Texas Watchdog

Houston ISD school board extends Superintendent Terry Grier's contract

Fri Feb 10 17:07:00 2012 CST

The Houston school board approved extending Superintendent Terry Grier’s contract during last night’s regular monthly meeting by a five-vote majority – the slimmest possible margin to pass the motion.

Grier’s contract terms stated that board members could vote to terminate the superintendent in December. Or, trustees could vote to extend his tenure.

Speaking for the majority, Trustee Harvin Moore made the motion to extend the superintendent’s contract through June 1, 2014.

“It’s important that we signal that Dr. Grier is on the right course, and that we stay on that course,” Moore said, explaining why he wanted to extend the superintendent’s contract at this juncture, rather than wait until closer to December.

Voting with Moore were trustees Greg Meyers, Paula Harris, Lawrence Marshall and Manuel Rodriguez Jr.

Trustee Anna Eastman was the only board member who voted against the extension. She praised the superintendent’s passion and said that though she wanted to be a part of the majority, she simply wasn’t there at this moment.

Eastman spoke about concerns that have remained with her since November 2010.

“I wanted to hear the same passion and zeal from the people on the ground,” Eastman said. “But I fear the culture of the (school-district) organization is struggling.”

Board President Mike Lunceford and trustees Juliet Stipeche and Rhonda Skillern-Jones abstained from the vote.

Grier became the Houston Independent School District superintendent on Sept. 11, 2009, after leading the San Diego public schools. He succeeded Abelardo Saavedra.

He is the highest-paid HISD employee, earning a $300,000 annual salary. HISD is the seventh-largest school district in the nation. It has a roughly $1.6 billion budget and educates about 203,000 students.

District data show that Grier did not meet HISD goals set for student achievement in 16 out of 24 categories, though he narrowly missed the mark in several.

The school board uses an evaluation form that consists of data measurements in categories such as the increase in student college readiness; recruiting and retaining the best teachers and principals; and improving the public support and confidence in HISD schools.

Grier earned about $69,000 in extra money last month due to performance bonuses built into his contract.

Grier’s extension is sure to set off fireworks among many HISD parents, teachers and school administrators. His two-year tenure has been a rocky one.

Some object to his intense focus on standardized tests to measure student progress and data-driven analyses to judge teacher and principal performance; a recent profile of Grier in Texas Monthly called him “the most hated man in Houston.”

But his fans say they support his efforts to improve the nation’s seventh-largest school system, where four out of five of the some 200,000 students are on free or reduced lunch programs -- and they support Grier’s broader goals of reform, even if he has rubbed some folks the wrong way.

Grier’s board backers repeatedly spoke during last night’s meeting about HISD being “on the right track” under the superintendent’s leadership.

“The data tells the story,” Meyers said. “This superintendent has followed his charge. He’s put together a staff that’s doing what’s right for kids.”

Marshall, the longest-serving member with 15 years on the board, said he’s had the good fortune to work with 12 superintendents throughout his career.

“We’re proud to say that (Grier) is our superintendent,” Marshall said. “Dr. Grier has made a difference. Our role on this board of education is to make sure we get a return on our investment. The superintendent is that investment.”

Harris added that, though the data are important, so is the way people are being treated within HISD, and how the public perceives the district.

“Dr. Grier has surrounded himself with great people,” Harris said. “Yes, there’s always room for improvement, and we still have an open dialogue with the unions, parents and staff. People won’t always walk away happy, but we’ll always have an open dialogue because Dr. Grier demands it.”

Still, an August survey showed that district-parent dissatisfaction with the superintendent has increased under Grier. About 70 percent of parents said they were strongly or somewhat satisfied with the superintendent in 2007 when Saavedra was chief.

This year that number sunk to 58 percent. The feeling among the general population followed a similar track, falling to 47 percent this year from 57 percent in 2007.

And parents who believe HISD is strongly or somewhat on the right track plunged to 54 percent this year from 79 percent in 2009, showed a survey conducted by Creative Consumer Research based in Stafford, Texas. Among the general population, those numbers dropped to 44 percent from 58 percent.

Skillern-Jones repeated during the meeting what she said during campaign season: She would not weigh in on Grier’s future until she saw all the data. She said she still hasn’t received some of those data, despite requesting them from HISD staff.

“I don’t have the data, so I can’t make a decision,” Skillern-Jones said.

Board President Lunceford concluded the discussion before the vote by stating that the reason he couldn’t support Grier’s extension had nothing to do with the superintendent himself.

“There’s a reason we’re not a board of directors,” Lunceford said, who was elected to his four-year unpaid term in November 2009. “We’re trustees. We serve as a trust for the people. I have a problem with signing on (the superintendent) for a time period longer than I’ll be here for my constituents.”

***
Contact Mike Cronin at mike@texaswatchdog.org or 713-228-2850. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelccronin or @texaswatchdog.

