According to documents obtained from the Office of Child
Support Enforcement, since 2010 OCSE has spent over
$30,000.00 for promotional items such as pens, keychain flash lights, clips and
plastic goodie bags to be given away mainly at the Arkansas State Fair.
Why does the OCSE need to waste tax funds for promotional
items? Couldn’t these funds be better used applied towards additional positions? A
large number of complaints were recently featured on several Facebook pages of
local television stations and featured in on-air newscasts about lack off and extremely
poor service by OCSE (see previous posts).
From emails obtained it appears that when DFA Deputy Director
Tim Leathers saw all the OCSE swag at the Arkansas State Fair in 2012, he
did not recall approving their purchase (DFA procedures require an approval
letter from him for such items). Subsequent emails indicate that the required
approval for 2012 purchases was not given prior to the purchase of the items
even though this had been an issue in 2011.
Additionally the keychain flashlights were junk and fell apart easily
posing a possible choking hazard to children.
Twana Porter, Manager of Communications and Outreach for OCSE, was so concerned about the cheap quality
flashlights she purchased being a possible choking hazard, that she told Sharon
Pojar, the purchasing supervisor at the time, she “will not be using them for
our outreach activities”. When Porter
was contacted by this blog about what happened to the unusable flashlights, she
refused to answer or comment. The
question of what happened to the flashlights that cost $2,275.00 remains
unanswered at the time this post was published.
Also in 2012, Pojar asked other OCSE employees “Can we
refuse the keylites? We do not fell [sic] they are a save [sic] item to
dispense to the public”. In another
email Pojar berated the performance of a subordinate, Chad Bland, who
apparently failed to follow established procedure regarding purchase orders
which appears to have resulted in errors in orders.
A previous post revealed that the OCSE NPOWR! program spent
almost a million dollars and has a failure rate of over 75%. The NPOWR! Program
spent close to $5,000.00 for stationary and envelopes alone. In the real world the NPOWR! Program would
have been shut down long ago as the services it purports to offer are already
being provided by the Department of Workforce Services and it is a failed program.
How long will the people of Arkansas and their elected
officials allow this agency to continue in this manner? It’s long past time for a change in
leadership at the Department of Finance & Administration and the Office of
Child Support Enforcement.
