----- Original Message -----
From: eleanor canter
To: Williams Bob (ACL) ; Kimball Gray ; Stiles Corinna (ACL/CMB)
Cc: elizabeth.akinola@xxxxxxxxxxx ; Deborah.cotter@xxxxxxxxxxx ;
veronica.hogan@xxxxxxxxxxx ; roslyn.thompson@xxxxxxxxxxx ;
Elizabeth.Leef@xxxxxxxxxxx ; daniel.davis@xxxxxxxxxxx ; regina.blye@xxxxxxxxxxx
; Molly.Burgdorf@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2017 6:00 PM
Subject: Response to Michigan Concerns: ILA Betrays Consumers
Dear Mr. Williams,
Thank you for responding, but NO. Your responsibilities are greater than
regurgitating a fraudulent report produced by the very entity that has taken
control of Michigan CILs.
You are entitled to your opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts.
Let’s go through your statements one by one. Your pants are on fire, sir.
Declaration of Compliance
False Statement 1: “…as we have explained in earlier emails, phone calls, and
in-person meetings, they are compliant with the requirements of the programs
overseen by the Independent Living Administration”.
Your staff has been doing a lot of talking about me without me, so that may be
the source of your confusion on this issue. Never, until this point, has any
ILA employee stated that Michigan’s IL Program is in compliance.
Furthermore, determining compliance or non-compliance would require Kimball to
do his job, and that hasn’t happened. It’s evident that you are declaring
Michigan’s entire IL Program “in compliance” in an effort to avoid doing what
your agency is funded to do. That’s not acceptable.
Consumer Control
False Statement 2: “…federal law does not preclude close working relationships
between the SILC and the DSE or vocational rehabilitation agencies”.
Centers for Independent Living are defined in federal law, and for you to
simply decide that those laws have no meaning is outrageous. Federal law
defines a CIL as a cross-disability, consumer controlled, community-based
organization.
In fact, Centers for Independent Living were created as non-profit entities
specifically to limit the role of the state in tax-payer funded organizations
that are legislated to be controlled by consumers. It’s sickening to see the
ILA endorse the take-over of Michigan CILs by vocational rehabilitation. You
are using laws designed to protect consumers to legitimize the very practices
those laws are intended to protect us from. Federal law may not “preclude close
working relationships,” but it certainly doesn’t allow for phony-baloney
“Centers for Independent Living” that are run by vocational rehabilitation.
That’s not what consumer control means. You know it. I know it. Kimball knows
it. Why are you pretending otherwise?
False Statement 3: “The federal IL Program has always relied on staff members’
self-disclosure of disability status as a means of determining compliance with
this requirement. We believe that attempting to determine an individual’s
disability by any other approach would undercut such requirements as be
extremely invasive and counterproductive.”
This statement is an attempt to mischaracterize my position.
No one has ever suggested that you do anything but your job, which entails more
than rubber-stamping the 704 Report. Federal legislation requires you to review
America’s IL Program. Yet no functioning review tool exists; no formal
complaint process for CILs and SILCs exists; no onsite reviews are taking place
in Michigan; and my IL Specialist has been unreachable for two and a half
years. Your refusal to do your job has had a direct and negative impact on my
ability to access CIL services.
Furthermore, when the ILA is presented with direct evidence that people
identifying as disabled for the purpose of consumer control openly identify as
non-disabled during SILC public meetings, no action is taken. To argue that the
ILA is relying on self-disclosure is disingenuous. The ILA has decided that
falsified 704 data is good enough because your objective is to find an excuse
for not doing your job.
The last audit done in Michigan (2013) indicated that the CIL under review was
out of compliance with consumer control requirements and was not following
proper procedure with CSRs, which led to incorrect 704 data. Obviously, this
implies that RSA had had some way of measuring consumer control beyond a number
written in the 704 Report. RSA did less than the bare minimum to meet its
requirements under the law. Apparently we can expect even less the ILA.
Like Michigan CILs, ILA has adopted the medical model by conflating disability
and diagnosis. Under his theory, consumer control has no meaning. Nearly every
person in the world has experienced some form of diagnosis in their lifetime.
In Independent Living, disability is experienced. CILs led by “behavior
modification” specialists, vocational rehabilitation counselors, sheltered
workshops managers, and group home owners (many of whom openly identified as
non-disabled) are not CILs. Common sense and respect for IL values and the law
seem to have no place in this discussion.
False Statement 4: “I have reviewed the issues you have raised and the steps
taken by Kimball Gray and others on my staff in response to them. In all cases,
they were thorough. They reviewed the information you provided and additional
information we obtained from the Statewide Independent Living Council and
Centers for Independent Living.”