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Austin bag ban up for vote, could go into effect in 2013; see Texas Watchdog story on cost inflation in city estimates

Fri Feb 10 11:29:00 2012 CST

Hoping to keep a captive public guessing, Austin waste officials still aren’t quite sure what kind of ban on plastic bags they want, but they are sure it is time to vote on it.

The City Council has scheduled yet another public hearing prior to taking a vote March 1, according to a story by the Austin American-Statesman.

Bob Gedert, director of Austin Resource Recovery, now thinks March of 2013 is the perfect time to prevent shoppers from taking home their groceries in inexpensive, disposable plastic bags.

He thinks. Maybe. He’s pretty sure.

Less than a year ago, Gedert thought Austin ought to ease into a ban, maybe in 2016. Then he thought 2014 might be better.

But there has been so much to think about since Gedert and the city started to get serious about the locust-like plague of plastic grocery bags swirling, tumbling, clotting and generally blighting Austin.

There was the matter of criminalizing the bags, making it a Class C misdemeanor to continue to bag groceries and other goods in them. And deciding that it really didn’t make any difference whether the actual estimated cost to clean up plastic bags was as much as $600,000 less than thought because of Gedert’s miscalculation.

Gedert had once considered charging a fee for the bags, providing a small discomfort on the way to the greater irritant. He had trouble deciding if the city should charge by the bag or the transaction.

No matter. We’ll skip the interim fee period altogether and go right to the plastic bag ban, Gedert told the council. But what, several council members asked, are we to do about paper bags, the exclusion of which prompted lawsuits in California.

Mayor Lee Leffingwell, a plastic bag banner from way back, says he isn’t sure about banning paper because they can be recycled easily and cheaply, two words rarely used during this entire plastic bag debate.

Gedert wonders why paper bags should be banned when the council sought exemptions for paper and plastic for bagging meat and produce. Can’t the cost of cleaning up bags for bulk goods and those big, billowy dry cleaning bags be over-estimated, too, without resorting to an exemption?

And in whose pocket is a council eager to grant exemptions for booze, wine and beer bags, bags for carry-out food and those windsock-like newspaper sleeves?

The list of cities around the country passing bag bans is growing and so, too, are the lawsuits contending the bans are overreaching and selectively punitive.

So very many questions, so little time and so confusing for Austin. Gedert thinks he has that worked out, too. Whatever the city comes up with by March 1 will be fully explained in a two-year, $2 million education program, Gedert says.

For taxpayers, paid by taxpayers.

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo of groceries by flickr user Librarian By Day, used via a Creative Commons license.

More Medicare fraud allegations; Houston hospital chief latest nabbed in crackdown

Thu Feb 9 19:20:00 2012 CST

Further establishing that there are no unaccountable federal programs only bad people, authorities have charged a Houston clinic administrator with $116 million in Medicare fraud.

Mohammed Khan’s alleged con was to pay elderly and disabled care operators to recruit residents for the mental health clinics he oversaw through Riverside General Hospital, a story today by the Houston Chronicle says.

With an added entrepreneurial flourish, Khan lured recruits into therapy giving away coupons for merchandise at several “country stores” at Riverside Hospital and handing out cigarettes and food, the indictment says.

Khan and several unnamed co-conspirators submitted $116 million in claims to Medicare for treatment that wasn’t medically necessary and sometimes not provided at all, the indictment says.

For this federal authorities charged Khan with seven counts of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and health care kickback conspiracy.

Khan’s arrest is the latest in a federal crackdown on Medicare and Medicaid fraud called for nearly two years ago by President Obama.

Restrictions on Medicare claims data were eased as a tool for pursuing fraud late last year after an investigation by the Wall Street Journal led to arrests in Dallas and Houston almost a year ago in the broadest Medicare fraud roundup in U.S. history.

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo of ‘Carla’s Surgery’ by flickr user ReSurge International, used via a Creative Commons license.

Houston school board breaking the state's open meetings law? Not so fast. HISD did not violate law.

Thu Feb 9 17:52:00 2012 CST

Some of our readers may have seen the story we published this morning that reported that the Houston school board was about to break the state's open meetings law by voting on extending Superintendent Terry Grier's contract this afternoon.

It’s not as cut-and-dried as that.

The open government lawyer we quoted in that story, Austin attorney Joel White, this morning reviewed the wording of the agenda for this afternoon's board meeting and said the agenda “is not as clear as it should be, but reasonable people could disagree on whether it violates the letter or spirit of the” open meetings act.

The meeting agenda item says the school board would "consider" Grier's contract in closed session, and then consider closed-session topics in open session.

Texas Watchdog apologizes and regrets the error. We've taken the original story off-line to try to prevent any additional confusion.

***
Contact Jennifer Peebles at Jennifer@texaswatchdog.org or 281-656-1681.

Photo of 'wrong way' by flickr user Bob.Formal, used under a Creative Commons license.

Bill for Houston ISD's procurement performance audit: Just under $16,000

Thu Feb 9 10:24:00 2012 CST

The cost of October’s performance audit by a national education nonprofit of the Houston school system’s way of buying goods and services is about $16,000, district officials say.

