NEW ORLEANS — Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams announced Thursday a new criminal investigation into alleged misappropriation of public funds at the historic Dryades YMCA in Central City.
Williams said he’s launching the investigation after receiving a letter from the Orleans Parish School Board and New Orleans Public Schools on Monday that alleges the YMCA used public money intended for the James Singleton Charter School it operates for non-school purposes.
The allegations are nothing new. WWL-TV began investigating allegations of financial improprieties at Singleton in March when the longtime YMCA president and CEO, Doug Evans, retired and the Y’s chief financial officer, Catrina Reed, resigned.
Reed was later arrested and charged with falsifying her own criminal background check to cover up the fact that she’d been arrested for bank robbery and embezzlement in the late 1990s.
And in June, WWL-TV reported on an audit that found the Dryades YMCA owed Singleton $1.14 million. At the time, the YMCA’s interim CEO, Samuel Odom, Ph.D., said forensic auditors were preparing a report on how much money the YMCA owed the school and how that money was spent.
In Monday’s letter to Williams and the state legislative auditor, the Orleans Parish School Board said the forensic auditors hired by Dryades YMCA found the amount owed the school “may be in excess of $1 Million, but they have been unable to certify their findings to date.”
“Our inquiry will be as to why there would ever be a situation where public funds for a school would be spent on anything else other than that school, and that's where this investigation will go and we'll follow where the evidence takes us,” Williams said.
Public Schools Superintendent Henderson Lewis tried to revoke the Dryades Y's charter for Singleton School back in July, but the YMCA went to court and blocked that.
Odom confirmed to WWL-TV in June that about $381,000 of the $1.1 million was for portable classrooms the Y planned to purchase for the school, but the units were damaged and never delivered.
The YMCA has also argued in letters to the school district that it and the school are the same legal entity, so it should have been allowed to use the school's funds however it saw fit.
Williams took the rare step of announcing a criminal investigation at a press conference Thursday, before gathering any evidence.
“My office will vigorously investigate this matter,” he said. “We will in very short order issue subpoenas and use every other law enforcement tool available to make sure we have access to every single document and all the information to support a thorough investigation and get to the bottom of this matter.”
He invited all local media to the news conference to announce a “special investigation” just a few days before early voting begins in City Council races.
City Councilman Jay Banks, who endorsed Williams’ opponent in last year’s district attorney’s race, is seeking re-election in what many expect to be a close race. Banks keeps an office at the Dryades YMCA, used to run its school of commerce and has told WWL-TV that he stands by Evans’ leadership of the Y and Singleton Charter School.