ATLANTA --- The Southern Christian Leadership Conference says it will catch up on submitting financial reports to the Internal Revenue Service in the next 45 days.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported the lag Monday, the day before what would have been the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 79th birthday. Dr. King co-founded the SCLC in 1957.

The SCLC has not filed a financial report with the IRS since February 2005, according to the IRS nonprofit hot line. Nonprofit organizations are required to file such reports annually. The SCLC has raised more than $6 million since President Charles Steele took office three years ago.

Mr. Steele said that the SCLC would file the late documents within 45 days and make those reports available to the public.

"We're not that late," he told the Journal-Constitution. "For 18 months, we've been in transition."

The group had unpaid employee taxes totaling tens of thousands of dollars in 2004, an issue Mr. Steele said has been resolved. He said that the organization currently has an annual operating budget of between $1.2 million and $1.5 million and that he hopes to raise the budget to $5 million.

Last fall, the organization celebrated its 50th anniversary with the opening of a $3.3 million headquarters on Auburn Avenue, the street where Dr. King was born, preached and is entombed. Georgia Power President Michael Garrett spearheaded fundraising for the building, which was presented debt-free.

Georgia Power spokesman John Sell wrote in an e-mail to the newspaper that the company was "aware of past tax issues that we were advised have been resolved, and we hope that any new issues will be resolved as well."

In the years since Dr. King's death, the SCLC has lost influence, funding and membership, and infighting led the group to stagnate.

Mr. Steele, a funeral director and former Alabama state senator, took over during a tumultuous period, and he said he has stopped the squabbling and raised millions to pay off debts and open the new headquarters.