LITTLE ROCK — The head of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group in danger of losing funding after videos appeared to show employees giving advice on opening a prostitution business, said she was "outraged" by the actions of those workers and will announce an independent auditor for the organization today.
"I was outraged by it, everyone should be," said Bertha Lewis, chief executive officer of the nonprofit group founded in Little Rock, on Fox News Sunday. She added that "all of our employees, if they're too stupid to understand that they're not reaching professional standards, we terminate them."
The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted 345-75 to cut all federal funding to Washington-based ACORN in the wake of the video's release. The measure now goes to the Senate, which has voted to bar ACORN from receiving money from an Interior Department spending measure and to cut federal housing grants to the group.
"I can understand how the Congress was also" angered by the actions of ACORN's employees, Lewis said Sunday. "Those folks were terminated immediately."
An organization that provides housing and other assistance for low- and moderate-income families, ACORN has received more than $53 million in federal funds since 1994, according to a report by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Republicans.
In one of the videos, which have been widely posted on the Internet, two women who are said to be employees in ACORN's Baltimore office tell the fake pimp and prostitute how they can avoid taxes in setting up a prostitution business.
One of the women tells the fake prostitute to list herself as a performing artist on tax forms.
"You're a performing artist, OK, so stop saying prostitute," the woman advises.
ACORN on Thursday announced that it would examine its operations and policies. In a message to supporters, Lewis and Executive Director Steven Kest said the group had suspended all interviews of people seeking assistance, and its advisory board would begin an independent review of its programs.
The videos have added to the criticism surrounding ACORN. Last year, opponents of Barack Obama's presidential campaign tried to link him to voter-fraud charges that had been leveled against the group.
As a lawyer in private practice, Obama once represented ACORN in a successful lawsuit, joined by the Justice Department and League of Women Voters, to force the state of Illinois to comply with federal voter registration laws.
Obama said in an interview broadcast Sunday that the behavior shown on the video "was certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated." He said on ABC's This Week that there are some organizations that support Democratic causes that "haven't always operated in ways that I'd appreciated."
He declined to comment directly on the revocation of funding. "This is not the biggest issue facing the country," he said. "It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to."
The Internal Revenue Service said Tuesday that it was conducting a "thorough review" of its agreements with ACORN, which helps low income people prepare their tax returns. The group said it has helped prepare about 150,000 free tax returns since 2004 that have generated $190 million in tax refunds.
Lewis said Sunday on Fox News that ACORN will name an independent auditor today to review the organization's finances.
Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Salant and Justin Blum of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 09/21/2009