Psst! Wanna Good Job?

Scandal startles Miami

Federal funds account for most of the $1.3 million that is spent each year by Miami's Edison-Little River Council on programs for the unemployed and disadvantaged. But when Dade County investigators checked up on how Council President Nathaniel Dean was actually using all that money, they found evidence that he had diverted $22,000 for the use of a gasoline station that he owns. He also made an undetermined number of interest-free loans to his various relatives. He employed a staff psychologist at the council who had no degree in psychology and whose home address turned out to be a vacant lot. In addition, Dean spent $300,000 on a farm worker project in which no trainees ever served, and paid for farm machinery that was nowhere to be found.

Acting on this evidence a Dade County grand jury is expected to indict him and at least two other council executives by the end of this month. Subsequent probes by city and county investigators have turned up dozens of other examples of questionable activities in the $92.5 million-a-year South Florida jobs program, which is jointly administered by officials from Dade and Monroe counties and the cities of Hialeah, Miami and Miami Beach, and financed by the federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA).

Founded in 1973 and instructed by Congress to decentralize the federal manpower training programs, CETA has grown rapidly and is now the Government's chief program for fighting unemployment. The agency's 1978 budget is about $12 billion-almost three times the amount spent for the War on Poverty at its peak in the 1960s. Partly because of loose federal supervision, there have been several scandals involving CETA funds, notably in Chicago, Cleveland, Denver and New Orleans.

But nowhere have there been more flagrant cases of nepotism, patronage and mismanagement in CETA-financed activities, which are supposed to benefit only the poor, than in South Florida. Some examples:

> John Clark, 22, the son of Miami City Commissioner Stephen Clark, held a $4.18-an-hour CETA job as a laborer for the parks department. Another son, Paul Clark, 18, was enrolled in a six-month diesel mechanic's training program (upon graduation, he got a $4.80-an-hour job washing buses at CETA'S expense). Also on the CETA payroll was Commissioner Clark's estranged wife, Faye, who drew $4.80 an hour as a social worker for the Dade County Association for Retarded Citizens.

> Watergate Burglar Bernard Barker held a $10,000-a-year CETA job as a sanitation inspector, which he got on the recommendation of Miami City Commissioner Manolo Reboso. CETA also paid half of his tuition as an engineering student at Florida International University. CETA pays Barker's ex-wife Clara $14,000 a year as a clerk-typist and his present wife Maria $12,500 a year as a city sanitation inspector. Says Barker: "I think it is a wonderful program.

> Margarita Ross, whose husband heads a Coral Gables engineering firm, was paid $14,200 a year, largely from CETA funds, as Miami's "cultural experiences coordinator." Mrs. Ross was apparently well connected: she is a former partner in a downtown art gallery with the wife of Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre.

Ferre says he sees nothing wrong with politicians helping friends obtain CETA jobs. Says he: "It's just incongruous to conceive that elected officials aren't going to recommend people they have a high regard for." But spokesmen for Miami's poor complain that the program is being turned into a hiring hall for the middle class. Says Urban League Director T. Willard Fair: "The chronic unemployed are being left out of the system." Indeed, Fair's own $189,000 CETA job-training program is being investigated--for spending money on training programs for long-time employees who were already skilled in their jobs.

South Florida officials insist that abuses involve only a small fraction of the more than 21,000 people who are now holding CETA jobs. Says Miami Department of Human Resources Director Robert Krause: "In any massive program, it is inevitable that administrative errors will be made." He argues that too much attention is being paid to the cases of abuse. Says Krause: "There is a tradition of corruption in Miami, so people expect to find it."

After calling some 800 witnesses and studying 29 local CETA efforts, the Dade County grand jury cited testimony indicating that the South Florida program "felt itself politically obligated to respond favorably to numerous requests from officials of county government." Adds Assistant State Attorney Thomas Petersen: "There was all this money for all these programs, but no one had time to plan or evaluate them. The wrong people ended up benefiting."

So far, 21 people have been fired from their CETA jobs in South Florida as ineligible for the program and another 14 are being investigated for fraud. The Department of Labor recently ordered a team of investigators to begin auditing the entire South Florida program. But while its problems are serious, the program is surely not the only one of CETA'S 2,800 local projects afflicted by mismanagement. Says a Labor Department official with a sigh: "It would take an army, everybody in the department, to check on each of them."

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