Special Coverage: The Hayes Indictments
This series originally ran in the News-Miner in 2007.
Part One
Old church, new church
How the Hayeses secured government grants, built a church and founded a social service organization, all in the name of LOVE
Published March 25, 2007
In October 2001, a few days before the election that would select the next mayor of the city of Fairbanks, Jim Hayes sat for an interview with the News-Miner as he prepared to give up the office he had held for nine years. Already he had served longer as mayor than any other person in the city's history.
LOVE Social Services strives to maintain community outreach
Published March 25, 2007
Beneath the federal investigation surrounding Jim and Chris Hayes is a program that aims to help young people from low-income families do better at school and in the job market. The charges against the Hayeses don't take issue with the work reportedly done by the tutors and other volunteers of LOVE Social Services inside the old church building that is the focal point of the government's allegations of wrongdoing.
Nonprofit leaders express dismay at lack of federal oversight
Published March 25, 2007
Leaders in several Fairbanks nonprofit groups say recordkeeping rules for federal grants are stringent, but some also say that federal oversight of compliance with those rules is not fail-safe.
FOIA requests integral to Hayes investigation
Published March 25, 2007
Much of the material used as the basis for this series of stories on the government's funding of LOVE Social Services was obtained through several requests made under the federal Freedom of Information Act from 2005 through 2007.
Part Two
What was and wasn't done?
From high-speed computers to playground equipment to a new gym floor - the Hayeses' grant requests covered a gamut of goods
Published March 26, 2007
The glass-enclosed computer lab inside the LOVE Social Services Center has 12 Dell computers, arranged in a horseshoe along three of the lab's four walls. The lab sat empty on one early February afternoon, just before the expected arrival of children at the tutoring and mentoring center in South Fairbanks.
Part Three
The pay at the top
Chris Hayes as executive director of LOVE Social Services and in the midst of a federal criminal case
Published March 27, 2007
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.
Much of budget devoted to personnel costs
Published March 27, 2007
Total personnel costs - including travel, benefits and board member expenses - proposed by LOVE Social Services in paperwork for the five grants through the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Justice accounted for about $1.2 million of the $2.9 million awarded to the agency for the 2001-2007 period the grants were intended to cover.
Most tax-exempt organization information is public
Published March 27, 2007
Information about the funding and expenses of federally tax-exempt organizations is, in most circumstances, required by law to be public.
Part Four
The government's loose leash
Federal earmarks help support Alaska programs. Too often, how that money is used goes unchecked
Published March 28, 2007
The federal indictment against Jim and Chris Hayes, for all its detail, is silent on the government's own role in what it alleges transpired between the Hayeses, their church and the nonprofit center in which they are so central.