The Council of the Great City Schools, based in Washington, D.C., has delivered a bill of $15,807.06, said Jason Spencer, a spokesman for the Houston Independent School District.

That is less than the roughly $22,000 the council charged HISD in 2010 for its review of the district’s capital facilities program.

But it’s still pricier than what Superintendent Terry Grier told the public in August that the council procurement audit would cost, which was: zero.

Spencer provided the council-audit cost breakdown for the six auditors who traveled to HISD and stayed three nights in a hotel with a $109 room rate.

Hotel: $2,217.06

Airfare, meals, and out-of-pocket expenses: $5,513.96

Honorarium (report/writer’s fees): $4,860

Council administrative fee: $3,216.04

A Houston accounting firm, Null-Lairson, also is conducting an audit of HISD’s purchasing processes. That should be completed during the upcoming weeks, school board President Mike Lunceford and Spencer have said.

HISD trustees in October approved paying Null-Lairson up to $87,500 for that audit.

Some district parents have complained that district officials have wasted taxpayer money by paying two separate organizations to audit the same thing.

***

Contact Mike Cronin at mike@texaswatchdog.org or 713-228-2850. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelccronin or @texaswatchdog.

Photo of money by flickr user 401K, used under a Creative Commons license.

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All aboard Austin’s Taxpayer Express. Unlimited seating available.

Wed Feb 8 15:22:00 2012 CST

Austin, where money is no object except for grocery shoppers and taxpayers, is offering weekend rides on its MetroRail train for just $2.2 million a year, according to a story today by the Austin American-Statesman.

For city residents used to this sort of thing and choo-choo aficionados no further explanation is necessary.

For the rest of you, climb aboard our zephyr, the Logic Is Limited, for a luxury excursion to the inscrutable nether reaches of rail transit.

Passing us in the window to your left is the MetroRail, finally up and running two years late and at $1.3 billion, twice the original estimated cost. You don’t see many passengers, as the Statesman has occasionally reported.

No, those sometimes empty cars on the 16.5-mile weekday run don’t come close to breaking even. Disappointing for what was sold to taxpayers as a commuter rail, but for transit advocates, beside the point.

But up ahead, ladies and gentlemen, are hourly runs in both directions Friday night and Saturday through midnight for MetroRail. Weekend test runs last March found the 108-seat trains full.

Full trains are money losers, too, just not as much. So the more runs you make the more you lose, only less than the money you lose on every run during the week. And if the losses are big enough they might justify asking taxpayers to buy more trains for the weekends.

As we pull into the station, let me assure you none of these are concerns of the Logic Is Limited.

Our rail service is founded on sound transit principles and a generous stimulus grant from funds sent back to Washington, D.C. by the states of Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Please be careful stepping off.

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo of train by flickr user Sunfrog1, used via a Creative Commons license.

Texas health officials deny records request on foodborne illness

Wed Feb 8 10:31:00 2012 CST

The Food Safety News was denied records by the state of Texas to find out exactly which restaurant was linked to a national salmonella outbreak last fall, but other states complied, pointing to Taco Bell as the culprit.

In federal documents, Taco Bell was referred to only as “restaurant Chain A.”

Michigan, known for its poor ranking with regard to public records policies, this week became the second state to comply with the request from the trade magazine. Oklahoma turned over its records last week. Food Safety News reporter James Andrews filed his requests on Jan. 19 with the “Center for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration and the 10 state health departments involved in the outbreak, asking health officials for the name of the fast food chain and the locations of the three restaurants where more than one victim ate.”

Nebraska denied access with a letter.

Texas had the most reported illnesses with 43 and simply denied the request.

Andrews said he called the press office at the Texas Department of State Health Services, which bounced him from person to person until finally telling him no.

He also received an email from the department citing a prior ruling by the attorney general. The AG had found that certain public health records related to "cases or suspected cases of diseases or health conditions" are not subject to release under the Texas Public Information Act. The AG in 2010 had given the agency permission to withhold such records in the future without seeking new rulings.

In an email, Andrews said he was told by the state health department that “they were not able to provide the name of the restaurant because they saw that as the responsibility of the CDC and FDA and those agencies had chosen to withhold the information.”

The Food Safety News is run by the Seattle-based law firm Marler Clark, which specializes in plaintiff’s suits in food sickness cases. Taco Bell did not respond to an interview request from the publication.

CORRECTION: This story was updated at 4:17 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 8, to reflect that the Texas Department of State Health Services had sent correspondence to Food Safety News regarding the denial of the public records request.

***
Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

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Like this story? Then steal it. This report by Texas Watchdog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. That means bloggers, citizen-journalists, and journalists may republish the story on their sites with attribution and a link to Texas Watchdog. If you do re-use the story, e-mail news@texaswatchdog.org.

Dallas Police Department website still down after hacking incident, officers' usernames and passwords published

Wed Feb 8 09:45:00 2012 CST

Dallas’ finest have been knocked offline by that most sinister of all criminals. No, not a crazed violent felon or a serial predator.

