The $170 million agency runs 30 Head Start preschool centers designed to serve more than 2,000 children. Its food services arm feeds families across the county. Its transit system carries the elderly, the disabled, and rural residents who have no other way to get around. All told, its roughly 35 programs touch nearly every dimension of poverty in Fresno County \u2014 a miniature government for the people the regular government doesn\u2019t reach.<\/p>\n
What is clear is that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency was flooded with $170 million in record funding \u2013 and then EOC mismanaged the windfall. As revenues surged over the span of a few years, documents and interviews show, the county\u2019s safety net for hundreds of thousands of vulnerable residents began to buckle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/WksXs-fresno-eoc-turned-a-pandemic-windfall-into-a-deficit-1.png\")
<\/p>\n
In 2025, the Fresno EOC Board declined to renew CEO Emilia Reyes\u2019 contract and\u00a0 brought back former CEO Brian Angus \u2014 who had retired \u2014 to fix the organization\u2019s financial situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Angus found the agency\u2019s cash reserve nearly wiped out and an administration department that had ballooned while the agency bled cash.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Feb. 23 forensic audit confirmed what interim leaders discovered when they arrived: \u201cPockets of the organization didn\u2019t understand or weren\u2019t mindful of budgets,\u201d auditors found<\/a>, and \u201cthere was no budget consideration for administration purchases\u201d across finance, executive, and administration divisions. Some employees told auditors they were unaware of what their budget was, or if there even was a budget.<\/p>\n In 2025, Angus cut more than 30 staff, brought back a former CFO to stabilize the situation, and negotiated emergency loans with local banks just to keep the nonprofit alive, he confirmed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those hail-mary maneuvers still weren\u2019t enough. Late last year, the EOC closed<\/a> its LGBTQ community center due to strained finances.<\/p>\n The long-awaited February forensic audit also painted a picture of an organization where overspending was rampant, budgets were ignored, and some employees told auditors they didn\u2019t even know if a budget existed for their department.\u00a0<\/p>\n The auditors concluded the agency ran into trouble once it started to spend down its reserves. But they left a more fundamental question unanswered: Where did the $15 million in reserves actually go?<\/p>\n A timeline of events compiled by Fresnoland raises tough questions about the EOC board itself. Starting in 2021, the EOC board voted multiple times to dismantle its own oversight structure \u2013 gutting committees and consolidating power during what would become the agency\u2019s financial crisis. By the time the EOC\u2019s reserves were gone and the board was giving the CEO the boot, these self-appointed watchdogs had few independent checks left.<\/p>\n The new leadership at EOC has been careful with information about the agency\u2019s transition. A\u00a0spokesperson with EOC would neither confirm nor deny Baine\u2019s departure, arguing the board\u2019s exodus and related changes to EOC \u201cisn\u2019t a story.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m no longer on the board,\u201d Baines said over text message when reached by Fresnoland. \u201cThere has been lots of board turnover.\u201d<\/p>\n Dismantling oversight as money disappears<\/p>\n Over the same three years that the EOC\u2019s finances were deteriorating, the board dismantled its ability to see what was happening.<\/p>\n The Fresno EOC once had eight standing committees \u2014 Finance, Audit, Infrastructure, Pension, Human Resources, Program Planning and Evaluation, Bylaws, and the Executive Committee. Each was a set of eyes on a different part of the agency\u2019s operations. Commissioners sat on these panels, reviewed budgets and contracts, and asked questions before matters reached the full board.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many of these committees were eliminated because board leaders said cutting the red tape would increase oversight.<\/p>\n The dismantling began in early 2021, a year into Reyes\u2019s tenure as CEO. In March of that year, the agency\u2019s attorney, Kenneth Price, outlined the first wave in a memo to the EOC\u2019s Bylaws Committee. Price flagged the key change explicitly: \u201cArticle X \u2014 Please note the consolidation of standing committees per our discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n A slate of veteran board members reviewed that proposal: board chair Linda Hayes, future board chair Oliver Baines, who made the motion for approval, Jimi Rodgers, and Charles Garabedian, a longtime EOC watchdog who voted for the changes but would later call them a mistake.<\/p>\n In October 2021, the Bylaws Committee voted unanimously to consolidate the number of committees, merging Infrastructure into Finance and Pension into Human Resources. The motion was made by Baines, seconded by Catherine Robles.\u00a0<\/p>\n The first deficit hit the following year.<\/p>\n Three years later, in an anonymous survey, one commissioner would assess the cost: \u201cThe consolidation of committees has decreased the involvement of commissioners in decision-making of programming and planning.\u201d<\/p>\n The first cracks<\/p>\n Just as the guardrails came off, the agency\u2019s internal operations were deteriorating in ways that wouldn\u2019t become visible for years.