The evolution of the agency (WIB 6)

A brief primer

I've had some minor misunderstandings about the evolution of Juan Manigault's Northern Indiana Workforce Investment Board (and its various incarnations) and I'm guessing readers may have as well. After conversations with former executives and others involved on the periphery, I think I have a much clearer picture.

Also, from this point I'll just use the terms WIB or "the agency" to identify it.

The original charge of the agency was multifaceted. They were to create and administer job creation/enhancement programs, supervise efforts of private non-profits using public funds and apply for grants: Federal, State and private. The grants varied greatly in amounts and started about $25,000. The total for the agency was about $14 million in the early 2000s. Naturally, a key function of the agency was to ride herd on the money involved. It's also useful to know that although the agency represented four counties, the "checkbook" - as it were - was maintained by St. Joseph County. The agency would request the checks, the agency's Vice President of Finance would sign them, but the checks would be issued by the county. In many respects, the county operated in the way many Bursar's offices do for Universities.

Due to conflict of interest concerns, the state elected to split the functions effective in July, 2000. They created a new entity - the DWD - to handle program administration. That left the the WIB the duties of fiscal agent and grant applications.

Overseeing operations of all this was a governing board of somewhere between 50-70 people. Though there was a requirement that a certain number of people be selected for each county, the selections were made by the Board's own Executive Committee, which seems a rather odd way to go about it. One former Executive Vice President of the WIB told me that Mr. Manigault was quite adept at loading this board (via his recommendations to the Executive Committee) with sympathetic individuals.

And of course there was a State agency which supervised this agency - Indiana Workforce Development, headed at the time by Alan Degner.

That clears up everything, doesn't it?

There is a point to explaining all of this. One key point to make is that by July 2000, the WIB's only job was that of a fiscal agent. This fact calls into even greater question Juan Manigault's claim that it wasn't his fault the agency had accounting problems. Not only was he a CEO, he was a CEO of an organization whose only job was to keep track of money.

Another point. After the fiscal crisis was uncovered in the early 2000's, through the efforts of Steve Luecke and others, the WIB was required to hire it's own fiscal agent (Crowe, Chizek) to protect the taxpayers. I don't know of a clearer evidence of malfeasence of an organization than that.

You may wonder, reasonably enough, why they didn't fire this guy? But remember, the governing board was loaded with Manigualt allies.

In the next chapter we'll introduce Konnie Beasley, who came on board in March of 2001 as the Vice President for Finance of the agency. You'll learn a lot towards explaining how one can make 1.1 million dollars disappear.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Don Wheeler