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State Sen. Dina Neal is below investigation following claims she pressured a university professor to direct federal funds for native companies into the pockets of unqualified corporations, together with one owned by her good friend, information and emails present.
Faculty of Southern Nevada enterprise professor Kevin Raiford stated he was ousted from the multimillion-dollar, tax-funded NV Develop grant program final yr after he refused to award the cash. Raiford stated the funding is supposed for corporations that meet strict monetary necessities.
“It’s like a bait-and-switch on the American public,” he stated.
In complaints filed with CSN and state officers in October, Raiford alleged that Neal, D-North Las Vegas, repeatedly meddled in this system. The senator pushed him to provide no less than $20,000 to a clothes enterprise owned by her good friend, North Las Vegas police officer Donavan McIntosh, in keeping with information Raiford supplied to the Las Vegas Assessment-Journal. The state has but to reply to the newspaper’s information request associated to the criticism.
Neal wished McIntosh to make use of the cash to repay a mortgage she had given him to start out his enterprise, the criticism states. When Raiford refused, Neal started working with “CSN cupboard personnel” to oust him as this system’s director, in keeping with Raiford’s criticism.
Neal, who works as a part-time teacher at each Nevada State Faculty and CSN, stated she had nothing to do with Raiford’s elimination and referred to as his criticism “libelous” and a “crimson herring.”
“You have to examine your info,” she informed the Assessment-Journal earlier than referring inquiries to CSN and the state’s legislative counsel.
Raiford stated he was abruptly fired in August from his job heading this system however stays a professor on the college. He filed a criticism with CSN in October, later bringing the allegations to state legislative officers after the school claimed it didn’t have the authority to launch an inquiry.
Courts have dominated that lawmakers should not topic to the state ethics fee and reply to the Legislative Counsel Bureau, which employed an outdoor legislation agency to analyze the problem, in keeping with Raiford’s paperwork.
It’s unclear if the investigator’s report has been submitted to the bureau, and employees and the investigator couldn’t be reached for remark.
Raiford’s allegations, reported now for the primary time by the Assessment-Journal, elevate questions on this system’s operations since his sudden departure. The professor stated he’s involved that companies have been left in limbo, unable to safe the cash, financial institution loans and patents they should function.
“That’s hurtful to the group. It’s hurtful to those companies,” Raiford stated. “And it actually hurts what Nevada might do going ahead.”
Program helps companies
Since its 2015 inception, NV Develop has recommended tons of of small enterprise homeowners, serving to them safe loans and develop methods to develop.
In 2021, this system broadened its mission and obtained $400,000 in federal cash to immediately fund companies.
Neal additionally sponsored funding for NV Develop every time it got here up within the biennial Legislature, and Raiford and his purchasers spoke to lawmakers about its success. A Senate invoice Neal launched final session allotted extra state funds to this system.
Beneath Raiford, who has held govt positions at corporations like Hewlett-Packard and Complete Meals, NV Develop made an impression, information present.
Throughout a Senate committee assembly in March 2021, CSN Vice President Clarissa Cota stated Raiford “has been integral to the Program’s success,” in keeping with the assembly minutes.
By July 2022, this system helped Nevada corporations safe greater than $20 million in capital funds from loans, grants and buyers and created 775 jobs, in keeping with figures final calculated by Raiford.
As director, Raiford budgeted for and utilized for aggressive grants, each federal and personal. He obtained a wage of $40,000 a yr till officers eliminated him in August, however CSN nonetheless pays him round $76,000 as a tenured enterprise professor.
Senator intervenes in grants
Raiford stated Neal remained principally hands-off till 2021, when he secured simply over $2 million in grants for this system.
She then started to intervene when it got here to the cash for companies, reaching out immediately about no less than two corporations, in keeping with what Raiford stated are emails and textual content messages between Neal, himself and CSN directors.
“She’s not imagined to be concerned,” Raiford stated. “She was utilizing her affect. This isn’t my bosses’ cash, that is state and federal funding.”
In what Raiford stated is a textual content message from June 30, 2021, Neal informed Raiford she could be listening in on a cellphone name between him and McIntosh about his enterprise.
“He desires me to be on. I will likely be quiet although,” she wrote.
Neal represents North Las Vegas. Whereas McIntosh serves on the town’s police pressure, public information present he owns a house in Henderson, the place he was registered to vote as lately as late 2020.
After Raiford held an in-person assembly with McIntosh, she adopted up: “What occurred? Are you giving him no less than 20,000?”
Raiford stated he finally awarded McIntosh $6,000.
Neal testified final yr during a deposition in a federal racial discrimination lawsuit McIntosh filed against North Las Vegas that she and McIntosh are pals.