A computer hacker.

Over the weekend, according to the Dallas Police Department, the agency noticed late Sunday that the names and passwords of several Dallas PD employees had been posted online.

Today is Wednesday, but a visit to the department’s Web site goes nowhere, as in, ‘unavailable at this time.’

Deputy Chief Randy Blankenbaker downplayed the troublesome mischief to NBC 5 in Dallas-Fort Worth: “It was a small number of employees and, at this point, there is no indication anybody saw the information. We have some folks that keep an eye on things that are open-sourced, like Facebook and Twitter, and do searches to see things being discussed about the Dallas Police Department.”

The damage must have been fairly extensive, since the site shows no signs of coming back.

News reports have connected the incident to a hacking group calling itself Anonymous, which last week hacked the site of the Texas Police Association's website and published the names and home addresses of 700 Texas police officers.

That site is now back up.

But Anonymous has been much heavier than the small stuff; the group has also hacked FBI phone calls. It also vowed to take down Facebook at one point.

***
Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

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Authority 'not there' for city of Houston investigative arm, Inspector General Bob Doguim says as he quits job

Wed Feb 8 08:09:00 2012 CST

Inspectors general in other cities root out fraud, conflicts of interest; Houston's IG only has power to investigate complaints of vulgar language, unlawful tamale sales

While Philadelphia's inspector general was stamping out contracting schemes between vendors and city officials, Houston's counterpart spent the past year fielding complaints of poor work performance evaluations, harsh language and other petty grievances best suited for an HR department.

In Chicago, the office of the inspector general issues a quarterly report running dozens of pages describing the findings and results of its office. In Houston, the quarterly report amounts to simple tallies of cases closed. It took a public information request and a state Attorney General’s ruling to obtain all of the complaints fielded by its inspector general office. Even then the city attorney’s office violated the state’s open records law by failing to provide the records in a timely fashion.

And the office that was once said to be revamped via an executive order from Mayor Annise Parker has yet to issue a report on its findings over the past year.

The former FBI agent, Robert Doguim, hired to lead the office, stepped down. His last day was Friday. He lasted 14 months in the job and left on what he said were good terms. He also provided some candid advice to City Attorney David Feldman on how the office might operate in the future.

Bob Doguim

“I talked about the three cornerstones for a successful, true OIG operation,” Doguim said. “That is independence, proper authority and transparency. And I also believe that whoever serves next as the inspector general should have a fixed term.”

With his departure, Doguim said, the city is now in a position in which it can build a true OIG office like the ones in other cities the size of Houston. Or not.

"I said that when they are hiring the next inspector general, before they do, they should know what they want at the city," Doguim said. "Do they want to build the Federal Reserve, or do they want to put an addition on the house?"

The complaints received by the OIG office in the past year tell a story of an office with little legal heft, besieged by concerns that are mostly personal and often more concerned with perceptions rather than reality.

One employee filed a complaint stating that unauthorized vendors were selling tamales at the Houston Police Department.

Another claimed there was trouble in the city’s wastewater department: “...I have felt discriminated because I am Hispanic and I feel also retaliated and besides that I have been sick because of this situation, they do not treat me as a good hard worker. …”

Then there are also substantial complaints regarding misuse of funds and labor kickbacks that, if proven, would seem to lead to bigger cases or illicit activity.

One accusation, also from the wastewater department, alleges a supervisor misused funds and was given free work in exchange for directing contracts to certain vendors. The claim was backed up with 17 pages of emails.

There remains fallout from the Houston Fire Department fiasco from 2009. A May filing accuses a supervisor of downgrading an employee’s evaluation because of a “racially charged assessment."

The complaints came from across the spectrum of the city’s 21 departments and offices. Engine operators, inspectors of all kinds, city council members and even City Attorney Feldman were named in complaints.

That account alleged that Feldman, in a department meeting, entered wearing “a pair of brightly colored feathered earrings…

"The earrings strongly resembled the same type of earrings sometimes worn by Council woman Jolanda Jones. As Mr. Feldman entered conference room number 382, several employees laughed, however, the majority of the employees were not laughing. Mr. Feldman approached the podium and laughed himself! He then started to speak, but did not make sense in what he was saying. He stated (in a different tone than usual) 'I have had a hard life.' I had to walk several miles to get to school and Oh, did I mention I am a lawyer". 'I am a lawyer'. It then appeared that Mr. Feldman was clearly mocking Council woman Jolanda Jones in both her attire and demeanor.”

Doguim said he wanted to look into the allegation but was overruled by Mayor Parker, who sent it over to the Houston Police Department for investigate.

Feldman declined to speak with Texas Watchdog.

There are complaints of name calling, including numerous racial epithets, complaints against judges’ rulings, as well as complaints of inappropriate language, in one case citing the use of the words ‘damn’ and ‘hell.'

In another protest, a retired worked claims, “On July 29, 2011, Mr. Jackson came to my work station and called me ignorant. ... I have retired and no longer work for the city.”

