Ex-board member says domestic violence nonprofit’s CEO resisted calls to disclose pay

In documents filed late Thursday with the Florida House, a former board member of the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence alleges that former CEO Tiffany Carr worked aggressively to shield details of her salary from disclosure.

Lorna Taylor, the only recent member of the board who did not have a financial relationship with the coalition that manages $52 million of state and federal grant money, says in the sworn affidavit that she repeatedly urged Carr to turn over the details of her salary and compensation package to state auditors but Carr refused.

Carr, 51, who had collected more than $7.5 million in compensation over three years, argued the information was “outside the scope” of the coalition’s contract with the Department of Children and Families.

“I told her that whether it was technically correct or not, failing to provide the information gave the appearance that FCADV was being obstructionist and/or had something to hide,’’ Taylor said she told Carr in a September 2019 phone conversation.

Carr then spent months dictating how staff and lawyers should answer auditors, working with lobbyists to resist legislation to end the coalition’s sole source contract with the state, and directing staff to send her files to her home in North Carolina so she could “organize them.”

Taylor, who is CEO of Tampa-based Premier Eye Care, served on the board of FCADV for 10 years and became friends with Carr. She resigned on Jan. 27, two days after learning from a former coalition staff member that Carr had used Department of Children and Families funds to pad her paid time off and cash it in for personal use.

At the time, Taylor said in the affidavit that she knew only about two payments — $700,000 in 2016-17 and $800,000 in 2017-18 — but documents turned over to the Florida House and reviewed by the Herald/Times show the total amount of taxpayer money used to cash in paid time off was about $4.9 million.

Taylor’s affidavit shows the extent to which Carr kept a close handle on information about the payroll scheme being investigated by the House Public Integrity and Ethics Committee. This week the committee interrogated three current and former chairs of the board’s compensation committee and Carr’s two top deputies at the coalition.

Documents obtained by the committee and interviews of board members and staff revealed a scheme in which Carr directed board members to award the equivalent of several years of paid time off as part of her compensation package.

Unspent grant money

It was financed in part by using unused grant money. Instead of giving the money back to DCF, as required by law, Patricia Duarte, the FCADV chief financial officer, would shift the money into the payroll account, where DCF never detected it, testimony showed.

Just as the compensation committee allowed Carr to liquidate more than $4 million in paid time off over three years, Carr allowed Duarte and FCADV’s chief operating officer, Sandra Barnett, to also liquidate paid time off: about $64,000 for Duarte and $46,000 for Barnett.

Taylor, who served on the board but not on the compensation committee that

approved Carr’s salary, said she first confronted Carr about her salary in July 2018, after the Miami Herald reported that Carr had shown W-2 compensation of $761,560 on the coalition’s IRS 990 form.

“I was alarmed as, while I was not privy to detailed information regarding Ms. Carr’s compensation, I had been told that her annual salary was approximately $300,000,’’ she said.

She called Carr, “who told me that the article conflated salary and compensation” which, Carr alleged, “included the liquidation of leave accumulated over a 25-year period and a bonus paid from private funding.”

Taylor checked out the details and seemed satisfied but was surprised when Carr then doubled down. Carr then sent an email that provided examples of high salaries at other nonprofit organizations as justification for her salary. A week later, Carr sent Taylor an email with “talking points” to counter the Herald article.

Taylor testified that she thought the issue had been resolved until she received a letter from DCF’s auditor in September 2019, saying FCADV was not cooperating with multiple attempts to obtain information about its compensation records.

That’s when Taylor advised Carr to cooperate and turn over the records.

“Ms. Carr told me that she disagreed with providing DCF with information outside the scope of its contract,’’ she wrote.

Resigned, but still calling the shots

When Carr resigned in November for health reasons related to a brain tumor, she remained on as a contractor, selecting former state Sen. Denise Grimsley as her replacement. Taylor said she was upset to learn about it two weeks later.

“I expressed frustration that as a board member I was learning about these developments after the fact,’’ Taylor said in the affidavit.

Then, when Grimsley resigned abruptly on Jan. 21, Taylor said she took it as a “signal” that something deeper was wrong. She had trusted Grimsley, but the former lawmaker had given no reason for her departure.

Taylor then called Carr, who blamed Grimsley’s resignation on a “perception problem,” saying she incorrectly perceived FCADV staff as not trusting her. But by this time Taylor had more doubts, she said.

She said she again advised Carr to release all the details of her compensation to put the issue to rest. Taylor also told her to resign as consultant and “separate herself completely from FCADV ... both for her own health and for the good of the organization.”

But Carr kept fighting.

Taylor then turned to Melody Keeth, the chair of the board who was a longtime member of the compensation committee, and in a Jan. 25 email demanded FCADV staff provide her with documents and details.

Keeth responded: “I am not trying to be secreative [sic] or difficult but if you want these things you are going to have to be patient.”

House increases pressure

Meanwhile, the House, which had drafted legislation to repeal the statute that gave FCADV the sole source contract to handle domestic violence finances, increased the heat. It prepared its own documents request and threatened to subpoena Carr and her staff if they didn’t cooperate with the DCF request for information.

Late on Jan. 25, Scott Howell, FCADV’s vice president for internal and external affairs, reached out to Taylor to fill in the blanks. He had been briefed by Barnett, who said that “800 double-sided pages of materials” were being delivered to DCF, and they would show that in two years Carr had been awarded paid time off with a cash value of $1.5 million.

The questions mounted for Taylor, she testified. Why would DCF not have flagged the excessive PTO awards? Why weren’t they caught by the annual financial audits reviewed by the board? How long had Barnett known about this?

Howell said he didn’t know. On Jan. 26, the two of them then approached Grimsley, who agreed to alert DCF. Taylor resigned from the board Jan. 27.

Taylor told the Herald/Times in an interview Friday that she is saddened and shaken by Carr’s actions.

“This is even more disturbing because it was not a one-time lapse of judgment,’’ she said. “Instead it appears to be a deeply hidden deception that was orchestrated over several years.”

Incoming board chair, Angela Diaz-Vidaillet, who is CEO of the Lodge, a Miami shelter, testified on Monday that she ordered staff to turn over the records. She said she also called Carr, who blamed Howell for “leaking” the details and suggested that had he said nothing, it would be another two years before the information would surface in the IRS 990 reports.

Although Carr has not had any comment, and House investigators have not been able to serve her with a subpoena to appear, the organization she was devoted to for more than 20 years is dealing with the fallout of the scandal.

Last week legislators passed and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill to sever the sole-source contract FCADV had with DCF.

DCF Secretary Chad Poppell said in a statement Friday that the agency is now working to “stabilize the provider network, assume operational and financial control, and competitively rebid for services in the next 12 to 18 months.”

But, he said, there will be more changes to come.

“FCADV conducted business without the expected level of integrity and transparency, preventing us from holding them accountable.,’’ Poppell said. “Through the efforts of the governor, the House, and the Senate, we can begin to hold them fully accountable — and we will.”

Mary Ellen Klas can be reached at meklas@miamiherald.com and @MaryEllenKlas