Tag Archives: Form 990

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Kate Brown and the Willamette Falls Trust: Fess Up

Kate Brown at Willamette Falls

Former Oregon governor, Kate Brown, and the Willamette Falls Trust don’t appear to be big on public disclosure. 

On June 4, 2024, the Willamette Falls Trust announced Brown had been selected as the group’s new president. She occupied her new position on May 28, taking over from Andrew Mason, who led the trust’s work for more than six years.

Willamette Falls Trust, created in 2015, is based in Oregon City. Made up of local, regional and tribal leaders, it is a non-profit working to promote and preserve public access to the Falls. It’s likely Brown’s appointment was based, in part, on an assumption she could secure state funding for the Trust. 

That bet paid off.

As the Legislature’s 2025 session ended, it approved giving $45 million to the Trust. The money will go toward the purchase of 60 acres of property on the West Linn side of the waterfall. 

But the appropriation was not without controversy. Willamette Week reported that the Grand Ronde Tribe, which has historic treaty rights at Willamette Falls, had urged Gov. Tina Kotek not to give money to the trust. Grand Ronde tribal chairwoman Cheryle Kennedy panned the appropriation. “Any state investment in land at Willamette Falls must center the voices and rights of Tribal nations with ancestral ties to this sacred site, not a private nonprofit,” Grand Ronde tribal chairwoman Cheryle Kennedy told Willamette Week. 

Going forward, you’d think the Trust would want to be transparent and straightforward about its operations in order to secure public support for its mission, but from the start it has been tight-lipped about what it’s paying Brown. Is it appropriate, modest, extravagant, embarrassingly over the top?

I e-mailed Brown asking her directly what total compensation she received from the Trust in 2024 and what her projected total compensation is for 2025. 

David Perry, Vice President of Internal Operations at the Trust, responded, saying Brown asked him to reply.“Unfortunately, all personnel matters, including employee compensation, are considered confidential so I cannot provide the answers to your questions directly,” he said. 

He noted, however, that Brown’s 2024 compensation will be noted in annual report the Trust and all other Oregon non-profits are required to file annually with the Internal Revenue Service and the Oregon Department of Justice. Those 2024 reports will be filed no later than November 15, 2025. Financial information for 2025 will go through a similar review and filing process, so will not be available until late 2026, he said.

As the conservative commentator John Stossel often says, “Give me a break!”.

The Trust, which is in line to receive an infusion of $45 million in taxpayer funds, wants to hide Kate Brown’s 2024 compensation until mid-November 2025 and her 2025 compensation until November 2026. 

Why? 

UPDATE: August 1, 2025 –  Gov. Kotek weighs whether to veto funds for Willamette Falls inter-tribal project, OPB, 

Kotek’s office stated Thursday that she is considering a veto of a budget line item from the Legislature’s “Christmas Tree” bill that allocated funding for all sorts of projects and initiatives, including the Willamette Falls project. 

“[Kotek] is exercising her due diligence to understand more fully the use of these dollars and wants to hear more from all interested parties,” the governor’s office wrote. 

The announcement came amid an ongoing conflict among regional tribes over both the project and fishing access at Willamette Falls.

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Justice Clarence Thomas and the Horatio Alger Association: What The New York Times Didn’t Tell You

On July 9, 2023, The New York Times ran a 4,314-word story about Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas’s connections with an exclusive club, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans Inc.. 

“His friendships forged through Horatio Alger have brought him proximity to a lifestyle of unimaginable material privilege,” the reporters wrote, leading into multiple examples of benefits he received from a broad cohort of wealthy and powerful friends and insinuations that Thomas had been compromised.

Citing the Association’s website, the story said the non-profit group, portrayed as a group of wealthy and influential believers in meritocratic success, has awarded more than $245 million in college scholarships to roughly 35,000 students since its founding in 1947. The Association has been tax-exempt since Oct. 1952.

What the reporters didn’t do was look deeper at the Association. It has quite a dubious history.

In 1988, while a business reporter at The Oregonian newspaper, I researched and wrote a story about the Association, which had inducted two prominent Oregonians. The story (which won plaudits from the Columbia Journalism Review) noted that from 1985 through 1987 — the latest period for which tax records were available at the time — the Association raised $2.1 million. During those three years, The organization spent $1.7 million. Just $315,000 of that went to scholarships.

Rather than funding scholarships, most of the association’s outlays went to executive salaries, office expenses, books devoted largely to laudatory stories of the members’ lives, annual banquets at places such as New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel and the Westin Galleria Hotel in Houston and contracts with a New York public relations firm.

The amount of salary and benefits going to the association’s executive director alone, which increased from $98,126 in 1985 to $120,154 in 1987, exceeded or almost equaled the amount of scholarships awarded in each of the past three years. Those scholarships totaled $100,000 in both 1985 and 1986 and $115,000 in 1987.

In 1987 the Association spent more on printing and publications than on scholarships. Its principal annual publication was a hard-cover book titled “Only in America Opportunity Still Knocks.” The book devoted 132 of its 192 pages to a membership list and biographies featuring informal snapshots of the members and outlines of their paths to success.

A review of the Association’s recent federal tax filings reveals it still engages in questionable financial behavior.

The IRS requires that tax-exempt organizations, nonexempt charitable trusts, and section 527 political organizations file an annual Form 990 to provide the IRS with the information required by 26 U.S. Code § 6033. In its recent filings it stated its purpose as: “(1) To provide scholarship assistance to help promising high school students (who fit the Horatio Alger profile) attend college, and (2) to spread the message that America’s free enterprise system provides the greatest opportunities in the world for personal achievement and success.”

The Alexandria, VA-based Association’s recent Form 990s (2020, 2021) reveal it has grown substantially since I wrote about it in 1988, reporting total revenue of $27,092,429 in 2020 and $20,322,852 in 2021. But its scholarship distributions still fall far short of its annual revenue.

In 2020, its scholarship grants totaled $11,223,951, just 41% of its revenue. In 2021, grants totaled $12,287,913, 60% of its revenue, which was at least better than in 2010, when its revenue totaled $19,682,336 and its grants to individuals totaled just $4,721,307.

Where has all the rest of its revenue gone?

In 2021, a whopping $2,446,876 went to salaries, other compensation and employee benefits, including $1,348,080 to Executive Director Terrence J. Giroux. Another $318,936 went to a Philadelphia, PA public relations firm, Brian Communications. A total of $552,717 was spent on “event management”, slightly less than the $1,062,380 spent on event management and production in 2020. (The Association’s Form 990s say some of that money went to Linder & Associates, but that is a property management company in Los Angeles, California. The money probably went, instead, to Linder Global Events, an event management agency based in Washington, D.C.)

The Red Bank Film Factory of Red Bank, NJ was paid $471,271 and Destin Productions LLC of Limassol, Cyprus took in $330,000 for a television marketing campaign in 2021

Another $8,527,523 went to “Other Expenses”, including legal, accounting, advertising, office expenses, travel, conferences, conventions and meetings. 

According to the Association’s 2021 Form 990, $2,739,296 went just to “Member support and meetings, including the annual board of directors meeting, annual awards week in Washington, D.C. and specialized forums.”

In other words, given the amount of its revenue, the Association falls far short of expectations in its scholarship handouts, while spending extravagant sums on compensation and other functions, such as public relations and fancy dinners for its mostly wealthy members. 

Media coverage of the Association, while frequently citing its distinguished members, such as author Maya Angelou, former Intel CEO Craig Barrett, Michael Bloomberg and NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, also has failed to mention that its ranks include some questionable characters, such as:

  • Roger Ailes, who resigned as chairman and CEO of Fox News after being accused of sexual harassment by several female Fox employees, including on-air hosts
  • Elizabeth Holmes, former CEO of Theranos. Holmes was convicted in 2022 on four counts of wire fraud for swindling doctors and patients to use her company’s blood-testing services while knowing that Theranos was incapable of producing accurate results, according to the indictment. She was also accused of defrauding investors of more than $700 million with the fabricated claims.
  • Joe Allbritton, a Washington, D.C. power-broker who turned a blind eye to evidence that Riggs Bank, of which he was  chairman and chief executive officer, was “handling the proceeds of foreign corruption and paid paid a $16 million criminal fine over charges the bank had failed to report suspicious transactions with foreign account holders.” The judge who imposed the fine described the bank as “a greedy corporate henchman of dictators and their corrupt regimes.”

America loves stories about someone picking themselves up by their bootstraps, as in Horatio Alger’s books about  impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of success, although, truth be told, you can’t really do that. Truth be told, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans Inc. isn’t all it’s stacked up to be either.

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The college admission fraud: and the beat goes on

fraud

It looks like there are a lot more people who should be charged in the college admission scandal.

William Singer, who used his Key Worldwide Foundation to help wealthy parents fraudulently get their children into top colleges. said in recorded calls in 2018 that he had helped 760 students in the previous school year get into college by what he described as “the side door”, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In  other words, there’s  a slew of parents and students not yet disclosed who participated in the college admission scheme. Federal prosecutors have so far identified only  50 defendants across six states.

Any parents who funneled money through the fraudulent Key Worldwide Foundation to get their kids into colleges could also be targeted if they deducted the payments on their taxes as charitable contributions.

charitablegiving

Then there’s Dawud Raamuh, John Peter Byrne Jr. and Steve Masera.

