Boy Scouts' Rolls decline by 25%: Thousands dropped after inquiry

Todd Bensman, of the Dallas Morning News, wrote an article on February 25, 2001, stating that the Boy Scouts of America's Dallas chapter has removed thousands of boys from troop rosters since a federal investigation of allegations of membership-counting fraud began last year.

The Circle Ten Council, the BSA's fifth largest, was raided by the U.S. Postal Service as part of a mail fraud investigation focusing on whether inner-city membership rolls had been inflated.

Council documents show that Circle Ten this year has revised its membership numbers downward by about 25 percent after coming under pressure from The United Way (a major source of funding for the Council) for an honest accounting.

The percentage of Scouts removed from the rolls of the Circle Ten Council was more than 40 percent in lower-income urban areas of Dallas that fund raising solicitations had emphasized.

Circle Ten officials released a statement acknowledging the primary reason for the smaller number of Scouts was negative national publicity regarding the BSA's policy of excluding gays. "Unfortunately, we're in a period where Scout numbers are suffering across the country from the national publicity," council president Bobby Lyle said last week.