In the state Inspector General concluded it may have mismanaged million in grants and the funding was frozen the Inquirer announced More in recent weeks UAC was the subject of a federal class action lawsuit alleging it broke the law by not paying overtime to employees in an anti-violence activity it oversaw The organization denied any wrongdoing but in agreed to pay in a settlement involving workers Lagging payment and alleged discrimination Nicholson stated she was hired by Latoison in November to move years of UAC s financial statistics into Oracle NetSuite its new business platform system According to her account and to emails she provided she was closely supervised by UAC executive Kevin Satterthwaite and EDP deputy director Carlos Jones who heads EDP Satterthwaite frequently emailed and phoned her including on evenings and weekends and she was in constant email contact with Vanessa Cheeseborough an administrator who worked under Jones Nicholson disclosed Yet she sent her invoices to Latoison who has a Chester Pa -based company called The Hierarchy that has been running UAC s email and applications servers since at least according to records provided by Nicholson Otherwise she rarely spoke with him she noted The arrangement initially worked but she alleges Latoison began taking longer and longer to pay her By February it was taking nearly two months for her to receive her paychecks He advised her he was waiting for money from UAC she says so she checked with Cheeseborough She disclosed He s a liar we pay him every seven days He s been sitting on the money Nicholson noted She also discovered she was being paid much less than various Black male employees doing similar work for Latoison and UAC she revealed When she complained about the late payments Latoison described her that minorities need to pay their bills before whites commented he hated Caucasians and made other abusive comments according to an EEOC complaint filed by Nicholson s attorney When she reported Cheeseborough and Jones about Latoison s apparently discriminatory behavior they declared Latoison had been doing this for years per the EEOC complaint Cheeseborough mentioned that women who previously complained about him were ultimately forced out of UAC for doing so Nicholson noted in the legal filing A history of dodging taxes Nicholson says she continued doing her work putting in to hours a week and eventually getting paid But in April her paycheck bounced and Latoison reported her his company was having tax compliance problems she declared We re in court with the feds from the IRS he mentioned according to Nicholson Kevin is helping me move money around into an account so I can pay you Nicholson stated Latoison s company has earned million from UAC since much of it ultimately coming from federal grants that are channeled through the city of Philadelphia according to billing records she analyzed But despite those earnings he has a long history of not paying taxes on his income In the city of Philadelphia filed a Municipal Court complaint alleging The Hierarchy hadn t filed Business Income and Receipts Tax returns for four years At the time any company that did business in Philadelphia had to file a return even if it didn t make a profit The city won a judgment which it was still trying to collect in City authorities could not discuss the status of the occurrence because of state confidentiality laws a Revenue Department spokesperson noted In Delaware where Latoison lives the state Division of Revenue has won at least eight court judgments against him since totaling nearly Citizens records from New Castle County show federal tax liens against him over the same period the majority of fresh from January One lien for taxes due in manifested him owing while another from was for Accusations of inflated billing In summer Nicholson contacted Cheeseborough and solicited to speak directly with Jones one of the UAC executives who supervised her work she reported He was surprised to hear Latoison hadn t paid her in months and didn t believe her conclusion that the contractor was pocketing the money he d been given by UAC to compensate her she reported Jones announced What are you talking about I ve been friends with Jacques for years and he would never steal money according to Nicholson Jones sent her financial records showing UAC had deposited the full amount she was owed into Latoison s bank account she disclosed But she was not receiving the funds Jones stated her he would have to do a criminal inspection of Latoison s handling of the money and appealed her not to discuss the matter with anyone she declared He declared if I can get him to give you your paycheck will you be quiet Nicholson recalled He promised she wasn t being fired she stated Nicholson was an UAC employee anyway Jones informed her according to her EEOC complaint He had his assistant contact her using a Gmail account rather than a company email account to make sure he had all the reporting on her current work projects she announced Shortly thereafter Latoison fired her In the two years since she s spent multiple hours sorting through Hierarchy and UAC financial databases trying to understand their relationship In addition to handling email and other technical services Latoison served as a payroll processor for her and for a number of others involved in UAC projects including youth participating in certain work programs Nicholson says she eventually discovered that Latoison had been routinely rounding up employee hours before he forwarded timesheets to UAC adding fictional work hours and billing UAC at higher rates than employees were paid out For example UAC was giving him for each hour she worked while paying her and pocketing the difference she says He also billed UAC for all of the hours she worked which often reached hours or more per week but only paid her for hours and kept the rest of the money himself she alleges She reported Latoison raked in for doing little more than sending her timesheets to UAC Literally I entered my own time and all he had to do was press a button she revealed State and federal inquiries continue Nicholson has pursued several avenues to try to pressure Latoison or UAC to compensate her for what she says she s owed She passed on information to a Delaware Division of Revenue investigator who was pursuing Latoison for unpaid taxes she declared She filed a wage theft complaint with the city of Philadelphia which she declared went uninvestigated and contacted the Pennsylvania Department of Labor which she declared declined to get involved because she s based in another state She concluded that suing Latoison would be a waste of time she reported because he likely has no money to pay her if she won a court scenario Instead she explained she s focusing on UAC and its responsibility as her de facto employer In the formal complaint her lawyer filed with the EEOC she alleged that UAC knowingly allowed Latoison to underpay her and discriminate against her At one point an EEOC investigator advised a UAC lawyer I do not see any evidence that reflects Nicholson did not work for UAC according to a letter Nicholson obtained through a Freedom of Information request But the agency ultimately decided not to sue UAC for reasons that were not specified and instead issued a standard letter saying she had a right to sue on her own Her hopes now lie in part with a division of the Pennsylvania Department of State that oversees charities It has investigated her complaint against UAC and is considering whether to seek administrative penalties or otherwise prosecute the development However a spokesperson declared the agency does not have the authority to require restitution to employees Nicholson also in the past few days filed a similar complaint with Ohio s attorney general She has corresponded with a U S Department of Labor investigator about her pay complaint and about issues related to UAC s payment of youth workers on a project involving the Philadelphia Youth Setup according to emails she provided She s been holding off on suing UAC in the hope that the U S Department of Labor eventually goes after them as it has done previously with companies accused of misclassifying or underpaying workers She s also contacted UAC s insurer in an effort to collect the allegedly withheld funds The post The Urban Affairs Coalition is in a legal battle with a subcontractor who alleges financial mismanagement appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY