Linda Hartke is the second refugee contracting agency CEO in a matter of months to step down apparently involuntarily from the leadership of one of nine federal refugee contractors.***
She follows Lavinia Limon (USCRI) who was, we heard from sources, “pushed out” last October (see here). No explanation was ever given about Limon’s departure, but it came at about the same time that investigations into LIRS had commenced.
This is what Michael Patrick Leahy is reporting at Breitbart this morning:
Linda Hartke is out as CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, three months after Breitbart News first reported on an internal investigation into claims of financial irregularities and harassment at the embattled non-profit under her leadership.
“Today, Linda Hartke, President and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), announced her departure from LIRS after eight years of service,” LIRS said in a memorandum sent to its donors, Lutheran congregations, and the U.S. government on Tuesday.
A source familiar with the operations with LIRS tells Breitbart News that the Board of Directors fired Hartke on Thursday of last week, a consequence of the findings of the internal investigation into her tenure as CEO.
[….]
“The issues related to Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIaRS) are widespread but are rooted in the main areas of financial mismanagement and the incompetence of leadership,” a source familiar with the operations of the refugee resettlement industry told Breitbart News in November, adding that “seven key areas” were the focus of the internal investigation:
Financial Mismanagement
Failure to Address Financial Irregularities Discovered by Independent Audits
Wasteful Spending
Concealment of Taxable Income
Timesheet Fraud
Budget Grant Fraud
Large Severance and Settlement Payouts to Avoid Public and Board Reporting
The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) has contracted with LIRS and eight other voluntary agencies (VOLAGs) to resettle refugees admitted into the United States under the Refugee Admissions Program. Over the past several decades, federal payments to these VOLAGs have averaged about $1 billion annually.
Virtually all of LIRS’s revenues come from the federal government.
Continue reading here and see LIRS leadership efforts to make her departure sound so warm and fuzzy.
Yes, LIRS is a federally funded resettlement agency that I have followed for years sucking down on average 95% and up of its funding from you, the US taxpayers (see my most recent accounting, here). We sure hope that in addition to the Dept. of Health and Human Services looking into its grants management that the US State Department is doing the same! And, where the h*** is Congress?
Not such a happy place to work!
Just yesterday, I came across the Glassdoor and got a few screenshots of comments from employees that let you know what an internal mess was going on there in recent months.
Here are just three of those. (When you read these, consider that all this was going on while you paid for it including Hartke’s over $300,000 annual income/related income package.)
LIRS near you? Then this is what you must do….
Be sure to go here and see LIRS’s subcontractors working in 23 states. See if you have an affiliate near you. It is up to you to make sure your people know about the turmoil at the top of this food chain! LIRS headquarters is where your local agency gets most of their funds. And, it is LIRS headquarters that works with the US State Department to choose which refugees are to be placed in your towns and cities.
*** These are the nine federal contractors paid by you to place refugees in to hundreds of towns and cities via their subcontractors (see directory of offices).
They sit down with the Dept. of State every week in Washington to divvy-up the incoming refugees to be distributed (unbeknownst to you) to your towns. Although, due to the Trump slowdown, there are fewer to divvy-up each week.
The number in parenthesis is the percentage of their income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place those refugees and get them signed up for their services (aka welfare)! From most recent accounting, here.
- Church World Service (CWS) (71%)
- Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)(93%)
- Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) (99.5%)
- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) (57%)
- International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular) (66.5%)
- US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular) (98%)
- Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS) (97%)
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) (97%)
- World Relief Corporation (WR) (72.8%)