ex Commissioner William Bell and the bunchofmillion$ paperwork messup.

William Bell was appointed by Mayor Bloomberg to run ACS as an afterthought after Bloomberg promoted Nicholas Scopetta to run the Fire Department post 9/11.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/html/pr_archives/pr02_03_19.shtml
March 19, 2002
ACS COMMISSIONER WILLIAM C. BELL ANNOUNCES NEW CHILD WELFARE ADVISORY PANEL
Annie E. Casey Foundation Will Support New Panel Made Up of Local National Child Welfare Experts
Citing the need to continue reform efforts and maintain public accountability, Administration for Children's Services (ACS) Commissioner William C. Bell today announced the formation of a new Child Welfare Advisory Panel made up of local and national child welfare experts.

The new panel would replace the outgoing Special Child Welfare Advisory Panel, which was created as part of the 1998 settlement between the City and child welfare advocates who had brought the federal Marisol class action lawsuit. The panel of five national child welfare experts closely reviewed ACS reform efforts for two years, ... blah blah and etcetera....

...to review ACS initiatives and advise ACS on reform efforts. Its concluding public report on the state of reform efforts at ACS is being published today...blah etcetera

...Commissioner Bell said, "ACS believes that our reform efforts benefit from the additional public accountability that an advisory panel provides. I have reiterated our commitment to continuing to maintain the standards of excellence that have been established at ACS and its contracted service providers. ACS believes that an ongoing advisory panel can play a major role as we continue our broader responsibilities to protect children and to keep the public informed about those efforts."

Oh and where is that ongoing advisory panel today???

Commissioner Bell advanced the idea of a new panel in a March 7 letter to Doug Nelson, the President of the Annie E. Casey Foundation who also served as the Chair of the Special Child Welfare Advisory Panel. (in stead of a panel answering to a federal judge...)The Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private philanthropy based in Baltimore, Maryland, has agreed to underwrite the costs of the new Panel and provide technical and other assistance to it...
Gail Nayowith, executive director of the Citizens' Committee for Children (CCC), an independent New York City-based child advocacy organization, has agreed to chair the new panel, which will be known as the NYC Child Welfare Advisory Panel. It will be made up of local and national child welfare experts and include a number of members from the outgoing panel."I look forward to working with the new panel, the new ACS Commissioner and the new Mayor," Ms. Nayowith said. "I also look forward to being responsive to the broad child welfare community that is committed to making New York City's child welfare system work better for children and families."

The panel will meet regularly with the ACS leadership team, have full access to ACS programs, and will publish public reports on ACS performance.

Commissioner Bell welcomed the outgoing panel's concluding report.
"We agree with the panel report that although tremendous progress has been made by ACS, much remains to be done, especially in the further development of our neighborhood-based services networks throughout the City," Commissioner Bell said.
According to the report: "The Administration for Children's Services is far better managed than its predecessors; ...
Contact:ACS Press OfficePhone: 212-341-0999 News Homepage
One of those panel members was John Mattingly.
Caring for the Caseworkers Who Care for Kids Connect for Kids
Published: August 10, 2003
by: Caitlin Johnson
ACS commissioner William Bell says that the reforms are behind the 40 percent ... Most of the new funding for foster care services comes from the federal ...blahplahblah etcetera

...The changes weren’t cheap: overall spending on the system increased by between $200 and $300 million since 1996. Most of the new funding for foster care services comes from the federal government; the agency has corrected filing errors that for years meant ACS received fewer federal dollars than it was entitled to...

(Wait a minute! Does this mean that for how many years ACS was not filing the correct papers with the Feds, costing hundreds of millions of local tax dollars? Say what? I don't remember any uproar about that! When did those filing errors begin to happen? Who was responsible? Who caught the mistakes? Just when were the mistakes caught?)

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F20613FA3B580C718DDDAC0894DC404482

William Bell resigns all of a sudden.

METROPOLITAN DESK
Children's Welfare Chief Quits; Helped to Overhaul the System

By LESLIE KAUFMAN (NYT) 475 wordsPublished: May 12, 2004William C. Bell, the city's commissioner of children's services, who helped institute a nationally regarded overhaul of the city's child welfare system, unexpectedly announced his resignation yesterday...

...He has accepted a job as executive vice president of Casey Family Programs, a nonprofit Seattle organization ...

Hmmmmm Seattle? Casey what? Casey, Casey, Have I read that name before? And his replacement will be...

...Mr. Bell will serve until July, but there is no obvious short list of candidates to succeed him, especially because the agency is set to weather more budget cutsfrom the state.
''The next commissioner will really need to focus on strategic targeting of financial resources,'' said Gail Nayowith, executive director of the Citizens' Committee for Children. ''It is a really tough job. Whoever comes in next will need sharp elbows.''

Hmmmm...Bell left such an important job to go where? to do what? with no short list even, for his replacement? Odd, no?
Oh and his successor, turned out to be (a while later) John Mattingly who came from where? Annie Casey? Oh...

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