This report is the story of how taxpayer's monies are wasted and their constitutional protections of church-state separation are violated when government and public agencies do not carry out their fiduciary responsibility to protect the public interest.
  The overwhelming evidence presented in this report demonstrates that The Firm Foundation of Bradford County, a faith-based organization, has spent $200,000 of the public's monies with at least a cavalier, careless neglect, and has not accomplished what it was being paid to do. Meanwhile, the staff of Firm Foundation received weekly paychecks and other payments from the County that are not accounted for beyond check listing notations. People received money from Firm Foundation but the documentation does not say who they are, what they did, or why they were being paid. The fiscal reports are non-existent, or incomplete and inconsistent with the budget. Program performance records are largely missing or non-existent.
  Firm Foundation contracted to train 40 inmates of the Bradford County Prison to help prepare them to get jobs when released, and to follow up with support services for a year. These were worthy goals. However, not more than 12 inmates were involved in the program. Firm Foundation did not produce records showing how much time these inmates spent in training, whether the few inmates in the program learned anything, or to what degree their skills improved. There is no documented evidence that Firm Foundation's activities have had any positive effect on the lives of inmates or their families besides putting one ex-inmate on the payroll of Firm Foundation.
  Based on this record of performance, the Bradford County Commissioners and Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) awarded Firm Foundation an additional $64,562 on July 1, 2004, to continue its "work."

This study was conducted by Bradford County Alliance for Democracy (BCAD) between April and July 2004. BCAD is an informal group of citizens who have worked on various issues since 1996 to improve the quality of life, civil rights, responsible newspaper reporting, church-state separation, and governance in our county.
  This study is an evaluation of Firm Foundation's performance in carrying out its contract obligations and the quality of oversight provided by the Bradford County Commissioners (BCC), the Northern Tier Regional Planning and Development, Commission (NTRPDC), and the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD).
  BCAD has identified at least 26 Firm Foundation violations of its contract obligations, 7 violations of church-state separation by Firm Foundation, 7 misrepresentations by Firm Foundation of its accomplishments used to gain additional funding, and 31 oversight lapses by the government and public agencies responsible to monitor Firm Foundation's performance.
  These are 71 violations of the public trust that specific individuals and agencies have committed themselves to protect.