SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS January 5, 2007 California investigation clears UFW-linked charities
The California attorney general's office has cleared charities connected to the United Farm Workers of America after a yearlong investigation into allegations that they may have violated the state's laws on charitable trusts. The investigation now is closed and charges will not be filed, according to a news release made public last week by the UFW. The attorney general's office suggested that the organization revamp procedures to avoid "the appearance of impropriety" in the future. The charitable trusts section of the attorney general's office opened an investigation last year after the Los Angeles Times published a four-part series in January 2006, "UFW: A Broken Contract," that criticized the heirs of UFW co-founder César Chávez, saying they used his name to enrich themselves. The series concluded that Arturo Rodriguez, a San Antonio native who was a protégé and successor of César Chávez, transformed the union into a family business, jettisoning Chávez's original vision of organizing farm workers through boycotts and hunger strikes. The San Antonio Express-News published a lengthy profile on Rodriguez in May. "The report cleared our good name and the good name of the Chávez family related to the Farm Worker's Union," said Rodriguez, speaking from the UFW headquarters in Keene, Calif., about 30 miles east of Bakersfield. "It was a great Christmas present." A 12-page letter, which summarized the investigation into the Farm Worker Movement, the nonprofits connected to the UFW, was made public by the UFW. The letter explained that the investigation "focused only on potential violations of charitable trust and nonprofit corporation." "The (Los Angeles Times) articles, on their face, appeared to raise serious questions regarding certain transactions," Supervising Deputy Attorney General Kelvin C. Gong wrote in the letter. "A closer review revealed that all of the allegations deemed by our office to require investigation were, in the end, found to be without merit." Nancy Sullivan, executive director of communications for the Los Angeles Times, said Thursday that the newspaper would have no comment. She referred a reporter to a front-page story published Dec. 27, 2006, announcing the results of the state's investigation. According to the article, Gong's letter indicated that the attorney general's investigation "offered a narrow examination of 10 assertions in The Times series about the nonprofits' behavior." The UFW itself was not subject to the investigation because it is a labor organization, not a charity, the letter indicated." Donations given to the UFW movement were not affected by the series, but it did cast a shadow of doubt in the minds of their supporters, Rodriguez said. "It was that the Chavez family was enriching themselves that hurt more than anything else," said Marc Grossman, UFW spokesman, speaking from his office in Sacramento, Calif. "We got calls and letters saying that people should stop driving fancy cars and living in fancy houses. And if you look around, that's simply not true."
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