Fox In Court Seeking Payment Superintendent Says Charity Broke Contract After She Wrote Federal Grant Application

In his brief to the First District Court, attorney Scott Reed boils down the question in the case of Anne Fox vs. St. Vincent de Paul to this:

“… whether the law will allow the plaintiff to do very, very well at the expense of the defendant devoted to doing good.”

In court Thursday, the attorney for Fox, the Idaho schools superintendent, said the issue was much more simple than that.

“It’s not about personality, politics or the nature of the entities involved,” argued Michael Johnson, a Boise attorney. “It’s about a contract.”

Johnson argued that St. Vincent de Paul illegally broke a contract with Fox, who wrote a grant application for the the charity in 1992.

Reed, representing St. Vincent de Paul, argued that the contract was illegally drawn up and therefore not valid.

Both attorneys were requesting a summary judgment from District Judge Gary Haman to avoid a week-long trial scheduled for April 1996. Haman did not make a decision Thursday.

Fox watched the proceedings from a front row bench, occasionally taking notes on a white legal pad.

St. Vincent de Paul hired Fox to write a 71-page grant application for a $1.3 million federal grant so the charity could build a homeless center.

Fox was to receive an amount equal to 10 percent of the total amount of the grant if St. Vincent de Paul won it. But on the grant application, Fox did not reveal the fee arrangement, which Reed said was a fatal flaw.

The government, “which is us,” Reed said, needed to know that information to evaluate the financial stability of St. Vincent de Paul.

“There is no way we would have approved a grant if the grant-writer was going to get $130,000,” Reed said. “This is a homeless shelter. This isn’t (Duane) Hagadone’s hotel.”

Reed also argued that it is illegal to use a contingency fee arrangement to pay a grant writer for federal grants. Johnson said the fee never was intended to come out of the grant, but out of store proceeds.

St. Vincent de Paul did pay Fox $21,400 from its store after it won the grant. But it could not use the grant as it intended because the figures in the application “were not realistic or accurate,” according to Reed.

The grant also was designed to purchase the old Albertsons store, but Goodwill Industries purchased the store as St. Vincent de Paul awaited word on its grant.

The charity paid the Panhandle Area Council a flat fee to help it attain a state loan, and it renegotiated the federal grant, to build the Transitional Housing Center.

As she left the hearing, Fox said she could not comment on the case until Haman has made his decision.

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