(The Center Square) – A whistleblower who exposed alleged self-dealing within taxpayer-funded grant programs says Attorney General Nick Brown’s staff still hasn’t even interviewed her, months after assigning an investigator.
The allegations center around non-profits funded by the Washington State Community Reinvestment Program (CRP) and other race-based programs funded by taxpayers at the federal and state level.
As previously reported by The Center Square, Corey Orvold, a real estate managing broker, has raised serious allegations against CRP arrangements and lack of oversight.
The program itself aims to support homeownership for minorities by providing grants and taxpayer funding to programs that assist low-income households or providing large grants for developers in the minority community.
The Community Reinvestment Program was created by majority-party Democrats in 2022 and initially given $200 million in taxpayer funds to lift up communities “disproportionately harmed by the war on drugs” and housing discrimination of the past.
Orvold volunteered with the Tacoma Urban League (TUL) for more than eight years, until she grew suspicious of some TUL members allegedly providing CRP funds to family members. The Seattle Urban League has faced the same allegations.
TUL is under investigation by the AG Brown’s office. TUL’s CEO has been placed on leave.
Brown refused to comment on the case during a recent press conference, telling TCS he cannot disclose any active investigations in his office.
Orvold told TCS she has sent all the evidence she has uncovered, including documents from public records requests to the AGO. But an investigator has not given her a formal interview and told her last week, they “have everything they need” from her.
“I’m not naïve enough to believe at this point that everyone that should be held accountable, will be to the full extent they should,” she said. “I don’t have faith in any of that right now.”
State Senate Republican Leader John Braun, R-Centralia, has introduced legislation aimed at increasing oversight and accountability in the state housing-assistance program.
Braun says Senate Bill 6205, which is scheduled for a public hearing in the Senate Housing Committee on Wednesday is intended to prevent unfair insider access to housing grants distributed through the CRP.
“This is an important issue and it goes into the broader concerns with fraud that are prevalent across our state, across a number of different programs,” Braun said during a Tuesday media availability. “This particular bill deals with the double dealing we saw, [that] was exposed last summer in the mortgage assistance programs that the legislature put in place to help some particular ethnicities.”
Braun said he did not support the program to begin with, but if the state is going to continue with the CRP, it needs to be on the up-and-up.
“If should be done well and reasonably without, if not actual legal fraud, certainly moral fraud, where they chose folks who were related either by family or by position to the organizations and provided in some cases, multiple grants to particular people who were within their circle,” Braun said, calling it a clear misuse of public funds.
Republican Senator Keith Goehner is backing another approach to questions about NGO funding. SB 6167 seeks to prevent multiple different grants or funding streams going to the same developer or individual. Both pieces of legislation (SB 6205 and SB 6167) are scheduled for public hearings in the Senate Housing Committee at 10:30 Wednesday morning.
During a Tuesday media availability, TCS asked Democratic leadership if they will support Braun’s bill and SB 6167.
Sen. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, said the CRP program and other race-based grant programs are vital to address “really historic injustices faced by black people in our state.”
“We want the program to work well to have the confidence of everyone in the public, so I absolutely am open to ideas from all corners about how to make sure that there’s good accountability and that we have good standing in a program that is really necessary for correcting those historic injustices,” Pedersen said.
Sen. Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, said there are accountability measures in place in Washington to ensure fraud doesn’t happen.
“There is transparency,” Dhingra said. “And people take action when they hear of any fraud or misuse of funds.”
Speaker Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma, said there are a lot of “baseless claims.”
“It is challenging when you continue to have completely baseless claims, especially regarding daycare fraud,” Jinkins said.
Jinkins did not respond when TCS asked what exact claims were baseless.
Orvold said she is not giving up despite ongoing personal attacks and threats to her life since she first blew the whistle on the alleged self dealing last year.
“The whistleblower does tend to be the bad guy,” Orvold said. “There are allegations on the table that theft is taking place, significant theft… and I’m the problem?”
TCS contacted the AG’s office to ask why their investigators have not interviewed Orvold but had not received a response by publication time.
