(C) Minnesota Reformer
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State suspends license of adult day care that was home to a senator’s campaign [1]
['Deena Winter', 'More From Author', '- December']
Date: 2022-12-13
Minnesota regulators on Friday suspended the license of a Minneapolis company that provides adult day care services — and gave state Sen. Omar Fateh free office space during his 2020 campaign.
Open Arms Corp. has racked up a string of violations for failing to comply with state licensing requirements, including inadequate staff and record-keeping about clients, according to state Department of Human Services records.
The adult day care center at 624 E. Lake St. was used free of charge by Fateh’s campaign, which became the subject of a state Senate ethics investigation of Fateh after his brother-in-law was convicted of perjury in connection with a federal ballot fraud investigation.
On Friday, DHS made its second unannounced visit to Open Arms since the Reformer began asking questions about the day care three months ago, and determined that people served by the program were at “imminent risk of harm.” Investigators found evidence of rodent infestation; the sole source of heat was a portable space heater and the company was not maintaining records on site.
“Because this report is currently under investigation, no additional information can be released in this order,” DHS wrote.
Prior to September, DHS had done three previous unannounced visits since Open Arms opened over seven years ago — in 2015, 2016 and 2019. DHS has cited Open Arms for repeat violations after each visit, but DHS has never previously fined or revoked the company’s license.
After the Reformer began asking DHS questions about the day care in August, DHS visited Open Arms on Sept. 7 for an unannounced licensing review. After the drop-in, the company was cited for 10 violations, including equipment and furniture in disrepair, noting there were spiders and cobwebs throughout the building.
During the 2019 licensing review, Open Arms was cited because its nurse, physical therapist and dietician were not properly licensed, certified or registered.
The day care is housed in a one-story, 2,280-square-foot brick building whose exterior is painted with a tropical mural that’s largely obscured by graffiti. The parking lot is often empty or nearly empty, even though Open Arms is licensed to have up to 43 adults per day come inside to eat, socialize and learn life skills.
Adult day centers provide health, social and nutritional services to people with functional impairments, with a goal of helping them improve their ability to care for themselves.
Since April 2016, the state has paid Open Arms almost $2.3 million to provide those services, along with transportation services, according to DHS. Open Arms was also paid $2.2 million by managed care organizations via DHS contracts, for a total of $4.5 million.
Asked how many people were at the day care center during the September unannounced visit, a DHS spokeswoman would only say the number of clients “was well below their licensed capacity” of 43.
Last year, Open Arms received Medicaid payments for 33 recipients, according to DHS.
DHS has known about problems in its adult day program for years. A 2018 federal audit found DHS did not properly oversee about 200 adult day care centers statewide, after unannounced visits in 2017 found violations in all 20 centers reviewed. The feds said a staffing shortage prevented DHS from doing routine inspections. The state’s $63.3 million adult day care service program today includes 181 day care service providers.
‘It’s not the greatest location’
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes Open Arms day care services are provided remotely, and DHS said most of the claims for Open Arms show the service is being provided in people’s homes.
That could be why the day care parking lot is often empty or nearly empty. The corporation is licensed to operate Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., but when the Reformer checked the site multiple times in recent months, there were usually zero to two cars in the parking lot.
When a Reformer reporter dropped by unannounced, two older men sat at a table eating toast with peanut butter and drinking coffee in a large room with an open kitchen, several long tables and a couple of sofas. A few minutes later, two other older men walked in, sat down and began playing cards at a table.
The clients were being supervised by a man named Taja Ibro, the father of two women who work for Open Arms, Lula and Lensa Mohamed.
Lula Mohamed was listed as the company CEO until late October, when Lensa Mohamed filed new paperwork with the secretary of state changing the CEO to Zak Geylani of Rosemount.
In an interview before DHS suspended the company’s license, Lensa Mohamed said she is the director of Open Arms, which she said is family-owned. She said “we took a hit” during the pandemic, closing down for a while and dropping from 30 to 40 clients to about a half dozen, who came in on varying days. She said the company downsized its staff and wasn’t fully operational, but was still open, with about a half dozen employees and “a lot are on call.”
“We’re not 100% sure about the future of the company at this moment,” she said before the state took action.
She said the company provides meals, activities, field trips and transports people for errands and appointments. A company van also transports people to and from the day care. Lensa Mohamed said they’re trying to move because they’ve had problems with graffiti and flooding.
“It’s not the greatest location,” she said.
Office space
The Open Arms building came up during a recent state Senate ethics investigation of Fateh after his brother-in-law and 2020 campaign volunteer Muse Mohamud Mohamed was convicted in May of lying to a federal grand jury about his handling of absentee ballots in Fateh’s 2020 primary victory. The perjury case emerged from a broader federal investigation into ballot fraud during the 2020 primary.
A friend of Mohamed’s, Mustafa Hassan, testified during Mohamed’s trial that he volunteered for Fateh’s campaign on the day of the 2020 primary. When Hassan showed up at the Lake Street campaign office — housed at the Open Arms facility — he was taken to a back room and given three envelopes to deliver to an elections office. Because he didn’t know the voters, he was unwittingly violating the law, prosecutors said.
The ethics committee chair, Sen. David Osmek, R-Mounds, noted that state law bans corporations from promoting candidates except through independent expenditures, suggesting the campaign office was illegal.
The committee required Fateh, who previously worked as a campaign finance analyst for the Federal Election Commission, to complete a refresher course in campaign finance rules.
Lensa Mohamed said she didn’t know anything about the ethics investigation. She said they offered Fateh the office space after someone reached out to her sister saying Fateh was looking for a place to run his campaign.
“We try to help the community as much as we can,” she said. “At the time we were doing really well… we were glad we could help.”
She said she wasn’t aware that the free office space should have been reported as an in-kind donation.
Fateh sits on two human services committees that deal with licensing and reform of facilities like Open Arms. DHS records obtained through a public records request don’t show that he advocated specifically on behalf of Open Arms.
Fateh did not respond to a request for comment.
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