<\/p>\n In 2021, the agency\u2019s finance director, a 19-year veteran named Rebecca Heinricy, was let go. Heinricy could not be reached for comment. Years later, a former CFO brought back to clean up the wreckage would put it plainly to the board:<\/p>\n \u201cThe Finance Office of Fresno EOC has not had an experienced or qualified financial head since Rebecca Heinricy was let go. I guarantee that we would not be in the present fiscal mess if Rebecca was still here,\u201d the board was told in May 2025 by ex-CFO Salam Nalia.<\/p>\n The loss of Heinricy set off a chain of turnover that hollowed out the agency\u2019s financial controls. The agency cycled through multiple finance officers under Reyes. Charles Garabedian, the 26-year board veteran and former Finance Committee chair, said the agency lost its deep bench of expertise.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had, at one time, so many CPAs,\u201d Garabedian told Fresnoland. \u201cAt one point, we were down to one left in the organization.\u201d<\/p>\n The damage from that turnover showed up first in the audits. The fiscal year 2021 audit wasn\u2019t presented to the board until April 2023 \u2014 more than 15 months after the books closed. The FY 2022 audit didn\u2019t arrive until December 2023. The board was governing an agency whose financial picture was, at best, a year old.\u00a0<\/p>\n The delays were so severe the auditors warned in 2023 the delinquency \u201ccould lead to withholding payments, noncompliance with grant guidelines,\u201d and other legal risks.<\/p>\n The delays were also obscuring deep financial trouble. In 2022, agency leaders originally budgeted a modest surplus of $181,000. By the time the late audit was completed, the agency posted a $3.18 million operating loss \u2014 a variance of $3.36 million. The bleeding had started, but nobody was raising a red flag inside EOC.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the deficits were growing, the board was moving in the opposite direction \u2014 cutting oversight further.<\/p>\n EOC dismantled more oversight as deficits increased<\/p>\n On Nov. 6, 2023, the EOC\u2019s attorney presented a new set of revisions to the agency oversight structure. The Finance, Program Planning and Evaluation, and HR\/Pension committees would all be eliminated as independent bodies. All would be merged into a single nine-member Executive Committee. Only the Audit and Bylaws committee would remain independent. The vote was unanimous, with Baines and board chair Linda Hayes making the motion.\u00a0<\/p>\n The combination of late financial reports and gutted oversight proved disastrous. In 2024 \u2013 the first full year under that structure, the agency posted one of the worst deficits in its 60-year history.\u00a0<\/p>\n Looking back on the changes, Baines said the board\u2019s heart was in the right place.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhile it wasn\u2019t a great decision, it wasn\u2019t like they [the board] made it because they were trying to hurt the agency.\u201d<\/p>\n The decision to eliminate the committees was an attempt, Baines said, to increase the participation of board members. By making the Executive Committee more high-stakes, Baines had originally hoped that the board would be more engaged and oversight would improve.<\/p>\n \u201cWe gave it a shot,\u201d Baines said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t as effective as you\u2019d want.\u201d<\/p>\n But results from a 2024 board survey shows the extent in which the changes kept commissioners out of the loop.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been on the board about six months and am not sure which committees we have except\u00a0for executive committee. Clarity would be appreciated here!\u201d they wrote in 2024, the worst year of the deficits.<\/p>\n When asked who advocated for the consolidation, Baines \u2014 who was part of the Bylaws Committee that proposed it \u2014 denied responsibility.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was not my decision,\u201d Baines said. \u201cThat decision was made by the former CEO. I didn\u2019t have anything to do with that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor anyone to say that that was my fault is pretty laughable,\u201d he added. \u201cPeople who don\u2019t like me are cherry-picking.\u201d<\/p>\n Emilia Reyes, the EOC\u2019s chief executive officer from 2020 to 2024, during the deficit years, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n Following the money<\/p>\n By early 2025, when the board began picking up the pieces, the scale of the damage had reached into many parts of EOC\u2019s operations. In October 2024 alone, roughly 400 invoices\u00a0 went unpaid \u2013 vendors, contractors, and service providers all waiting on money from an agency that was supposed to be a lifeline for the poor. Roughly $15 million in operational reserves were consumed by deficits in the span of a few years.\u00a0<\/p>\n Out of the $4.46 million deficit in 2024, administration was the single largest driver at $2.15 million, followed by Food Services at $1.51 million, Transit at $540,000, and the Local Conservation Corps at $440,000.<\/p>\n Budget documents and financial reports show the broad outlines of what drove those losses. But the specifics \u2013 who authorized the spending, what it paid for, and where the money ultimately went \u2013 remain largely unknown.<\/p>\n Reyes became CEO in 2020 after Angus\u2019 tenure ended. She inherited an agency with experienced staff and deep institutional knowledge. As veteran employees left and expertise drained away, the agency\u2019s costs climbed \u2013 and spending under Reyes, the board would later discover, ballooned.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the people kind of left, but we did have individuals that were very talented ready to step up to the plate,\u201d said Charles Garabedian, an EOC board member for 26 years.