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New name, same old shady tactics

The Florida Youth Conservation Corps needs to take the paper bag off its head. The disguise isn't fooling anyone.

FYCC bosses have repackaged themselves (without the bold promise of being new and improved!) as the Youth Development Corps in a contrived attempt to again grab tax money for their dubious nonprofit group.

Legislators already said they plan to prohibit FYCC from getting no-bid state contracts. The legislative intent comes because Dade City-based FYCC received up to $4.5-million annually to clean state highway rights of way under the guise of providing job training and scholarships to disadvantaged youths. Instead, a Times investigation last year found no scholarship recipients, but $457,000 worth of travel and conference expenses over four years including a junket for top managers to the Dominican Republic to oversee an $8,000 investment in a youth baseball league.

FYCC leaders declined to document their spending when called before a Florida Senate committee in October. But that doesn't mean they've been inactive. A month earlier, they recast themselves as the Youth Development Corps. The new nonprofit lists FYCC officials Bartolome Colom and Terry Blackmon as vice presidents, works from the same address as FYCC and uses a mission statement verbatim to FYCC's to provide an "at-risk youth work experience program."

Youth Development Corps certainly walks and talks like a duck. It even pulled the same FYCC trick of anointing officers without their knowledge. Corporate records list the president as retired Department of Transportation engineer Ahmad Nawab, who also is an FYCC director. Nawab told Times staff writer Bridget Hall Grumet he had never heard of the new charity beyond a conversation last summer with Colom and Blackmon who said they wanted to divest FYCC into separate entities. Previously, FYCC listed state Sen. Mike Fasano as a member of its board of directors without his knowledge. No sense telling people they'll be responsible for oversight if you don't plan to have any oversight anyway.

Blackmon, in an e-mail received by the Times after Grumet completed her reporting, said forming Youth Development Corps was part of a preconceived business plan and the group did not intend to seek DOT contracts. Not informing Nawab of the incorporation was on oversight, he said, and those critical of FYCC are acting out of spite or their own self interests.

The continued posturing is insulting, but not unexpected. FYCC earlier attempted to mislead legislators by stating Colom was no longer part of the organization even though he continued to run the place and put nine relatives on the board of directors.

Forget the subterfuge; the intent of Youth Development Corps is obvious. It seeks to circumvent accountability of its handling of public money and to continue to exploit young, unskilled laborers toiling for $7 an hour.

Fasano is correct to extend the planned state money ban to corporations affiliated with FYCC. Let the group bid for future state work after it accounts for past appropriations.

[Last modified March 21, 2006, 02:30:40]