Still another alleged that he was denied a promotion. One person filed a complaint against “someone in IT (information technology)” who had changed the passwords while that complainant was out of the office.

While Doguim professes admiration for Feldman, he said that in the end, “the authority is just not there.”

“I had always argued that the office should not be under the city attorney,” Doguim said. “Mr. Feldman never pushed back on anything I recommended, or tried to influence anything. But at this level, even the appearance of a lack of independence is a problem. It makes it look like someone is saying, ‘I have an OIG,’ but they don’t want all the things that come with it.”

Assistant City Attorney Lynette Fons will serve as interim IG until a replacement can be found. Fons is a former litigation attorney at Beirne, Maynard & Parsons.

Texas Watchdog will be releasing all of the 342 pages it obtained from the city in the coming weeks.

***
Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

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Photo of Houston City Hall by flickr user J Jackson Photography, used via a Creative Commons license.

Rep. Kay Granger’s $52 million for Trinity River makes list of Congressional ‘earmarks’ for projects near members’ property

Tue Feb 7 15:31:00 2012 CST

Rep. Kay Granger’s tireless work in Washington has delivered nearly 52 million dollars to downtown Fort Worth redevelopment. Taxpayers can rest easy knowing she has put that money in the hands of her son, JD.

Granger, R-Fort Worth, didn’t top the Washington Post’s list of 49 members of Congress who managed to bring more than $300 million in federal money to places close enough to benefit them or someone close to them.

That would be Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., whose $124 million in what the Beltway crowd quaintly calls earmarks has spiffed up downtown Tuscaloosa where Shelby just happens to own an office building.

Granger had to settle for second, edging out California Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who believed Americans were anxious to part with $50 million to provide light rail for Union Square and Chinatown in San Francisco.

The Post examined the greasy dives into the pork barrel by all 535 members of Congress and found 33 who helped direct spending to projects within about two miles of where they live or own property.

Another 16 lawmakers slung suet-smeared slabs at programs, businesses and colleges where relatives might reasonably be seen to benefit.

And although the practice is sometimes looked down upon by the public (hence all the allusions to pigs, their ears and waistlines), as Texas Watchdog has pointed out, the story reminds us this wallow is altogether legal. The Senate earlier this month voted 59-40 against an amendment outlawing earmarks.

While the amounts of money and the projects varied, there was a single unwavering reply to questions by the Post to the pork mongers: In no way was personal benefit a consideration before my fatty, two-fisted barrel grab.

Granger has taken full advantage of her legal right. In 2010 she delivered to her district $70.4 million in 35 different installments, 29th among everyone in the House, according to the government accountability non-profit Open Secrets.

Over the past 10 years Granger has made sure all American taxpayers got a stake in the revival of downtown Fort Worth. The project includes rerouting the Trinity River for those taxpayers in Maine who might not have known the river needed rerouting.

The executive director of the Trinity River Vision Authority is JD Granger. Until 2010, mother and son owned a condominium a half a mile south of the project, the story says.

Texas put four others on the list, piglet snatchers compared to Granger.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, who has lobbied for light rail earmarks, helped secure $5.25 million to the University of Houston in 2009 and 2010. At the time her husband, Elwyn Lee, was vice president of student affairs.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, managed to get $2.98 million to widen three miles of bypass for U.S. Highway 287, the dust of which probably stuck to the windows of two nearby homes Barton owns.

Just up the road from Republican Rep. Lamar Smith’s San Antonio home are three road improvements paid for with $950,000 Smith earmarked in 2009 for the Fort Sam Houston military base.

That same year Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, D-Mercedes, brought home $665,000 to help widen a road for the development of a commercial property near the family’s food processing plant. Hinojosa is a partner in the commercial development.

El Paso Times digs into questionable moonlighting by UTEP professor, schools corruption

Tue Feb 7 12:08:00 2012 CST

We relayed to you yesterday the stellar reporting of the El Paso Times on political donations from a felon to some high-ranking state figures.

And that’s one example of some strong work the Times has been doing.

The paper also reported on the extra-curricular income of S. Fernando Rodriguez, head of the Criminal Justice Program at the University of Texas-El Paso.

Rodriguez, who was placed on leave following the Times’ story, earned nearly $1 million in fees for his outside work, for which he is required to get permission from the university.

Especially when some of that money is linked to an operation whose chief is under federal indictment for defrauding a program to aid children suffering from severe mental illness and their families.

Add to that some of the work the Times has done on corruption in the El Paso ISD, and you’ve got a newspaper doing things the old-fashioned way: reporting news. A rather antiquated notion, but we appreciate the Times for keeping it real.

***

Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

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Photo of magnifying glass and money by flickr user Images_of_Money, used via a Creative Commons license.

Cornyn, Dewhurst, Reyes make charitable gifts of (some) campaign cash from convicted felon; Perry still has $80K from El Paso businessman Bob Jones

Mon Feb 6 11:39:00 2012 CST

It is Texas Watchdog’s privilege to extend a laurel and hearty handshake to the El Paso Times for dogging state politicians given more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from convicted felon Bob Jones.

