7 p.m.Five armed police officers searched the Napa County Office of Education last week, seizing files, a fax machine and the computer of Associate Superintendent of Instructional Services Tony Apolloni.

The search was part of an investigation into more than $2 million in allegedly questionable expenses. The expenses were accumulated by a social service program at Sonoma State University, where Apolloni served as executive director while also working at Napa County Office of Education.

A report released by the Office of the University Auditor earlier this month describes misappropriation of funds, conflicts of interest, contract violations and potentially non-billable expenses at the now defunct California Institute on Human Services at SSU.

Apolloni was fired from his position with CIHS in June. University police are conducting a criminal investigation.

Apolloni declined to comment for this story.

Among the questionable expenses described in the report is $5,792 from CIHS to Napa County Office of Education Superintendent Barbara Nemko, Apolloni’s direct supervisor.

The report said that CIHS awarded paid work to Nemko in 1999, which, according to the report, created at least the appearance of a conflict of interest because of her ability to influence Apolloni’s employment at NCOE.

Nemko denies that there was a conflict of interest and says the charges against Apolloni are driven by a personal vendetta by Sonoma State administrators.

“They’re flinging a lot of innuendo that’s unsubstantiated,” she said. “It’s absolutely ludicrous.”

While the report accuses Apolloni of a potential conflict of interest, neither the auditor nor the university have accused Nemko of wrongdoing.

Auditors said they were unable to determine how Nemko was selected to perform the work or what, specifically, she did. The breakdown of expenses provided by the auditor lists five separate amounts totaling $5,792.18:

• $1,678.69 charged to CIHS Admin listed as “Workshop”

• $483.82 charged to CIHS Admin listed as “Mtg”

• $1,050 charged to New American High Schools listed as “Strategi”

• $900 charged to CIHS Admin listed as “Wrkshps”

• $1,679.67 charged to CIHS Admin listed as “Inventio”

Nemko said that neither the university nor auditors spoke with her about the funds, but she speculates that the money in question was for out-of-state workshops she led on behalf of a special branch of CIHS called School Restructuring Support.

Though Nemko is uncertain about the specifics, she speculates that the funds she received in 1999 paid for four or five workshops in upstate New York. “It is reported as income, but a large part is travel reimbursement: travel, hotels, meals,” she said.

The workshops were separate from her work with Napa County Office of Education, said Nemko. She said she has conducted similar workshops for CIHS since 1980, 11 years before she started at Napa County Office of Education.

Nemko said she led up to 10 workshops a year some years, and CIHS reimbursed her for travel expenses and paid her an honorarium — or appearance fee. Nemko has also received some funding from other organizations for consulting work in the past, though she said that lately she doesn’t have time for outside consulting.

Nemko said Apolloni had nothing to do with the decision to give her CIHS work. “The way School Restructuring Support worked, there were a number of us who did workshops,” she said. “Generally, I might do a presentation at a conference, someone there would hear me and say, ‘I would like you to come and do a talk to the school,’ and School Restructuring would reimburse my travel and pay an honorarium.”

The report said that Apolloni began full-time employment with SSU in 1999, the year Nemko received the $5,792 cited in the audit.

Nemko said she met Apolloni in 1979 when he was already working for SSU. He has been with Napa County Office of Education since 1984, she said, before she started as superintendent in 1991. As associate superintendent, Apolloni oversees all educational services, such as the Regional Occupation Program, Early Childhood Education and curriculum.

“He’s been with Napa County Office of Education for 25 years,” she said, “Do they think he was bribing me with $5,000 to keep him here?”

Nemko said Apolloni was instrumental in getting her hired by Napa County Office of Education, but that the final decision to hire her was made by a separate panel.

“The notion that there is a conflict of interest doesn’t even pass the giggle test,” she said. “And the amount of money you’re talking about, come on,” said Nemko, noting that she gives $6,000 out of her own paycheck to Napa County Office of Education every year.

While one claim against Apolloni is based on the money Nemko received directly, the audit also claims Apolloni had an apparent conflict because he participated in “making decisions to move CIHS grants to Napa County Office of Education, where he had secondary employment.”

“In his position with Napa County Office of Education, one of the executive director’s areas of responsibility was grant development,” said the report. “At least in part because of his dual employment, the executive director was able to participate in making decisions that moved CIHS-administered grant projects to Napa County Office of Education. This apparent conflict of interest on the part of the executive director may have been detrimental to CIHS and beneficial to Napa County Office of Education.”

The report did not specify whether CIHS paid grant money to Napa County Office of Education.

But Nemko said that Napa County Office of Education never received any grants from CIHS. “There were some subcontracts with Sonoma State University,” she said. “But not CIHS.”

The special investigation has drawn harsh criticism from SSU and Napa County Office of Education officials.

Bob Karlsrud, dean emeritus of the School of Social Sciences at SSU who oversaw CIHS’ directors until 2001, said that “dishonesty masquerades as fact” in the report.

“While admitting that data are missing, conflicting or ambiguous, they still draw definitive conclusions,” wrote Karlsrud, saying that the report pays “attention to protecting the SSU establishment while setting up others to take the fall.”

Nemko believes that the special investigation was prompted by a personal vendetta on the part of SSU President Rubin Armiñana against Apolloni, dating back two years when Armiñana “decided to take all indirect cost money going to grants, peeled it off and took it for himself.”

SSU spokeswoman Susan Kashak declined to comment on Nemko’s accusation, saying that the university supports the report’s findings.

“The real problem resides with Sonoma State University, not CIHS. I think they’re trying to make CIHS a scapegoat for a lot of things,” said Nemko, calling the police search last week at Napa County Office of Education “absolute overkill” and “pure intimidation.”

“The real issue here,” she said, “is who is auditing Sonoma State University?”

Karlsrud wrote that he and others are “meeting with representatives from the California state Legislature in an attempt to secure an independent state audit of management and fiscal practices” at SSU.

“If ever a set of circumstances spoke to such a need,” he wrote, “this sorry situation surely does.”

Nemko said funding sources have agreed to award grants to Napa County Office of Education for some of the research work previously performed by CIHS.