The doors of uptown nonprofit Alianza Dominicana are shut, and dozens of clients a day are turned away from its empty, taxpayer-funded $30 million headquarters — yet Rep. Charles Rangel thinks the remedy is to reinstate its disgraced director.
Rangel has called everyone from Gov. Cuomo to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman seeking to have his ally and former campaign manager, Moises Perez, returned to the helm, sources told The Post.
Perez was accused by city investigators in 2010 of a “disturbing level” of self-dealing when he headed Alianza and was permanently booted from the social-services group in 2011 by Schneiderman.
In a recent radio interview, Rangel called Perez “a great warrior, a great community leader” and said his absence was to blame for Alianza’s current problems.
“Unfortunately, so many of the programs were built around him,” said Rangel, who held a rally with Perez outside the group’s headquarters last month.
Alianza provided an array of government-funded services, mostly to Latino immigrants, including day care, and substance-abuse and education programs.
But the agency can’t seem to escape turmoil. Its new director quit in the spring, after only a few months, following apparent conflicts with the board. And the city transferred several contracts to another provider July 1. Employees hadn’t been paid in months. The state Labor Department is investigating.Alianza stiffed the company that had been providing financial management services, according to a legal claim seeking $312,321. And its gleaming new headquarters, the 48,000-square-foot Triangle Building, is a white elephant.
The six-story structure, on public land in Washington Heights that the group subleases from Columbia University for $1 a year, was developed with more than $13 million in taxpayer money. Alianza also has a $5.3 million mortgage on the property.