Union strips chief of position

The president of the union local representing workers at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Southeast has been removed from office following charges that he mismanaged the group’s finances and paid himself unexplained “stipends” with union funds.

A trial board for the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees ordered Willie E. Smith to step down as president of Local 2095 and repay the stipends he made to himself from the union’s bank account.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office and the D.C. inspector general are investigating Mr. Smith and Christopher Leach, former treasurer of Local 2095. The union local — an affiliate of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — represents about 700 workers at St. Elizabeths Hospital, at 2700 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE.

The Washington Times first reported last month that $16,000 to $20,000 was missing from the union’s bank account, and that union members suspected Mr. Smith of embezzling or misappropriating the funds.

Henry Nicholas, president of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, yesterday told The Times that the investigations by federal prosecutors and the inspector general should be closed since the trial board had remedied the financial mismanagement at Local 2095.

“There’s no reason for it,” Mr. Nicholas said. “Everything is normal.”

The trial board, which conducted hearings Jan. 26 and March 6 on corruption charges lodged by a union member against Mr. Smith, did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that the president engaged in corrupt or unethical practices.

However, the board found “substantial evidence of incompetence” in Mr. Smith’s handling of union finances and concluded that his bookkeeping did not comply with union standards, including failures to meet requirements for documenting disbursements and filing detailed expense reports.

“The Trial Board finds this conduct to be especially egregious because the overwhelming majority of the Local’s expenditures were payments to Mr. Smith, purportedly reimbursing him for expenses he incurred on behalf of the Local,” the trial board said in an April 5 memorandum.

“In addition, the Trial Board is concerned about the inconsistent testimony concerning the ’stipends’ paid to officers of Local 2095 for approximately 5 months in 2003,” the memorandum stated. “It is unclear whether these stipends were intended to cover out-of-pocket daily expenses such as parking, or were in addition to such expenses.”

The stipend payments stopped after the January trial board hearing, according to the memorandum.

The trial board ordered Mr. Smith removed from office, called for a special election for a new president and declared Mr. Smith ineligible to hold any union office for two years. Union officials also ordered an audit of Local 2095’s books and that Mr. Smith reimburse funds he paid himself that cannot be substantiated by receipts or other documentation.

Mr. Smith, who works as a psychiatric technician in the hospital’s ward for the criminally insane, could not be reached yesterday for comment.

Diana Flowers-Hinnant, an elected trustee of Local 2095 who lodged the complaints against Mr. Smith, said yesterday she was pleased by the ruling, but was disappointed the trial board did not sustain the corruption charge.

“I’m happy that this has all come out and the membership does realize what is going on,” said Mrs. Flowers-Hinnant, who has worked as a secretary at St. Elizabeths for 19 years. “I knew all along that Mr. Smith has been misappropriating the funds. [The trial board] took great pains to not say that, but if he took just 5 cents that wasn’t his money — that’s stealing.”

She said that the union’s national leaders were slow to take action after she first reported financial irregularities at the local in January 2002.

The D.C. government has operated St. Elizabeths Hospital since 1987. It is the nation’s only federal mental hospital and home to such infamous patients as John Hinckley Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Reagan in 1981.