Recent FOIA requests reveal this statement to be false. What would I find if I
submitted a FOIA request of all documents related to Kimball’s “thorough”
inquiry into these matters? A FOIA request from February of this year revealed
that no communication had taken place between Kimball and Disability Network
West Michigan, except an email from the DNWM Executive Director slandering
consumers attempting to attend board meetings and a copy of the fraudulent
report from MDHHS referenced in your letter. That email contained several false
statements, in addition to blatant disrespect for IL values. Lying to the
federal government in order to keep state and federal dollars flowing is a
crime.
In the last 20 years, MRS and Michigan CILs have been moved in and out of 4
departments. Each move diminished the knowledge of state administrators about
IL and the fundamental differences of Centers and other social programs. The
current contract analyst assigned to the Michigan SILC and CILs has
demonstrated that he has makes no distinction between the IL model of
community-based, consumer-controlled services and government-controlled public
services. The degradation of consumer-designed and delivered IL services is
clearly related to the total lack of compliance monitoring for fidelity to IL
history and philosophy.
False Statement 5: “Some of the issues you raise pertain to matters of state
law, rules or practices over which ACL has no purview.”
False. Part of Kimball’s job is ensuring that Michigan’s IL Program complies
with state and federal law. Michigan’s CILs and SILCs are not complying with
state and federal law and onsite reviews are not being conducted. Michigan CILs
have gone to such extremes that they have violated our Constitutional rights –
in addition to our rights under the ADA and Rehabilitation Act. That tells me
that the ILA will not take action, no matter how egregiously Michigan CILs
treat consumers.
Much of the information I have provided you with is evidence of a culture of
corruption and is not necessarily illegal. That’s not an excuse for you to do
nothing. Kimball’s job description obviously gives him the authority to require
that CILs – at minimum – provide the core services and promote IL philosophy.
Under no theory are CILs run by vocational rehabilitation for the benefit of
the businesses and governmental agencies exploiting the disability community
acceptable under the Rehabilitation Act.
Open Meetings
This issue became irrelevant in October of 2016, when the contract between
Disability Network West Michigan and the state expired. That contract clearly
required Michigan CILs to conduct open meetings. When Kimball refused to
provide guidance for over two years, despite requests from the P&A and numerous
consumers, the state took that opportunity to rewrite the contract. Because the
ILA refused to do the job it is funded to do, consumers are now without access
to any CIL board meetings and we are also without recourse.
False Statement 6: “We are pleased to find that the board meetings at
Disability Network West Michigan (DNWM) most often open to the public”.
That is a flat out lie. Disability Network West Michigan made a false statement
– that board meetings during a specific period were open to the public. The
state repeated that false statement to you, and now you are repeating it to me
as though that makes it true. Except it isn’t true. Did you forget that I
actually live this experience? I am the person actually attempting to attend
those meetings. Asking me to believe that my CIL’s board meetings are open to
the public when they clearly are not is absurd.
Kimball is fully aware that those board meetings are not and have never been
“generally open to the public”. He was copied on nearly weekly emails I sent to
Muskegon’s CIL requesting the date, time, and location of those meetings over
the course of years. I attempted to attend several meetings and documented with
video evidence that they are not open to the public.
a.. Watch video footage of DNWM throwing consumers out of their “open” Board
Meetings here and here.
b.. Watch video footage of the ONLY open meeting ever conducted by DNWM, in
which the board votes to close all board meetings to the public and replace
them with public input sessions “as necessary”. (No open board meetings or
public input sessions have been held since.)
Again, lying to the federal government in order to keep state and federal
dollars flowing is a crime.
While we were being thrown out of “open” board meetings; while we were
physically barricaded from the ADA Celebration; when our CIL threatened to sue
us for using our First Amendment rights, Kimball did nothing.
Conclusion: You have all of the evidence and resources you need in order to
act, including the authority, the funds, and the legal and moral
responsibility. At this point, I have to conclude that the ILA is unwilling to
do the job it is funded to do.
This weekend, we will host the 2nd annual Rally for Disability Pride. It will
be very difficult for me to share the news with consumers that the ILA has
betrayed us and that no one cares that we remain without access to CIL services
despite a fully-funded IL Program.
Eleanor Canter
Consumer
Muskegon, MI
Attachment:
Letter from Bob Williams - Text Recognition.pdf
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Letter from Bob Williams - Accessible Version.docx
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6-7-17 Response to Bob Williams.docx
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