William Edwards, Steve Kim and Laura Palmer.
These former Houston Independent School District employees' identities have been closely guarded by the school district. HISD administrator Richard Patton, who is in charge of compliance with certain ethics rules that federal officials accused the trio of employees of violating, named them Thursday in an interview with Texas Watchdog.
The information technology workers were accused of taking meals and gifts from vendors under the federal technology program called E-Rate, violating ethics rules that spurred a federal investigation and halted funding to HISD under E-Rate in 2006. The district has lost millions of dollars, and earlier this year settled a lawsuit brought by the federal government. Neither HISD nor any of its employees admitted to any wrongdoing, according to the settlement documents.
The employees were named after Texas Watchdog filed a public information request in March for details surrounding the employees involved with the E-Rate scandal. E-Rate is a federally funded program that brings cut-rate telecommunications services to public schools, nonprofit private schools and libraries.
Edwards, Kim and Palmer do not show up in the salary databases Texas Watchdog has obtained from HISD in 2008 or 2009. Thursday, Patton said he believed that all three employees resigned from the Houston district, though other HISD officials have previously described their departures as firings.
Texas Watchdog is still waiting on those documents to be made public.
The subsequent compliance agreement required HISD to hire an E-Rate compliance officer, who makes $150,000 annually. HISD hired Patton in February using a headhunting firm that reportedly charged $67,200.
Freezing the funding under the E-Rate technology program has caused the district to lose $105 million in federal funding.
Texas Watchdog was unable to reach the former employees immediately Thursday afternoon. We'll keep trying, and we'll update our site if we are able to reach them.
Within months of the federal government's freezing of HISD's E-Rate funding in 2006, Palmer got a 45 percent pay increase and promotion, according to HISD salary records acquired by Texas Watchdog through a Texas Public Information Act request. Employee Laura M. Palmer was listed as an assistant superintendent for technology and information systems as of September 2006, earning more than $122,000, a big boost over her previous salary of about $84,000 in 2005. She was earning more than $126,000 in fall 2007, and had worked with the district since 1994.
Palmer retired as of October 2007, according to an HISD database of retirees since 2005. Edwards and Kim, however, do not show up in the same retiree database, and it is unclear precisely when they stopped working for the school system.
Employee William L. Edwards worked in the Technology and Information department, earning more than $132,000 as an assistant superintendent in the Technology and Information Systems Department as of 2004, salary records show. He was hired in 1993.
Steve K. Kim worked as a manager of network operations in the networking department and as of 2006 he earned more than $89,000 annually. He had worked for HISD since 1997.
Edwards, Kim and Palmer do not show up in the salary databases Texas Watchdog has obtained from HISD in 2008 or 2009. Thursday, Patton said he believed that all three employees resigned from the Houston district, though other HISD officials have previously described their departures as firings.
After Texas Watchdog's public information request for the employee names, HISD asked the Texas Attorney General to allow the names to remain secret. The AG disagreed and said in a letter that the information must be released.
Texas Watchdog is still waiting on those documents to be made public.
The Federal Communications Commission filed a lawsuit against the district in 2006. More than three years later, the district paid $850,000 to settle the suit, and is receiving money again under the program.
The subsequent compliance agreement required HISD to hire an E-Rate compliance officer, who makes $150,000 annually. HISD hired Patton in February using a headhunting firm that reportedly charged $67,200.
Patton has spent hours training employees and board members on stricter ethics rules to avoid a repeat of the earlier problems. He has recommended HISD spend an additional $10,000 a year on monitoring software.
Freezing the funding under the E-Rate technology program has caused the district to lose $105 million in federal funding.
A voicemail message left for a Steve Kim in Sugar Land was not returned. Texas Watchdog was not able to immediately find a phone number for Edwards and Palmer.
As recently as a few months ago, an HISD press official said the investigation by federal officials was still open. Thursday, Patton said, "the investigation is over."
Contact Lynn Walsh at 713-228-2850 or lynn@texaswatchdog.org.
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