State MRDD probes relationship with for-profit company

COLUMBUS (AP) -- The vice president of the Ohio Association of County Boards of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities said the group is looking into whether it should distance itself from a for-profit company that shares its chief executive and office space.
A two-month investigation by The Columbus Dispatch found that the state and counties have paid Charles H. Arndt's company, Leadership First Academy for Executive Development in MRDD, more than $1.4 million since 2001 while the nonprofit association paid many of the company's expenses.
Leadership First is run out of the same Worthington office as the association, which gave Ardnt permission to run both. The company now provides much of the state-mandated training the association used to run for MRDD professionals and board members. The association gets a cut of the money Leadership First makes from the training programs.
Audit under way
Dave Dohnal, vice president of the association, said the group is conducting an audit and examining the "appropriateness" of its relationship with Leadership First.
The audit is to be finished by next month. The association also is conducting a separate review of its own operations.
"We are making a diligent and honest effort to review everything the association does, and if corrections need to be made, we'll make them," said Dohnal, a retired Akron lawyer and member of the Summit County MRDD Board.
Criticism and surprise
Some have criticized the fact that money once paid to the nonprofit association now is going to a for-profit company. Several advocates for the mentally retarded said they thought Leadership First was part of the association and were surprised to learn it's a separate company.
Arndt, 57, has been on medical leave for a month. He told The Dispatch on Saturday that he has "lost track of everything."
"Over the last five to six years, I have been too intensely involved in my work with the association to appropriately run a private business," he said.
"When I started the association in 1984, there was $160 million [in public funding for Ohio MRDD clients], and it's about $1.5 billion today. I realize that doesn't justify anything." He declined to comment further.
Documents from county MRDD boards, the state MRDD department and the association of county boards show the association has paid more than $100,000 to Leadership First to cover employee salaries and consultant fees.
Meaningless title
The newspaper also reported that Union County MRDD Superintendent Jerry Buerger is listed in the current contract as the board's adviser to Leadership First -- a position Buerger didn't know he held.
"I've never been approached for advice," he said. "I don't know why that title is there." Buerger said that Arndt asked him earlier this year about serving on an audit committee but that he never heard anything more about it.
Clark County MRDD Superintendent Deborah Clayton said she worries there isn't a clear line between the tax-supported association and Arndt's business.
"It is the lack of transparency and the fact some of the relationships and finances that are not clean enough that are of real concern," she said.
The county refused to renew its association membership in 2003. But it also is no longer planning to join a lawsuit against the state over decisions seen as harmful to MRDD funding.