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd somehow they were driven out. I think she was more focused on loyalty than anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n Reyes \u201cwas spending on lavish things, from furniture to bonuses,\u201d Garabedian added. \u201cShe was becoming top-heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n The available records bear that out \u2013 up to a point.<\/p>\n A year-end financial report in 2024 disclosed that \u201cOther Costs\u201d had reached 150% of budget \u2014 $706,678 spent against $470,466 budgeted \u2014 attributed in part to \u201ccommunity relations costs\u201d that were never itemized.\u00a0<\/p>\n What was specified: an all-staff event that posted a $66,000 bill, and staff service awards to the tune of about $40,000.<\/p>\n Then there were the credit cards.<\/p>\n Within a year of Reyes\u2019 departure, credit card spending dropped by $150,000 a month \u2013 approximately 75%, according to the EOC audit.\u00a0<\/p>\n What happened when people asked questions?<\/p>\n After more than a year of investigation, few concrete details have emerged about why exactly the EOC changed its oversight structure and where its depleted reserves went.\u00a0<\/p>\n In February 2025, the board authorized<\/a> a forensic audit to investigate potential \u201cirregularities related to contracting, purchasing, procurement, standard operating procedures, policies, regulations, and other financial activities.\u201d The firm selected, Wipfli LLP, was awarded the contract partly because it had an approximately $40,000 credit with the EOC from a prior project it had only half<\/a> completed.\u00a0<\/p>\n The final audit, presented to the board on Feb. 23, framed the fiscal mess as case-closed. The auditors found that EOC executives \u201cbypassed\u201d built-in budget controls using credit cards, which ran as high as $200,000 a month.\u00a0<\/p>\n But it did not show what was bought with those purchases, nor how the debt was paid off.\u00a0<\/p>\n The agency has yet to chart a complete map of the financial mess, according to Baines.\u00a0<\/p>\n He also said that even Angus \u2014 who had run the agency for a decade before Reyes, came out of retirement to clean up the mess, and spent six months going through the books \u2014 could not piece together the full picture. In an interview, Baines described his final conversation with Angus before the interim CEO left.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, hey, man \u2014 what really happened here, now that you\u2019ve had a chance to just kind of pull back all the operations?\u201d Baines recalled. \u201cYou\u2019ve been here six months. You used to run this agency. You know it better than anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n Angus\u2019s answer, as Baines recounted it, was that administrators still couldn\u2019t make sense of the mess.<\/p>\n Reyes did not return repeated phone calls over several weeks of reporting.<\/p>\n Still unaddressed were concerns raised in an anonymous board survey in fall 2024. One commissioner wrote of \u201cthe perceived financial conflicts of interest that arise when awarding contracts that are not brought to the full board.\u201d None of those concerns were taken up by the audit.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, many of the people with the most knowledge of how the EOC worked \u2014 and didn\u2019t work \u2014 during the bad years are gone. At the January meeting, Baines stepped down. Seven other commissioners \u2014 Kathleen Arambula, Lauren Nikkel, Alena Pacheco, Daniel Martinez, Dr. Mitchell, Jalyssa Jenkins, and Manuel Romero \u2014 left last year.<\/p>\n Garabedian, the 26-year veteran and former Finance Committee chair,\u00a0 was not reappointed by the Board of Supervisors in February.<\/p>\n \u201cYou get 24 new board members, they have no idea what to do,\u201d Garabedian said. \u201cThey have no history of the organization. They don\u2019t know this guy from that guy, or anything like that.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Baines, now off the board, said that many of the decisions made during Reyes\u2019s tenure have since been reversed. The committees started meeting again last year. The administrative staff has been cut. A new CEO and a new financial team are in place. The agency is trying to get back on its feet.<\/p>\n \u201cWe gave her every opportunity to correct it, and when she couldn\u2019t correct it, we didn\u2019t extend her contract,\u201d Baines said about Reyes. \u201cWe have some good safeguards in place. Before that, there were several points where I think it failed.\u201d<\/p>\n But Garabedian, who spent years pressing for answers that never came, said the safeguards came too late \u2014 and that many questions still haven\u2019t been answered.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one was really watching the door to money going out,\u201d Garabedian said. \u201cAnd here we are \u2014 an anti-poverty program.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Support our hyperlocal reporting with a donation today. <\/p>\n Every week we bring you deeply reported stories about the essential issues facing our region. Please help us continue our work by becoming a monthly member. <\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five years ago, the Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission \u2013 one of the largest anti-poverty agencies in the United…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-211731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211731","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=211731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/DSCF9856-good.jpg\")
Fresno EOC\u2019s courtyard | Gregory Weaver<\/p>\n