Five retired bishops chided two members of Executive Council whom the bishops said “carefully failed to give us the information we requested.” In a brief letter the bishops again repeated their request for the amount of money spent last year on property disputes and the source of the funds.
“We are concerned that there could be a violation of federal pension fund laws,” the Rt. Rev. William Wantland, retired Bishop of Eau Claire, said in an interview with a reporter for The Living Church. “If they are using endowment funds, some of those are restricted.
“Are we seeing Executive Council in the act of pulling a Charles Bennison on the church?” Bishop Wantland asked. “Bishop Bennison was brought up on charges by his standing committee for refusing to disclose full financial information. No one is saying Executive Council is using money illegally, but how do we know? We need assurances that the gifts of faithful Episcopalians in previous generations are being used for the purposes for which they were originally intended.”
This request is a fishing expedition intended to scare people about the Pension Fund. The EC chairs didn’t bite the first time and now the bishops have cast their line in again, or, to change the metaphor, have decided to keep the waters stirred.
Seems to me that the Executive Council could always do something strange like actually answer the question instead of ducking it. Their arrogant refusal speaks volumes, at least to me. Is the EC pulling a Chuckie B? We’ll never know until 815 comes clean.
#1 Yeah, but sure is a great place to begin fishing!
Imagine, people with direct interest in how and where the pension fund is being used asking about it. Wow, the nerve of those people! Here I was so stupid to think pension funds were for retirement and not a source of instant capital, I guess should have gone to the Enron school of economics, those guys also knew how to put a pension plan to work for them.
BfromB:
My parish publishes the budget and actual expenditures every year – I am assuming that the figures are available upon request at any time. Why should the National Church be any different? How is asking for information trying to “scare people”? If you’ve got nothing to hide, why hide? And WHY the condescending, pat-the-nice-old-bishops-on-the-head attitude – reminds me of the old “don’t worry your pretty little head about such things” response.
If ECUSA has nothing to hide, then it should be willing to divulge all legal expenses, both those paid and those for which payment is pending.
ECUSA should also be willing to divulge what anticipated legal expenses might be incurred over the current budget year.
If they have no sense of future expenditures, they have no plan, then they are poor managers/stewards of the monies entrusted to them.
Evasiveness breeds suspicion among those waitng for a response.
Still seems odd to me that it takes a group of retired bishops to ask for financial accountability. Are there no active bishops interested?
The Episcopal Church of the US as well as all of the dioceses are 501(c)3 organizations. There IRS requirements covering the disclosure how they spend their money. If they do not voluntarily disclose these numbers, there is probably a sympathetic state’s attorney general who would sue for disclosure
[blockquote]This request is a fishing expedition intended to scare people about the Pension Fund. The EC chairs didn’t bite the first time and now the bishops have cast their line in again, or, to change the metaphor, have decided to keep the waters stirred. [/blockquote]
Then wouldn’t you think 815 would be in a hurry to pour oil on those waters (in an environmentally friendly way, naturally) to ease the worried minds of the beneficiaries?
Counting the cost has a basis in scripture – if you care about such.
TEC is doing a lot of dodging on this issue.
In Colorado where the diocese has spent close to $2,000,000 on these things there is no acknowledgement or willingness to reveal either their expenditures or their sources of funding.
They are using as a front a small group of people they call a congregation, but it is the diocese that is footing the bill…these folks couldn’t afford an hour with a good attorney, not saying the attorney opposing us is particularly good…
The part the national church is playing locally is clear, and obviously costly, as TEC attorneys are copied on everything…and even that they are even reading documents is an expense to TEC in this case.
And too, all these cases and the tactics are so cookie cutter, it is clear who is calling the shots…although it is all beginning to look a lot like Christams–that is the same poor job being done elsewhere in the church and here that was done in Virginia…
I don’t believe they are worried about the Pension Fund, which has a seperate board. I think they believe that EC is using endowment to fund the law suits and many of the endowment funds are restricted to a specific use or to use of interest only. There are pretty big unrestricted endowment funds also (I believe Beers once told a meeting of the Diocesan Chancellor he had $300M he could tap to sue dissidents). But, I agree with #4. In a healthy church the minutes of meetings, budgets etc. are published. Healthy organizations are transparent. TEC is not healthy and certainly not transparent. Maybe we need to start calling the PB Katherine Lay-Schori, and the Episcopal Church TECron. By the way, unless your memory is very short, you already know TEC is not immune from financial scandal, and the PB is not immune from covering it up.
The bishops make reference to Bishop Bennison’s use of trust funds, but they are too much the gentleman to mention how former national Treasurer Ellen Cooke spent down endowment funds for her personal benefit. Ms. Cooke was sentenced to five years in federal prison.
The amount spent is available [url=http://www.episcopalchurch.org/finance_58295_ENG_HTM.htm?menupage=856]here[/url]. Assuming those figures are correct, what is not known is the source of the funds. What’s baffling to me is why the EC is stonewalling. Why not just say “The information is on our website, here’s the link. We’re tapping the endowment for funds, not the pension plans.”
Thanks, mousetalker…that link was a big help
The Executive Council ought to operate with transparency, and it needs to avoid even the appearance of malfeasance, especially considering the history of financial operations at the Episcopal Church Center from a few years back, and the more recent history of financial operations of the Diocese of Pennsylvania.
When the Executive Council does not operate with transparency, it appears that it either has something to hide, or it doesn’t know, neither of which is a good situation, and neither of which build confidence.
These are dishonest people folks, starting with Schori, who lied on her resume about being Dean of a non-existent school of theology. You will never get honest behavior from dishonest people.
There is much interesting information to be found in theses financial reports. Why for example does the national church the church feel the need for a $50 million line of credit. At the end of 2005, they had borrowed $27 million and it had increased to $37.5 million at the end of 2006.
Wow! That sounds like a Bishop I know quite well.! “Honest behavior from dishonest people?” It has been a long four years.
Good to have this link, mousestalker.
As far as I can tell, there are three budget items for legal costs for 2007:
$300,000 for Title IV investigation, legal, trials;
$500,000 for “property protection” litigation;
$362,000 for “corporate legal” fees.
I don’t know how the budgeting process works. Does GC vote on a triennial budget? Who sets the specifics? Does the Executive Council have the power to increase budgeted amounts significantly? Like, can EC dramatically increase the three items above for 2008?
I’d want to see the audited, line-itemized financial statement for the final 2007 expenditures. If the bureaucrats calling the shots are like others I’ve come across in other such settings, some legal expenses are being run through non-legal line items.
w.w.
Form 5500s are public documents I believe. This is the form required to be filed by the administrator of a pension plan. On the form, a balance sheet must be presented which would show loans from the plan to other entities. If money is being removed from the pension plan for purposes other than providing benefits or investing assets of the plan, then these would almost always be in the form of a loan (to a related party in this instance) and must be disclosed.
A very shallow amount of digging is all that’s needed.
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the “indiscretion” on the part of the then TEC Treasurer (Ellen Cooke) a few years back, which occurred via the 815 Church offices. Wasn’t that a clear case of embezzlement? You can check it out at: TEC Ebezzlement
Who needs any other reason to claim the right to ask questions regarding fiduciary responsibility? Given past 815’s history, I would think that they would do everything possible to be as transparent as possible.
Oh, but then again, that was a couple P.B.’s ago, wasn’t it?