By: Joe Garofoli The San Francisco Chronicle January 13, 2010
California's branch of ACORN is splitting off from its national organization to form a new entity called Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). As of Tuesday, it says it is "running as an independent state-wide organization with no legal, financial or structural ties to ACORN."
Why the split? As we told you a while back, because of all its implication in various scandals, ACORN has lost major credibility with local funders and foundations -- even here in the ACORN-luvin' liberal Bay Area. They had to cut staff and services to the working class and poor folks they serve.
Even though a recent Congressional Research Service report found no reports of people improperly registered by ACORN attempting to cast ballots, the damage was done. A report -- paid for by ACORN -- said the group had serious management issues but didn't do anything illegal. A federal court lifted a ban on Congressional funding of the organization, which Obama's Justice Department is appealing.
The whole mess is something that California ACORNers want to walk away from and start all over again.
"In recent months it has become increasingly clear to the leadership, staff and members in California that the serious challenges ACORN is facing are jeopardizing the important work we are doing here in California," said ACCE exec director Amy Schur, the former former Executive Director of California ACORN.
Just chatted with Andrew Breitbart, the media czar whose BigGovernment site broadcast videos of SoCal ACORN employees offering advice about stuff they shouldn't be offering advice about. AB was dubious about the makeover.
"They've done everything they can to cleanse themselves of this outrageous scandal," Breitbart told us. The Left needs a healthy and scrubbed ACORN, he said, because "they are a partisan organization that promotes certain aspects of the Democratic Party agenda" like minimum wage and housing issues.
Since mention of the word "ACORN" elicited the most jeers at last fall's CA GOP confab (with "Boxer" and "Brown" close behind), we asked California Republican Party leader Ron Nehring what he thought.
"So let me get this straight," Nehring retorted. "The California chapter, which includes the San Bernardino group that was featured in the ACORN videos apparently providing advice for human smuggling and prostitution, and the San Diego chapter, that conducted what looked like the world's biggest document dump just before the AG's agents arrived, wants to split off from the national organization because they say the national group has problems.
"This would be like the feds lecturing California about fiscal responsibility. If anything, the national group should split off from the California group and beat them to the punch," Nehring said.
As for safeguards for her new group, Schur says that "ACCE was formed intentionally as a California nonprofit public benefit corporation, which means that by design, it will be subject to strict regulatory oversight by the California Department of Justice.
"Also unlike ACORN, ACCE will qualify as a 'social welfare organization' for federal tax purposes, which means that by design, it will be subject to additional operational and reporting requirements imposed by federal tax law," she said.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=55193&tsp=1
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