Youth Opportunity Center

[May 14th, 2003] It's no secret that employers get chafed when their workers rat them out to the feds, but when the Rev. Dorothy Turner blew the whistle on a Portland nonprofit for misusing funds, her superiors responded with an inspired bit of roguery.

Established with a $20 million federal grant, the Youth Opportunity Center has largely failed in its mission to place at-risk youths in living-wage jobs that don't involve a burger grill or a gas pump. The high-profile agency, operated by Worksystems Inc ., instead squandered its funds on extravagances like leather couches and feng shui consultations (see "Salina Worrell Was Robbed," WW, July 3, 2002). Even when President Bush paid the center a photo-op visit in January 2002, staffers had to lure kids in with promises of gift certificates to make the place seem busy.

Turner's brief stint with the YO Center began soon after the organization opened its doors in the fall of 2000, when she was hired as a youth-development specialist. Exasperated that none of her clients, including several in special-education programs, were getting the funds supposedly earmarked for them, Turner contacted the Washington, D.C., office of Lorenzo Harris, the Department of Labor official who oversaw the YO Center's grant.

Word of Turner's call to Harris spread like a virus through the office and set off a chain reaction of roguery. According to a complaint filed with the state Bureau of Labor and Industries, Turner soon found that her workload was increasing dramatically, her projects were being ignored, and her job was being threatened on a weekly basis. The crowning moment arrived when, according to the complaint, Turner's supervisor, Two Foxes Singing, pulled out a knife at a staff meeting and gestured toward her, remarking that "you've got to cut out the cancer." In June 2002, two months after contacting Harris, Turner was fired.

Worksystems Inc. has denied allegations of unlawful employment discrimination, but in April 2003, a state BOLI investigator determined that Turner's firing was retaliatory, "not because she had been doing a bad job." Turner is now seeking $400,000 in damages from her former employer--and an apology.