One week after the news came out that $1.5 million was embezzled in Measure P funding, the Fresno Arts Council announced Friday that it is cooperating with investigators.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The arts council said it has secured the records needed for the investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The backstory: Fresno city leaders revealed that a former employee of the Fresno Arts Council embezzled $1.5 million in Measure P funding that was intended for competitive grants to expand access to arts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Arts Council received a five-year contract in 2023 to administer and distribute the Measure P grant funds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the council received $9.7 million to distribute over the first two cycles, the city denied a $6.6 million payment last October because the council did not provide sufficient documentation to justify prior expenditures.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What they\u2019re saying: \u201cUpon being informed of the allegations, the Board acted immediately to secure organizational records and initiate appropriate next steps,\u201d the Fresno Arts Council said in a statement. \u201cWe are fully cooperating with the City of Fresno and law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n
The council said it is unable to provide any further comment because of the ongoing investigation and will provide additional information as appropriate.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One week after the news came out that $1.5 million was embezzled in Measure P funding, the Fresno…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":{"0":"post-177189","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-fresno","9":"tag-fresno-headlines","10":"tag-fresno-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}