YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

Carlos Diaz, who built the Washington State Migrant Council's budget from $3 million to nearly $30 million but faced a range of trouble in the past decade, has been fired after 24 years as chief executive.

The council's board of directors voted 9 to 0 Saturday at a meeting in Sunnyside to remove Diaz and replace him temporarily with Luana Lumley, who will also remain chief financial officer while a regular replacement is sought, according to a statement issued Sunday.

Neither Lumley nor council board president Rodolfo Mendoza would say what led to the firing, citing confidentiality concerns in personnel decisions.

Diaz said the effort to fire him was led by Mendoza, "a man who ... doesn't fully understand the realm of human services to migrant and seasonal farm workers," and told the Yakima Herald-Republic he would likely bring legal action.

A native of Texas, high school dropout and former hop field worker, Diaz earned $136,146 in 2004, the last year for which records are available.

His work in social services began in 1968 when he helped a fledgling group, Washington Citizens for Migrant Affairs, recruit families for a new Grandview center for migrant children education. The group evolved into the migrant council and expanded both geographically and in services.

Today the council has nearly 1,000 employees, mostly in Eastern Washington, and provides 10,000 low-income families - many of them headed by migrant and seasonal workers - with early childhood education, nutritious meals, vocational rehabilitation and literacy and citizenship classes.

In 1997 a Herald-Republic report that the council had hundreds of children on waiting lists while carrying more than $1 million in surplus funds led to a legislative inquiry, state audit and two new laws designed to boost the accountability of nonprofit organizations receiving state funds.

Two years later state Auditor Brian Sonntag wrote in an 80-page audit that the council misspent $6.7 million by overbilling funding sources, but he concluded there was no evidence of misconduct or malfeasance and the group continued to receive state and federal funding.

In onsite audits every three years, Department of Health and Human Services officials have repeatedly cited the operation for inadequate child safety measures, questionable spending and nepotism.

Federal auditors wrote that the council's use of Head Start early childhood education funds violated numerous regulations in ways that were "particularly serious and indicate that you are not adequately fulfilling your responsibilities as a Head Start grantee."

The council removed unsafe playground equipment and installed toilet-training facilities to solve those problems, but new trouble arose in March when three longtime employees filed a federal lawsuit accusing Diaz and board members of improper and illegal activities and of firing them for reporting on those matters to state auditors and federal investigators.

The lawsuit was settled in October for undisclosed terms, and Agustin Garcia was replaced as board chairman.

William A. Gilbert of Moses Lake, a lawyer for the three former council employees, said Sunday night the firing of Diaz was long overdue.

"(Diaz) has been running the organization for a long time based upon his own ideals, and it finally caught up with him," Gilbert said.