Felix mental-health A court-appointed mental-health consultant who provided technical assistance to state agencies working to comply with a federal consent decree is under federal indictment for fraud and embezzlement of thousands of dollars from the federal government.
consultant indicted
The charges arise from
State wants more time
her federally funded work
in North Carolina
By Crystal Kua
Star-BulletinThe charges against Lenore Balsam Behar, 62, of Durham, N.C., stem from a controversial experimental mental-health program, criticized as being a "boondoggle," which saw costs balloon.
When contacted by phone last night at her home, Behar denied the allegations in the indictment and said the case in North Carolina has nothing to do with her work in the Felix consent decree.
"They are totally unrelated," Behar said. "The charges (in North Carolina) haven't been validated."
The Felix consent decree has also come under fire in recent months with state lawmakers and other critics scrutinizing the spiraling costs of providing educational and mental-health services under the Felix consent decree, which came about in response to a lawsuit aimed at improving mental-health and educational services to public school special-needs students.
Behar was one of three consultants appointed to the Felix technical-assistance team.
Ivor Groves, the court-appointed monitor designated to oversee Felix compliance, said Behar was not responsible for handling money. She mainly provided technical information on planning and training to state agencies.
The team was disbanded last year at the end of the consent decree's first deadline, but Behar said she continued to be a consultant as needed by the state.
Groves said the last time Behar worked with the state Health Department was in January when she helped organize a conference on best practices.
In North Carolina she was the former head of the child and families section of the state mental health division.
She was indicted in March on 18 counts stemming from a demonstration project, the largest of its kind ever, that provided comprehensive mental-health care to families of military dependents in the region around Fort Bragg, according to the News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C.
The federal indictment alleges that Behar paid herself a consulting fee of $18,200 while arranging favorable reviews of the program after it had been criticized as a boondoggle, the newspaper reported.
The Fort Bragg project was supposed to cost $15 million over five years but escalated to $91 million, the newspaper said. An evaluation of the program downplayed its effectiveness, the newspaper reported.
Before the indictment she had been under federal investigation for six years, during the time she was working in the Felix case.
News accounts say she was indicted on 26 additional counts earlier this month in a separate case.
The state is asking for more time to comply with the Felix consent decree because the teachers strike last month delayed the state's progress in meeting a federal mandate to improve special-education services, according to documents filed by state attorneys. State seeks additional
time to comply with FelixThe teachers strike is blamed for the delay
By Crystal Kua
Star-BulletinThe state is also asking that $28 million in salary savings from the strike be used to offset a budget shortfall in paying for mental-health and educational services for special-needs students.
Gov. Ben Cayetano said use of the amount saved by the Department of Education in teachers' salaries during the strike would mean that the Legislature would not have to call a special session to deal with any deficit in Felix spending during the next fiscal year.
The strike affected several key benchmarks related to reading, implementation of school-based services, training, service testing and the special-education information system.
The state must have a total of 30 school complexes -- high schools and the schools that feed into them -- in substantial compliance by June 30.
The consent decree came about after a lawsuit was filed on behalf of special-needs student Jennifer Felix. It alleged that the state was violating federal law by not providing adequate educational and mental-health services to public school students like Felix.