in Houston, Texas

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HISD trustees are mixed on their opinions of the policy.

Trustee Natasha Kamrani said the gifts policy leaves "a lot of room for improvement," though Kamrani said she hadn't been offered gifts that would fall in the category of not having to be disclosed.

"It clearly allows for folks to get around the spirit of what these policies are trying to get at, which is disallowing folks outside the organization to have undue influence over the decisions of board members," said Kamrani, who was elected to the school board in 2005.



Trustee Paula Harris said "nobody ever offers me gifts (such as sports tickets), so I don't parse this sort of stuff." Harris said, though, that she receives multiple invitations each month to fundraising lunches and dinners in her capacity as a trustee, though she's selective in what she attends and hasn't broken the invitations down according to who would foot the bill.

Harris said she's used to wooing clients herself in her job as director of community affairs for an oilfield services company. But she stopped short of a judgment on whether wining and dining should have to be disclosed in the case of public officials.

"Do I see something wrong with a dinner or a lunch? Absolutely not," Harris said. "Should it be reported? I guess the legal entities or the legal minds need to decide on that."



School transparency advocate Peyton Wolcott said that even though loopholes in the law may be exploited, other areas of government transparency are a higher priority.

"Where there's any wiggle room at all in reporting requirements -- and there always is by the time legislation finally passes -- folks who want to are going to wiggle," Wolcott, of Horseshoe Bay, said by e-mail.

But Wolcott, who has made a national push for school districts to post their check registers online, said shining light on how school systems spend their money is more important.

"Simply posting districts' checks online can achieve the same transparency and accountability goals better, faster and cheaper than counting on trustees and other to self-report on disclosure forms," she said.


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Contact Lee Ann O'Neal at 713-980-9777 or leeann@texaswatchdog.org.

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