Oops! Tarzana Treatment Center's Leaders May Be Worse Than We Thought
When the Center for Public Accountability published its report on some of Tarzana Treatment Center's leaders getting rich off the nonprofit earlier this month, those leaders told the Los Angeles Times and the Daily News that we were biased and our report was "filled with factual errors."
We have repeatedly invited them to cite any errors in our report, which identified $22 million in extra costs that the largely tax-payer funded, $45 million per year substance abuse organization incurred, apparently to benefit its leaders. But they have not.
We, however, have found two omissions.
We reported that six members of Tarzana Treatment Center's tight-knit nine-person board received substantial compensation from the nonprofit including, in four cases, rental fees from real estate they own personally.
It now appears we should have said that seven of the nonprofit's nine board members received substantial compensation, raising even larger questions about the degree of independent oversight the board provides.
We missed that Tarzana Treatment Center buys numerous insurance policies from an agency owned by board member Rick Helfman, who is related by marriage to board member Lane Weitzman. The nonprofit pays $700,000 per year for insurance, according to its income tax return. Helfman did not respond to repeated requests for an interview about his fees.
Likewise, in reporting on rents paid by the nonprofit to board members who are also its landlords, we noted that the nonprofit rents six major properties from board members.
We have since found that Tarzana Treatment Center also uses a seventh, much smaller site in Palmdale that is owned by board member and COO Albert Senella and his wife, according to land records.
In a telephone conversation this week, Senella declined to say how much Tarzana Treatment Center pays him to rent the site, a house that he and his wife have owned for years.
Our initial reporting found evidence that in some cases, board-member landlords, including Senella, charged the substance abuse nonprofit rents that were much higher than going rates.
