Charged up at Wasilla chamber

WASILLA — What does it cost to run a chamber of commerce?

$3,000 in Isagenix dietary supplements. $1,300 to Tailgaters sports bar. $600 to Tamarack Lodge in Michigan. $16 to Blockbuster Video.

At least, that’s according to credit and debit card receipts for the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce.

The above are just a few examples of the chamber’s spending from 2006 until 2009. There is also nearly $600 to Coldwater Creek clothing company, $1,200 to Hawaiian Vacations, $1,500 to the Omni William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, Pa., and $3,300 in plane tickets, including one for the executive director’s husband.

During this time, the cards were in possession of the executive director, Cheryl Metiva.

Metiva was recently put on administrative leave because of accusations about her misuse of funds, but was reinstated after the results of an internal audit by the chamber board of directors.

“I have no comment,” Metiva said Wednesday when asked if all the expenditures were justifiable. “My current board has invited me back, and I am ready to move forward.”

Board of Directors President Chris Abernathy said board members were aware of the charges and the statements were included in their audit.

Chamber credit card spending included more than $3,900 in purchases made at local grocery and retail outlets and at least six penalty charges for being over the established limit on the chamber’s credit card.

“There was some liberal spending done,” Abernathy said. “But a lot of that stuff was approved by previous boards.”

Initial requests by the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman for copies of the chamber’s credit and debit card receipts were denied by Abernathy. The newspaper obtained the information from another source.

Asked about the clothing expenditures in particular, Abernathy said that was approved by a previous board. The staff of the chamber was to buy new clothes for a chamber event, he said, because they put in so much overtime.

Asked about the dietary supplements, he said “I have no comment on that. Some of these charges have been agreed to be paid back.”

He declined to say how much will be paid back. The board is still working out an agreement with Metiva, he said.

Abernathy claims these statements are coming to light now because past board directors are trying to protect themselves.

In a press release last week, the new board claims the liberal spending happened while Metiva was under direct supervision of at least four directors and all expenditures were available to prior boards.

“They stepped down instead of doing something about it,” Abernathy said.

Previous board speaks

Claims they were avoiding dealing with Metiva are not true, said Cheryl Combs and Jeremy Hongslo, the past president and treasurer of the board, respectively.

Combs said detailed financial records were never presented to the board in the three years she was a director. When she took over as president in 2009 and was presented with a budget where outlays far exceeded profits, she and Hongslo started to demand detailed financial statements of the chamber’s accounts. They were met with nothing but continual delays, excuses and refusals by Metiva, Hongslo and Combs said.

“It got to the point where I asked our bookkeeper to get the credit card receipts. She waited at the chamber office for 30 minutes, only for Metiva to say she couldn’t find them. This precipitated us to find them another way,” Hongslo said.

Thus, the board members went to the bank directly. What they found was a pattern of misuse of funds, not liberal spending, Combs said.

In addition to the expenses listed above, there are charges for trips for two on the railroad to Seward, including lodging and food. There are overnight stays at hotels in Anchorage, a dental operation, a car wash, and more than $1,000 to local day spas. More than $300 went to a local sporting goods store, and more than $180 went to Gold Rush Jewelers. There was an expense for $52.53 to a florist shop in Michigan near the town Metiva lived in before moving to Wasilla.

“It was imperative that improper spending and undisclosed financial obligations be brought under control and that became, in her words, ‘micro-managing,’” Combs said.

“We never saw receipts detailing these expenses. Whenever we asked, we got stonewalled one way or another,” Hongslo said. “She hid things from the board and lied about it.”

What was worse than the credit and debit charges was Metiva’s alleged misuse of the health insurance policy, the past board members said.

When Combs reviewed the 2008/2009 policy after taking over as president, employees were to pay 25 percent of their premium and 100 percent for their spouse or dependents.

When she got a copy of the chamber’s check registry, Combs saw the check to the insurance company was more than the chamber could afford. It was then she saw the insurance forms, filled out and signed by Metiva. On the forms, Metiva not only indicated she owed nothing for her policy, but she said the chamber would completely pay for her spouse, Marty Metiva, as well.

Combs calculates Metiva owes the chamber $5,000 in insurance payments for 2008/2009 alone.

“She reviewed the contract and signed the contract every year knowing what the agreement was,” Hongslo said. “She received a paycheck every two weeks with nothing taken out for insurance. She knew she wasn’t paying for it.”

When confronted and asked to pay the back fees, both Hongslo and Combs said Metiva simply replied “not possible.”

“People keep asking me why didn’t you just fire her,” Combs said. “It took us this long to discovered all this stuff. But once we did, that’s what we were intending to do.”

Mass resignations

At a board meeting on May 20, the conference room at the Wasilla Depot was packed. It began with Marty Metiva saying any action taken by the board would immediately be challenged. The board was in violation of its bylaws by only having six voting members, he said. The seventh, Erika Bills, was the past president and therefore did not have voting rights even though she was serving the third year of her three year term.

What then proceeded was an ambush of personal attacks against the members of the board, Hongslo said. At-large members of the chamber came to the meeting combative and questioned board members’ ability to lead and follow the organization’s bylaws.

“Suddenly, Cheryl (Metiva) was trying to use her influence to make the rest of the members believe whatever is happening is the fault of the board,” Hongslo said in an interview at the time. “At some point, I just had enough of it.”

Five of the seven members of the board of directors resigned and walked out of the meeting. A sixth resigned May 26 wanting to avoid any perception of bias.

The last remaining member, Quentin Algood, selected a new volunteer to join her on the board. The two selected a third, the three a fourth, and so on until the seven member board was complete.

The new board members, led by Abernathy, resolved to put Metiva on administrative leave pending the outcome of a third-party audit. Soon after, deciding they did not have the funds and could not wait for the results, the board performed its own internal audit.

The board welcomed Metiva back into the office on Monday. From its audit, not only did the board determine the funds were liberally spent under supervision, but no funds were missing and the expenditures did not lead to the chamber being in the strained finical situation it is in now. While a third-party audit is still in the works, the board needs someone to raise money and run the chamber’s operations, Abernathy said.

He said board members are now holding Metiva to the bylaws and policies that have always been in place. She no longer has a credit or debit card, and never should have had one in the first place, he said. Every expenditure has to be paid for by a check signed by two members of the board.

As for the insurance payments, Abernathy said the board should have been reviewing these contracts every year. The new board is aware of the situation and that will be part of the agreement worked out with Metiva, he said.

Despite questionable charges and alleged insurance violations, the board still feels Metiva is, “at the present time,” the best person for the job, Abernathy said.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.

WASILLA CHAMBER MEETING

The next meeting of the board of directors will be at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 8, at the Wasilla Depot. According to the chamber’s Web site, this will be the only chance for members to comment on past decisions of the board. Visit www.wasillachamber.org for more information.