Oregon Public Broadcasting

An investigation into a manager at the Oregon Department of Human Services has put in peril a long-term care facility proposed for Astoria.

The state manager has resigned and leaders of the assisted living facility are in the lurch after Oregon suspended a grant program.

The Clatsop Care Center planned an expansion that would have been home for 40 people with various disabilities.

A grant from the state was to pay for about a quarter of the $8 million price tag. But the Oregon Department of Human Services abruptly suspended the federally-funded program just days before Clatsop Care was to break ground.

The facility's executive director Anita Schacher says the news came out of the blue more than a year after the grant was approved.

Anita Schacher: “I mean, we’ve chosen countertops and paint colors and carpeting and landscaping and now it’s gone. It’s gone.”

Human Services spokeswoman Patty Wentz says the agency requested an investigation by the Oregon Department of Justice into concerns raised about how some of the money was being spent.

Wentz wouldn’t specify what those concerns are. But she confirmed that the manager of the so-called “Money Follows The Person” grant program, Julia Huddleston, resigned amid the investigation.