An legal professional introduced Neal’s cellphone information exhibiting she and McIntosh exchanged about 8,000 calls and texts over the previous three years, which averages to about seven a day.
Mates for 5 years
They met in 2017 and she or he did favors for him, each massive and small, together with advising him about his work as a police officer, serving to him with identification theft points, and bringing him soup after his neck surgical procedure, she stated within the deposition.
She employed McIntosh as a private coach for her father, the late state Sen. Joe Neal, in keeping with federal courtroom information.
Neal testified that McIntosh recurrently reached out to her with many points through the years.
“I prayed for him,” she stated.
She reached out to the Nevada Equal Rights Fee on his behalf after he filed his employment criticism in opposition to the town, information present.
She additionally stated within the courtroom information that she labored to safe an condominium for his daughter, who in 2018 was homeless and pregnant together with her second baby.
McIntosh’s daughter was later denied the condominium on account of a prostitution cost that Neal was unaware of, she testified.
“I used to be (mad) that, as a police officer, that he didn’t know that she had a prostitution cost,” she stated within the deposition. “I actually simply obtained slammed and I put my fame on the road to get her into an condominium and she or he obtained denied.”
When reached by cellphone, McIntosh stated Neal might have talked about NV Develop to him, however when requested if she had loaned him cash for his enterprise, he laughed. “No, what sort of query is that?”
When requested whether or not she was on the cellphone throughout his conferences with Raiford, he hung up. He didn’t return a subsequent cellphone name.
Neal emails Raiford’s boss
Raiford supplied an electronic mail chain from the next yr that he stated reveals Neal continued to intervene with NV Develop when she reached out about one other enterprise that Raiford stated didn’t qualify for the grant cash.
On March 4, 2022, Neal emailed Cota, Raiford’s boss and vp of CSN’s North Las Vegas campus, in keeping with the information Raiford supplied.
“Hey, So I wished to observe up on the assembly about Raiford. What was the top end result?” she wrote.
Cota responded that directors have been discussing the suggestions for this system’s oversight and requested to arrange a gathering with Neal, the doc reveals.
“The restructuring would permit for NV Develop to construct upon its success and transfer within the route you might have expressed you want to see,” Cota wrote.
When reached for remark, Cota referred a reporter to CSN’s spokesman. CSN President Federico Zaragoza declined to reply any questions.
“Per (Nevada System of Greater Schooling) Code, I’m not approved to touch upon any HR-related issues,” he stated.
Spending questions
Raiford has questions on how the grant cash is being spent.
He stated that whereas director, he put invoices via to buy supplies for the wants of this system, however they have been blocked.
He continues to obtain emails from companies searching for assist, and a NV Develop brochure despatched out earlier this month nonetheless lists his identify and call data on it.
Raiford stated his firing got here after CSN school union legal professional Nate Ring despatched a requirement letter in August. Raiford and his employees have been working with out pay, despite the fact that their wages have been coated by grants, in keeping with the letter.
“The general public belief has been put into your fingers by means of taxpayer monies funding the assorted grants,” Ring wrote. “It’s inequitable and unconscionable for CSN to proceed to simply accept grant funds from donors for the work of Mr. Raiford and his Nevada Develop workforce however refuse to compensate them. To proceed to take action violates the legislation and have to be stopped.”
Raiford was eliminated as director the following day, in keeping with an electronic mail he supplied to the Assessment-Journal.
On Oct. 12, he obtained a written reprimand, stating he “turned aggressive and non-professional” towards Zaragoza throughout an August dialogue in regards to the employees’s withheld pay.
Raiford denies this.
Since his departure, no less than 4 employees members are now not with NV Develop.
Jonathan Santos, CEO of the Santos Studios and a former pupil of Raiford, says he has had little involvement however continues to be listed as a counselor on the NV Develop web site.
“The folks concerned are nice folks,” he stated. “I simply really feel prefer it doesn’t have the identical spirit it used to have and the identical drive to herald actual instruments to the companies.”
Banker John Gentile resigned from this system final yr.
In an electronic mail to CSN officers Oct. 3, he acknowledged that he nonetheless had not been paid for 2 months of labor and was involved the grant program’s aims wouldn’t be fulfilled.
He wrote: “It’s an absolute disgrace as a result of the small companies inside our group are those harm by all this nonsense that would have been completely averted.”
Contact Briana Erickson at berickson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5244. Observe @ByBrianaE on Twitter. Erickson is a member of the Assessment-Journal’s investigative workforce, specializing in reporting that holds leaders and companies accountable and exposes wrongdoing.
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