The newspaper two months ago extracted promises from U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst to give their Jones donations, catalogued here by Texas Watchdog, to charity.

A federal judge last February sentenced Jones to 10 years in federal prison and ordered him to pay $68 million in restitution for embezzling millions of dollars from government programs while he headed the National Center for Employment of the Disabled.

Perry, the primary beneficiary of Jones’ generosity, raking in $80,000 between 2002 and 2005, has not yet given away the tainted campaign money, the Times is reporting today. A Perry spokesman, however, says the checks are in the mail. Almost.

Dewhurst has shed $10,000 of the $22,500 he received, and a spokesman said the rest would be handed out by the end of the month.

Cornyn has so far donated $5,100 of about $12,000. Reyes gave $3,500 of a total of $18,500 to the U.S. Department of Treasury. His staff says he is in the process of purging his campaign accounts of all Jones and Jones family donations.

All of Jones’ contributions were made before his indictment in 2008 on 37 counts of public corruption. Texas law does not require elected officials to return donations from people later convicted of crimes.

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Major change could come out of Houston ISD procurement audit

Mon Feb 6 08:59:00 2012 CST

If the response by Houston schools officials to past audits is any indication, district parents and residents could see major changes to the school system’s procurement practices during the next few months.

Two separate organizations – the Washington-based nonprofit Council of the Great City Schools and the Houston accounting firm, Null-Lairson – have both examined the way the school system does business.

The council released its report of the audit it conducted in October last month. Null-Lairson is scheduled to complete its audit and issue its findings to Houston Independent School District officials during the upcoming weeks, board members and administrators have said.

HISD revised policies and changed personnel in key positions after the Council of the Great City Schools’ 2010 audit of the district’s capital facilities program found, among other things:

Substantial financial errors

The program had been operating without annual budgets, standard contract forms or budget evaluations.

The program had no set timelines for the completion of projects and lacked standard guidelines as to how projects would be established, evaluated and completed.

The program had no tracking system of amendments to projects that enlarged their scope and price tag, and that district staff had “no understanding of the impact” of such changes on costs.

District improvements based on that 2010 review were significant, Issa Dadoush, HISD’s general manager for construction and facility services, told Texas Watchdog in a phone interview.

Among the most critical revisions in HISD procedures included:

Merging the previously separate construction department and facilities department. “Before, they were totally independent,” Dadoush said. “They were two silos and didn’t communicate with each other.”

Cultivating a pool of custodians similar to substitute teachers. “Back in 2010, it was not unusual to have 12 to 14 percent of our custodial staff absent,” Dadoush said. “We covered that with overtime, spending about $11 million annually. Since we created the (new system), we’ve saved HISD about $6 million.”

Re-establishing the district’s preventive-maintenance program. Now, Dadoush said, HISD is 27 percent more productive, acting on 139,000 work orders, as opposed to 110,000 prior to the council’s 2010 audit.

Starting an employee-evaluation process for contractors and consultants to hold them accountable. “The council’s 2010 report showed us that many employees didn’t receive evaluations,” Dadoush said. “Now, we articulate goals and objectives, and what are our performance measures, as well as the consequences for not meeting them.”

Hiring spot checkers to examine performance.

Becoming a “data-driven organization, where we analyze the cost-per-square-foot relative to others in our industry,” Dadoush said.

Though all those measures are good ones, Dadoush emphasized he and his colleagues aren’t finished yet.

“We’ve moved from a fair organization to a good organization,” he said. “We respond to about 95 percent of our work orders in a timely fashion. That means we still have thousands of work orders not responded to in a timely fashion. We want to get that number to 99 percent.

“We’re a work in progress,” Dadoush said. “We’re an open book.”

HISD officials paid about $22,000 for the 2010 council review, HISD spokesman Jason Spencer said.

District administrators are still waiting for the council’s bill for this year’s audit on HISD’s purchasing procedures, Spencer said.

The school board in October approved paying Null-Lairson up to $87,500 for the audit that firm is currently conducting.

The council’s October audit found that the ways HISD does business “lead to a perception of manipulation of and distrust in the procurement process.”

The report also concluded that “the majority of the district‘s purchasing... is awarded based on a number of weighted factors that are not always transparent or consistently applied.”

Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, told Texas Watchdog that HISD’s lack of transparency in its contract-awarding methods was the district’s most serious problem.

Spencer declined to answer questions of how the district would address the council’s findings, saying that would be “inappropriate” until the Null-Lairson conclusions are released.

***
Contact Mike Cronin at mike@texaswatchdog.org or 713-228-2850. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelccronin or @texaswatchdog.

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Like this story? Then steal it. This report by Texas Watchdog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. That means bloggers, citizen-journalists, and journalists may republish the story on their sites with attribution and a link to Texas Watchdog. If you do re-use the story, e-mail news@texaswatchdog.org.

