Wednesday, May 23, 2018

What is going on?




I’m sure that many of us have seen this video… we all saw it live and in person at the 2018 AGM. 
USSF CFO Eric Gleason gave us a response of 30-45 days from 2/10/18… 

We are now over 100 days since 2/10/18 and no audited financial statements have been posted on the USSF website for our review. The USSF posted its last audited statements in November 2016. 

What is really going on? Why is this taking so long? I’m not sure exactly, but we should all read Roger Pielke, Jr’s very informative research in to the USSF controlled ‘CA2016’ subsidiary and it’s financials.

“In 2014 the US Soccer Federation, a non-profit charity registered in New York, created a subsidiary non-profit related to the hosting of the Copa America Centenario soccer tournament. Specifically, on 29 October 2014 the USSF set up a single-member LLC, called The CA2016 Local Organizing Committee LLC.
I've reviewed the 2016 IRS 990 form from the CA2016, and this post raises some questions about the numbers reported in that form.”

Mr. Pielke Jr. came up with several very pertinent questions that may have something to do with the time it is taking to finish the report…

“The CA2016 reported $190 million in revenue in 2016 (specifically $189,681,375). CA2016 reported providing a grant of $64,941,805 to the USSF (Schedule I, Part ID, d). USSF 2017 IRS 990 (PDF) reported receiving $50,000,000 from CA2016 (p. 68, Part V (1)).
    Question #1: Why is there a $14,941,805 discrepancy between the two numbers?”

This multi-million dollar one and six more questions that the leadership of our organization need to answer are found in this article… 


These 7 questions do not cover the fact that USSF has not responded to another major  governance concern. Questions have been raised about the USSF being out of compliance with New York state law concerning Non-Profit Charitable Organization reporting and the potential issues with the NY Attorney General that this would bring about. 


Non-profits like the USSF were required to file by February 18th under New York State law with the penalty of doing so being the losing of non-profit status. Currently the USSF is over 90 days late. Are we as members of the organization worried about what the penalty could be? 

Finally, Corporate Governance Lawyer Josh Westerman asks for the USSF… us… to “aim higher” and touches on some very important issues when it comes to how our USSF Nominating and Governance Committee operates compared to industry standards and norms. 

https://medium.com/@joshwesterman/ussf-nominating-and-governance-committee-537ed7c0a427


As members of USSF, the associations that the board serves, and the clubs that the associations are made of… it is up to us to hold our Federation accountable. It is up to us to make sure that WE are doing all that we can to push this organization forward and to make sure that major questions and concerns like these are addressed. We can't sit on our hands, we must ask questions, we must demand answers…

Chris Kessell
West Side Soccer
Kanawha Valley Soccer League
West Virginia Soccer Association

2 comments:

  1. They don't want to release anything until after the World Cup bid vote on June 13.

    They want to win and sweep all the corruption under the rug.

    ReplyDelete