The board of a Providence human services agency voted 12-0 Wednesday to suspend its embattled executive director without pay.
Frank Corbishley has been under pressure to resign from the Providence Community Action Program and was initially suspended Tuesday when authorities found staff members shredding documents.
The board's vote was taken in private. Corbishley was not allowed to be present.
"Clearly, Mr. Corbishley's entitled to be here to see what his fate holds. And the fact that all the doors are locked is troublesome, considering this is about him," said Mark Dana, Corbishley's attorney.
Board chairman and City Council President Michael Solomon made no apologies.
"We heard from them enough, I think. I think we've heard enough. We've heard from the state. We lost funding of $1.7 million. So, I think it was pretty imperative that we act right away so we're not at risk of losing more dollars," Solomon said.
Solomon said he wanted Corbishley fired, but the reason for suspending him was a personnel matter.
The No. 2 man at ProCAP fired back Wednesday at city officials for suspending Corbishley.
William Bentley, ProCAP's chief operating officer, said city officials have it wrong. Bentley said he was doing the shredding and that it was not unusual.
On Tuesday, Solomon got wind of shredding going inside ProCAP's offices. He arrived with Providence police and removed bags of shredded paper.
Corbishley was kicked out of the building, and Bentley said he, too, wasn't allowed to come back from lunch and explain what documents the police had.
"In our agency, we destroy documents, and if they have sensitive information on them and they're not mandated or required by the funder to be kept, they get destroyed. There's people's names, Social Security, wages, salaries," Bentley said. "There was no big conspiracy going on. It was just business as usual. I mean, this is what you do."
Mayor Angel Taveras has been calling for Corbishley's resignation, saying the agency mishandled of hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars.
"It's troubling that there was shredding going on, and I think there's been mismanagement over there irrespective of the shredding and it's time for a change," Taveras said.
Bentley says the U.S. attorney has taken materials from ProCAP's offices, including his computer's hard drive.
Frank Shea was named interim executive director of ProCAP.
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