Texas Watchdog's Mike Cronin interviewed on News 92 about Houston ISD paying for two audits

Fri Feb 3 18:06:00 2012 CST

Texas Watchdog's Mike Cronin talked with radio newsman Scott Braddock this morning about his story regarding the Houston schools paying for two audits of its procurement practices.

Cronin was interviewed on News 92 FM about his report, which noted that the Houston school system now says the review by the nonprofit Council of the Great City Schools wasn't really an audit.

Listen here

Listen to the audio of the interview in the player below.

***

Contact Jennifer Peebles at 281-656-1681 or jennifer@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @jpeebles and @texaswatchdog.

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Photo: Radio innovator Guglielmo Marconi at a desk with his equipment. Originally appeared in the March 1903 issue of The World's Work, now in the public domain and used here under a Creative Commons license via Wikipedia user Thomas H. White.

Fort Worth ISD trustee seeks closed meeting, says public forum to interview board applicants would 'jam up' process

Fri Feb 3 14:56:00 2012 CST

In Fort Worth, the school district has decided that rather than let voters decide who will fill a vacant trustee seat, the sitting board is better qualified.

The board claimed an election would be expensive, therefore it would do the selecting for the people. It will meet Feb. 21 to discuss who will join its ranks.

At least one board member, though, believes that the process should be closed to the public.

Fort Worth ISD Trustee Ann Sutherland feels that holding a public forum with the applicants would create a scenario where some could "jam up" the process.

"It's going to be huge and ugly if we do," Sutherland said, according to an article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Sutherland also wanted to keep the names of the applicants private, but the district’s counsel advised that would be illegal.

But the school district attorney, Bertha Whatley, believes the board can interview applicants and discuss its choice behind closed doors. Whatley said the Texas Open Meetings Act allows such, citing Texas Government Code Section 551.074.

Ann Sutherland

Today, the Star-Telegram weighs in with an op-ed on the situation, predictably – and reliably – coming down on the side of transparency.

Sutherland has been at times a foe of transparency. She was loud in her protest last fall of the public availability of e-mails sent by elected officials and public employees.

And an account last summer, also in the Star-Telegram, noted that Sutherland was texting with the representative of a potential vendor during a meeting on whether to hire the vendor to handle the district's collections from delinquent taxpayers. The representative's firm won the contract.

Of course Sutherland may have texted him in he past; he and his firm, Linebarger, Goggan, Blair & Sampson, had helped her campaign in the past.

And she’s not afraid to defend her stance.

***
Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

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Photo of crayons by flickr user KTVee, used via a Creative Commons license.

Texas state officials want billions more for schools, health, roads; transportation official floats doubling of vehicle registration fees

Fri Feb 3 12:09:00 2012 CST

My, my, my, the hands of begging bureaucrats are out awfully early.

First, there was Tom Suehs, executive commissioner of the state Department of Health and Human Services, saying he’s going to need as much as $17 billion more to run Medicaid.

Then Robert Scott, Texas education commissioner, said he just has to have more money to help struggling students and to pay for the school accountability system the Legislature called for.

And what if we nearly doubled vehicle registration fees to raise $14 billion for transportation projects, Ted Houghton, chairman of the state Transportation Commission, suggested to a transportation gathering in Euless.

Barrett Strong had a better groove, but Houghton was just as direct. “We need revenue,” he told the group.

All this grubbing and almost a year before the Texas Legislature comes back to Austin.

Suehs says Medicaid needs the money because the Legislature didn’t adequately fund the program in an effort to balance the budget in the last session. Scott is overseeing a public education system riven with lawsuits contending the Legislature was negligent in its funding.

Education and social service officials in Texas are always complaining about their woeful financial situations. But when the generally well-heeled Department of Transportation is out trying to tap taxpayers for billions this early the Legislature is going to have its work cut out for it.

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo of Texas state Capitol by flickr user The Brit_2, used via a Creative Commons license.

Texas weathers recession well; incomes in Washington, D.C., shoot up 8.1 percent during the down years

Fri Feb 3 10:37:00 2012 CST

Imagine what the last 111 years would have been like had Anthony Lucas come down off the Spindletop hill near Beaumont and announced, “By gads, I’ve just struck government.”

Now, Lucas didn’t do too badly providing the starter fuel for the world’s modern industrial age. And a new study by Sentier Research says Texans are still doing pretty well by the black gold.

But from 2007 to 2010 the households that by far best weathered a brutal and lingering recession were nestled in the bosom of our federal government, Washington, D.C., a Wall Street Journal story Thursday says.

Household income in the nation’s capital climbed by 8.1 percent during that time, more than twice the 3.6 percent growth of the leading state, Wyoming, and nearly three times the 2.9 percent in North Dakota. The top four states, including Alaska and Louisiana, are the beneficiaries of booming oil and gas industries.

Corpus Christi, Odessa and Longview-Marshall ranked second, third and fourth among metropolitan areas experiencing household income growth. The McAllen area was sixth and Amarillo tied for seventh. The Brownsville, Beaumont and El Paso areas made the top 20.

