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As the year 2000 closed, little more than 10 months would remain before Jim Hayes would give up the $75,000 annual salary he was drawing as mayor of the city of Fairbanks. His nine years as mayor, six of them with that full-time salary, would be coming to an end. He would be 55 when he walked out from behind the mayor's desk for the last time.

Hayes' wife, Chris, had worked as secretary to the Fairbanks schools superintendent for more than four years in the mid-1990s and was working at Alaska Communications Systems while her husband's time at City Hall wound down. The couple's only other sources of income at the time were from Lily of the Valley Church of God in Christ, where Jim Hayes was and is pastor; their annual dividends from the Alaska Permanent Fund; and interest earned from two savings accounts, according to Jim Hayes' financial disclosure statement filed with the Alaska Public Offices Commission for the year 2000.

Chris Hayes would soon have a new job, however, that would compensate for the loss of her husband's mayoral income. She would become executive director of LOVE Social Services Center, a nonprofit tutoring and mentoring program she, along with others, helped establish.

That job, paid for with federal taxpayer funds through a series of congressional earmarks, now finds her at the center of a complicated federal criminal case that alleges she and her husband misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal aid directed to their center.

But just how much taxpayer money was she being paid as the center's executive director?

The public record is unclear and incomplete.

Gaps with the IRS

LOVE Social Services' public filings with the Internal Revenue Service, which provided them to the Daily News-Miner, do not specify how much Chris Hayes was paid or list her as a paid employee, though the IRS clearly requires the information and that it be part of the public record. Other nonprofits in the Fairbanks area - Big Brothers/Big Sisters, the Literacy Council of Alaska and the Fairbanks Community Food Bank, for example - list the names and compensation of their officers and key employees on the federal tax forms, Form 990.

Not so with LOVE Social Services.

The nonprofit's Form 990 for 2003, signed by Chris Hayes and carrying her title of executive director, lists "compensation of officers, directors, etc." as $28,546, and a later section of the form indicates that that pay is for board member Sharen Miller. A separate line for "Other salaries and wages" lists $75,371 and includes a breakdown of about $52,000 for management, though there is no reference to how or whom that money was allocated.

Nor is Hayes included in a later section of the 2003 Form 990 that requires the listing, by name, of all "officers, directors, trustees and key employees" and the compensation given to each of those people. The 2003 form lists only five board members, with Miller the only one noted as being paid. IRS instructions for that year define "executive director," the paid position held by Hayes, as among the positions that require the listing of the job-holder's name and pay.

The 2004 Form 990, also signed by Hayes, is similarly absent of detailed information about Hayes' pay at LOVE Social Services. No dollar amount is listed where pay for officers and directors is to be noted, though a $63,142 entry appears in the "Management and general" category of the "Other salaries and wages" line. Again, there is no detailing the number of positions that that dollar amount encompasses. Hayes' name is also missing from the later section that requires the listing and pay of all directors and key employees, wording that the IRS again defines as including the position of executive director, the job Hayes continued to hold at LOVE Social Services.

Failure to provide the information to the IRS subjects a tax-exempt organization to penalties for submitting an incomplete return.

As for other tax years, LOVE Social Services' IRS forms for 2001, 2002 and 2005 could not be obtained, and the form for 2006 is not due yet. The IRS, in a July 8, 2005 letter to the News-Miner, said the nonprofit's 2001 and 2002 forms "are unavailable." The agency would not explain why, though it did offer a general array of possible reasons. The IRS sent a similar letter to the newspaper on Feb. 12 of this year regarding the 2005 form. An IRS spokeswoman said the agency's regulations prevent the release of information about whether or not the Form 990 had been filed for those years.

Most tax-exempt organizations must file a Form 990 each year; the only exception is for groups that have less than $25,000 in gross receipts in a given year. LOVE Social Services exceeded that threshold from 2001 forward. Forms 990 must, by law, be made available to the public by the tax-exempt organization. They can also be provided by the IRS.

Howard Hornbuckle, with LOVE Social Services, said he doesn't know if IRS forms were filed for 2001 or 2002.