Never heard of them?

Raamuh is the Secretary of the Key Worldwide Foundation, the 501(c)(3) non-profit that William Singer used to help wealthy parents fraudulently get their children into top colleges. Byrne serves as Director of the Foundation and Masera as Treasurer. They all should be held responsible for this fiasco.

A deeper look into the activities of Singer, who’s the Foundation’s President and CEO, is warranted, too. He may have used the Foundation to reinforce his own son’s attendance at DePaul University. Forms filed with the IRS by the Foundation show it donated $150,000 to the school in 2014, 2015 and 2016 while his son was a student there until graduating in 2017.

Form 990 IRS reports non-profits are required top file annually say the Foundation received $7,065,675 in contributions and spent close to $4,953,630 during 2013-2016. Shouldn’t the Foundation’s personnel be held responsible for the Foundation’s malfeasance?

The Foundation reported to the IRS that in 2016 it received $3,736,160 in Gifts, grants, contributions, and membership fees and made $860,112 in cash grants and other assistance to domestic organizations, including:

$150,000 to Chapman University, Orange, CA

$11,000 to Community Donations, Sacramento, CA

$50,000 to DePaul University, Chicago, Il

$18,550 to Friends of Cambodia, Palo, Alto, CA

$10,000 to the Ladylike Foundation, Los Angeles, CA

$39,900 to Loyola High School, Los Angeles, CA

$83,181 to NYU Athletics, New York, NY

$100,000 to Princeville Enterprises, Los Angeles, CA

$60,000 to University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL

$252,500 to University of Texas Athletics, Austin, TX

$25,000 to the USC Soccer Program, Los Angeles, CA

$50,000 to USC Women’s Athletics Board, Los Angeles, CA

There are questions, however, about whether even the listed donations occurred or were legitimate.

For example, NBC Bay Area  TV spoke with Elia and Halimah Van Tuyl, who run Friends of Cambodia. They said they’d never heard of the Key Worldwide Foundation and had never received any money from it in 2016 (or 2015, when the Foundation’s Form 990 reported it donated $18,550 to Friends of Cambodia).

In another case, it looks like the $100,000 listed as a donation to Princeville Enterprises in Los Angeles, CA went to the same address as the home of UCLA soccer coach, Jorge Salcedo.

Salcedo was indicted on Tuesday by the U.S. District Court for conspiracy to commit racketeering in the college admissions fraud case. He is accused of taking $200,000 to help admit one female and one male applicant to UCLA under the pretense they were soccer recruits when they didn’t even play competitive soccer.

Donations to the USC Women’s Athletics Board look suspicious, too. According to the federal indictment, Singer’s clients sent more than $1.3 million in bribes to USC accounts controlled by Donna Heinel, USC’s former senior associate athletic director. Many of the payments sent during 2014 – 2018 went to the USC Women’s Athletic Board.

With these cases in question, others probably deserve scrutiny, too.

 

 

 

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Portland’s XRAY.FM: skating on the edge

xray-fm-1000px-screengrab*750

XRAY.FM, a progressive non-profit radio station in Portland, was launched with much fanfare on March 15, 2014 with the backing of Portland taxpayers in the form of a grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC).

I was interested in how XRAY was doing, so I asked Cascade Educational Broadcast Service, XRAY’s parent, for copies of its Form 990 federal tax filings for 2013 and forward. I figured the station would get back to me without any fuss because the law requires tax-exempt organizations to allow public inspection of their recent federal annual information returns. In my case, no such luck. Despite repeated requests, Cascade never responded to my queries.

So I went directly to the IRS. They promptly sent me Cascade’s Form 990 for 2013, but that was it. “There is no record of filing for periods 2014 and 2015,” said Jeffrey Austin, Disclosure Manager with the IRS.

The 2013 filing, submitted on Nov. 12, 2014, shows that in 2013, during its organizational stage, Cascade took in contributions of $23,820 and spent $19,626.

What were its revenue and expenses in 2014, its first year of operation? Got me. How about its second year, 2015? Who knows? According to the IRS, after 2013, Cascade simply stopped filing any federal tax returns. There is no record of filing for periods 2014 and 2015,” said IRS Disclosure Manager, Jeffrey Austin.

That’s a problem.

Tax-exempt organizations are required to file annual returns. If an organization doesn’t file a required return or files late, the IRS may assess penalties. In addition, if an organization doesn’t file as required for three consecutive years, it automatically loses its tax-exempt status.

That means one more year of negligence would put XRAY’s tax-exempt status at risk.

What a shame it would be if that happened to this progressive mouthpiece.