Professor Joo Talks to Bee About Local NAACP Officials' Reported Financial Improprieties

Professor Thomas Joo spoke to Sacramento Bee reporter Darrell Smith for a Jan. 8 story on the suspension by the national NAACP of the nonprofit’s Sacramento president, Betty Williams, and other officials over alleged financial improprieties.

Williams and an executive officer appear to have used their own businesses to manage a multimillion-dollar county-sponsored pandemic food delivery program, Smith reported.

Joo told The Bee that the terms in the county contract clearly prohibited contractors from having financial interests in work agreed to in the contract.

The counter-argument could be that their businesses were the best suited, though they would have to show they went through a bidding process,” Joo added. Without a formal bidding process, Joo said it “puts the nonprofit in a bad light.”

Thomas Joo, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor at UC Davis School of Law, specializes in the areas of corporate governance and race and the law.