"We don't have the tax form that you are looking for 2001 and 2002 here on file. The feds took all of that paperwork with them, so you can contact them if you need to look at the documents," Hornbuckle said in a voice mail message to the News-Miner earlier this year. He was referring to the January 2006 raid by agents from the Justice Department, HUD, the FBI and the IRS who served search warrants at the center, at the Lily of the Valley Church and at the Hayeses' Doyon Estates home. He gave a similar response in late February when asked about the group's Form 990 for 2005.

A tangle of numbers

The federal indictment lists Chris Hayes' annual salary as executive director of LOVE Social Services as approximately $60,000, but public records obtained by the News-Miner from the federal departments that passed along nearly $3 million in grants to LOVE Social Services provide a confusing picture that doesn't cleanly match the indictment's assertion.

Documents related to three Justice Department grants, analyzed together, indicate that LOVE Social Services would have been paying its executive director $400,706 through the life of the earmarks secured by Sen. Ted Stevens.

The total life of the Justice grants itself varies, however: LOVE Social Services indicated the grants would pay for operations for a total of five years and three months, meaning Hayes' salary would average about $76,300 annually. The Justice Department, though, lists the life span of the grants as six years, meaning Hayes' pay would be just under $66,800.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment when asked about Hayes' pay and how it was portrayed to the department.

"We cannot comment on a case when charges are pending," said Joan LaRocca, with the department's Office of Justice Programs, which supplied the money to LOVE Social Services as dictated by Congress.

The LOVE Social Services grant requests to the Justice Department, obtained by the Daily News-Miner under the federal Freedom of Information Act, give some idea about Hayes' salary as the agency's executive director:

The budget worksheet for the first of the three Justice Department grants lists a salary of $50,328 for the director for each of two years and gives a total of $100,706.

The budget worksheet for the second grant, to cover the period June 30, 2003 to June 30, 2006, lists a salary of $60,000 for the director for three years and gives a total of $180,000 for that position. The reported funding period for this grant overlaps the funding of the first grant for 10 months, yet there is no associated reduction in the listed pay for Hayes and the two other paid positions listed on the applications to compensate for that overlap.

The budget worksheet for the third grant, to cover the period June 1, 2004 through July 31, 2007, lists the director's salary of $60,000 for each of two years and gives a total of $120,000. The funding period for this grant overlaps the period of the second grant for 25 months, yet again there is no offsetting reduction in the proposed personnel budget for either of the overlapping grants.

Hayes was also to be paid as the center's executive director through a HUD grant obtained, by a Stevens earmark, prior to approval of the Justice Department funds. Congress provided the first, in the amount of $1 million, for fiscal 2001 and a second, for $175,000, for fiscal 2005. Chris Hayes signed both funding requests.

The paperwork submitted to HUD on Nov. 22, 2000 by LOVE Social Services lists a $40,000 salary for an "admin," with that amount including expenses, travel and training. The amount was listed on a budget plan for the year 2001. There is no indication, in the information provided by HUD, that any of the second HUD grant was to be used for personnel expenses. A HUD official has said that the department conducted no reviews to see if any of the money it awarded to LOVE Social Services was spent as the nonprofit's leaders proposed in the paperwork they submitted to obtain the funds.

Payment postscript

Since 2003, the Hayeses' financial disclosure statements filed with the state have shown the same two employers: Lily of the Valley Church for Jim Hayes and LOVE Social Services for Chris Hayes. He has been filing the forms annually since leaving the mayor's job and being appointed to the University of Alaska Board of Regents; she has been filing them since her appointment to the Alaska Workforce Investment Board and the Alaska Human Rights Commission.

Neither form tells much about their income, however, since actual pay is not required to be listed. The form only asks for the listing of employers who pay a person more than $5,000. The Hayeses also note that they receive payments from retirement programs, though, again, the amount is not required to be listed.

Chris Hayes, however, has the potential for a continual payment from the church. In April 2006, Jim Hayes signed a form, filed with the state Recorder's Office in Fairbanks, that designated his pastoral successor upon his "incapacitation, resignation, removal or death."

The same form also included the following: "Upon request of Pastor James C. Hayes and in recognition of the establishment of this church by LeeRoy Parham, the new pastor is requested to set aside an honorarium for Murilda Chris Hayes until her remarriage or death."