Post by Logan on Jun 20, 2016 6:57:39 GMT -6
The Project Rebuild Foundation was supposed to help the Metropolitan Sewer District turn construction projects into economic engines for neighborhoods.
It would be a groundbreaking private charity, its founders promised, different from MSD, but able to work with the agency to create jobs and educational programs.
Turns out, it wasn’t so different after all.
MSD contractors made most of the donations to the foundation. Top MSD officials sat on the foundation’s board and directed its fundraising. MSD customers paid many of the foundation’s bills. And the children of some MSD and other city employees, including City Councilman Christopher Smitherman, got jobs at the foundation’s summer internship program.
A recent city audit concluded it was a messy, hopelessly tangled relationship that involved too much mingling of public and private dollars and too many conflicts of interest.
Read more: www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2016/06/19/ethical-conflicts-nepotism-mar-charity/86047748/
It would be a groundbreaking private charity, its founders promised, different from MSD, but able to work with the agency to create jobs and educational programs.
Turns out, it wasn’t so different after all.
MSD contractors made most of the donations to the foundation. Top MSD officials sat on the foundation’s board and directed its fundraising. MSD customers paid many of the foundation’s bills. And the children of some MSD and other city employees, including City Councilman Christopher Smitherman, got jobs at the foundation’s summer internship program.
A recent city audit concluded it was a messy, hopelessly tangled relationship that involved too much mingling of public and private dollars and too many conflicts of interest.
Read more: www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2016/06/19/ethical-conflicts-nepotism-mar-charity/86047748/