Merced food bank stands by new director despite Modesto trouble

Leaders of the Merced County Food Bank are standing behind their hiring this year of Bill Gibbs as executive director despite his history with a Stanislaus County nonprofit that led to allegations of mismanagement and forgery.

The connection between Gibbs and the Stanislaus Community Assistance Project in Modesto, a government-funded nonprofit housing agency commonly known as SCAP, was detailed in a story published Sunday by The Modesto Bee.

Gibbs took over the nonprofit food bank in February, given responsibility for a group that reported $5.8 million in revenue in 2013, according to its most recent tax filing, and supports more than 80 food pantries and programs that served more than 80,000 people that year.

“He has exceeded his expectations since he’s been with us,” Mark Seivert, the food bank’s board chair, told the Merced Sun-Star on Monday. “We look at his track record, and he has a phenomenal record of raising funds.”

Gibbs, whose legal name is William Joseph Gibbs, according to voter registration records, was known as Joe Gibbs when he and his wife, Denise, were part of SCAP.

In May 2011, The Modesto Bee revealed an arrangement that gave Gibbs a 4 percent commission on the assets and income he produced for SCAP. That compensation soared to $627,000 in a single year when the agency’s income spiked in 2010.

The Gibbses were fired from the group in December 2011.

The Gibbses were never charged with crimes for their SCAP activities. A week after they were suspended by SCAP’s board, FBI agents searched their Riverbank home and SCAP’s office on Coffee Road in late 2011, seizing files and computers.

In an interview with the Sun-Star on Monday, Gibbs said the FBI investigation found no basis for criminal charges, nor have three other independent investigations.

“A number of them said I did exactly what I was supposed to do,” he said.

Seivert said Monday the food bank thoroughly vetted Gibbs’ background before hiring him and that Gibbs had been forthcoming about his past, including a felony conviction in 2010 for felony hit-and-run and misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in the death of Mario Martinez, a Modesto man who died following a confrontation with Gibbs in 2008. The Gibbses later settled a lawsuit brought by Martinez’s family.

Seivert also noted that four auditors hadn’t turned up any criminal activity.

“They did find a conflict of interest, but that was more like a ‘slap on the hand’ kind of thing,” Seivert said. “None of us are perfect. He might have done a couple things in retrospect we wouldn’t have, but we’re looking at what he’s doing currently.”

Seivert said the food bank would never agree to the sort of compensation arrangement Gibbs had with SCAP. It pays him an annual salary of $75,000 with no benefits.

Seivert said the food bank has brought in $600,000 since Gibbs was hired. “He is doing a tremendous job for us,” he told The Modesto Bee.

Gibbs said the new money has come from private funding, such as foundations, corporate giving and grants.

At least one supporter of the Merced food bank wondered if Gibbs was a good choice to manage the nonprofit.

“I would be leery of it,” Phyllis Legg, a former volunteer executive director of the food bank, told The Modesto Bee. “You have to have an honest person in that job. You need a good ethical person.”

Gibbs’ salary is twice the $37,500 the group reported paying then-Executive Director Bernadette Mello in 2013, when it said she worked an average of just five hours per week.

According to its tax filings for 2011 and 2010, the organization was run by a volunteer board whose members received no compensation.

Mello declined to comment when the Sun-Star reached her by phone Monday. Mello now is the UC Merced coordinator for the United Way Campaign, according to the campaign’s website.

Seivert declined to discuss the circumstances of Mello’s departure, citing personnel policies.

Seivert acknowledged the difference in pay between Mello and Gibbs, noting it was “night and day.” He said it was necessary to increase the pay to attract qualified and experienced candidates and that the board was looking for someone with managing experience.

In 2010, the food bank reported $482,000 in total revenue and $1.7 million in 2011.

Seivert, a Merced financial planner, joined the board in May 2012, according to his LinkedIn profile, and, that year, the group’s revenue grew to nearly $2.8 million.

Then, in 2013, total revenue soared to nearly $5.8 million, all but $288,000 from contributions and grants.

Seivert said those numbers are deceiving, however, since the food bank is now required to declare the financial value of the food donations it receives.

Gibbs told the Sun-Star that the food bank’s budget this year remains below the 2010 budget at about $468,000. It costs the food bank about $40,000 a month to stay open, he said.

Gibbs told the Sun-Star he took a cut in pay for the food bank position. He previously worked for the Farmer Veteran Coalition out of Davis. He’s currently commuting from the Ripon area to Merced.

He said he saw the food bank job as an opportunity to combine his skills in operations, finance and development. “I came here to help,” he said. “I like having a positive impact.”

As executive director of the food bank, Gibbs manages a nonprofit that distributes food to neighborhood pantries, schools and hot meal kitchens, providing nutrition for an estimated 10 to 20 percent of Merced County’s population.

Former Modesto Councilman Dave Lopez said he was shocked Gibbs was hired for the position, “because of all the questionable stuff that was investigated here in Stanislaus County. I am surprised they would hire someone like that to get involved with a food bank.”

Gibbs’ wife, Denise Gibbs, was SCAP’s executive director while he was development director for an agency that housed people with AIDS, the disabled and others who met qualifications for government programs in Stanislaus County.

According to court records, one cause for firing Gibbs was his involvement in Echo Haven, a competing nonprofit that he created while working for SCAP. Gibbs said Echo Haven made $179,000 in profit by selling previously foreclosed houses and he earned $43,000 in salary from the nonprofit. Former SCAP board President Darryl Fair insisted he did not sign a document used to create Echo Haven. Former SCAP board member Patrick Pokorny told The Bee in 2012 that it was “all fraudulent, forged and made up.”

In 2011, The Bee reported the couple earned more than $1.32 million over four years, including $712,000 in one year, which was almost 10 percent of SCAP’s revenue in 2009-10. The United Way cut off funding to SCAP in June 2011 after the agency failed to adequately explain Gibbs’ extraordinary compensation.

SCAP spent almost $340,000 in taxpayer money to purchase and lavishly remodel a foreclosed home on Rumble Road and then placed Denise Gibbs’ parents in the home, The Bee reported. It was one reason why Modesto stopped giving money from a federal neighborhood stabilization program to SCAP in June 2011.

Gibbs has continued to seek $477,000 in unpaid bonuses from SCAP in a lawsuit filed in Stanislaus Superior Court. In 2012, SCAP changed its name to Community Impact Central Valley (CICV) and moved the office downtown, part of an attempt to remake the nonprofit group and repair its image. A judge put a stay on the case more than two years ago because of the pending FBI investigation.

On July 28, Michael Farbstein, an attorney for Community Impact Central Valley, will ask Judge John Freeland to lift the stay on Gibbs’ lawsuit, so the organization can leave the case behind.

This story was originally published July 18, 2016 at 7:45 PM with the headline "Merced food bank stands by new director despite Modesto trouble."