Texas as a whole ranked ninth among the states, with overall household income growing by just .8 percent.

The Wall Street Journal provides a fine interactive map showing all of the rankings of states and 297 metropolitan areas.

The rest of the country isn’t doing nearly as well, having seen median household income drop by 3.5 percent to $51,287 a year, the study says. Thirty-eight states lost ground. Not surprising, Michigan’s median income drop of 9.5 percent was the worst in the country.

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo of money by flickr user 401K, used via a Creative Commons license.

South San Antonio High school coach quits following questions of missing funds and porn on school computer

Thu Feb 2 17:25:00 2012 CST

The antennae rise when a high school administrator abruptly quits and announces, “The second I don't work there any more, the gloves come off. All the secrets I know about this district are going to come out. I don't have anything to lose anymore.”

We’re here if you need us.

The quote comes from a story in the San Antonio Express-News, and the guy delivering the welcome news is the departing basketball coach and athletic director from South San Antonio High School, Gary Durbon.

But first he has a few things to clear up.

His dad, former superintendent Ron Durbon, was fired in November amidst allegations he failed to fire up an investigation after it was found pornography was accessed on school computers, specifically one used by his son – Gary, the guy who is poised to spill the beans.

It also appears that the older Durbon also created some bad blood by obtaining a restraining order against the school board’s president and a trustee, whom Ron and son had sued over the pornography-on-school-computers episode.

The Texas Education Agency found good reason for canning Ron.

Gary was, until recently, best known for being the go-to guy for Tony Limon, the high school basketball player who was sued for punching a player during a game in 1999.

Limon said, coach said it was cool to punch; coach said otherwise.

What’s for sure not cool is stealing public money. And when some $25,000 in football funds turned up missing last fall, Gary was “reassigned.” Gary was supposed to be the watcher of the walking dough. But he told a local TV reporter: "I've never handled money. I don't count it. I don't deposit it. Nor have I ever been given a job description that says I am to oversee the money that comes into this department. So what you were told by the district is false."

We have to wonder the fate of the Ron Durbon Athletic Center.

Especially if Gary follows through on his promise to take off whatever gloves he was wearing. If he does, well, we answer our phone any time of day.

***
Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

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Photo of basketball hoop by flickr user acidpix, used via a Creative Commons license.

Critics question cost of Houston ISD's nonprofit audit; district says review wasn't an audit

Thu Feb 2 15:31:00 2012 CST

Some parents whose children attend Houston schools are wondering why district officials are spending taxpayer money to have two separate organizations to audit very similar things.

Especially because one of them was supposed to be free.

The Council of the Great City Schools, a Washington-based nonprofit organization, conducted an October examination of the district’s methods of buying and selling goods and services.

Administrators at the Houston Independent School District now are awaiting a bill from the council – even though Superintendent Terry Grier repeatedly told Texas Watchdog, other news outlets and the public for more than five months that the council audit would cost nothing.

HISD trustees in October approved paying a Houston accounting firm up to $87,500 to also audit the district’s business practices. That evaluation is being conducted now. Final results are expected sometime during the upcoming weeks, school board President Mike Lunceford and district officials have said.

Jason Spencer, an HISD spokesman, told Texas Watchdog last month that the council audit would cost the district taxpayer money. A council review of HISD’s capital facilities program in 2010 came with a price tag of about $22,000 – or roughly a quarter of what Null-Lairson will earn from conducting its current audit.

Peggy Sue Gay, 52, a mother of two HISD students, expressed the same concern and also asked, “Why did the Council of (the) Great City Schools do the ‘high-level management review?’ They have only conducted seven such studies in the past 12 years.”

Gay, who is represented by HISD District VII’s Harvin Moore, added, “I thought this was supposed to be an audit - but it ended up being a ‘high level management review.’”

But Spencer said in an e-mail that “HISD asked the Council of the Great City Schools to review the district’s procurement practices, not to perform an audit. A thorough audit of HISD procurement is under way,” Spencer added, referring to the Null-Lairson evaluation.

He also said, “I’m not aware that we’ve ever used the word ‘audit’ in connection with the (council) review. If we did, we were using the word generically. Again, I don’t specifically recall us using that word. Audits are highly involved and expensive exercises, it would not have made sense for us to expend taxpayer dollars on a pair of redundant audits.”

Spencer said the council’s work “does not meet the technical definition of an audit.”

But immediately after announcing in August that the council would examine the district’s purchasing procedures at a public meeting, Grier called the council inspection an “audit” during an in-person interview with Texas Watchdog.

And Grier, school-board members and other district officials have repeatedly and consistently referred to the council review as an “audit” for more than five months.

Both audits have come in the wake of Trustee Anna Eastman’s call in August that an independent entity evaluate HISD’s procurement processes.

Grier also told Texas Watchdog during that August conversation that the reason why another independent firm would conduct an audit of similar HISD practices was to dispel any doubt the public might have about the council’s objectivity due to both his position on the executive committee and the fact that Chief Financial Officer Melinda Garrett received a council award in 2010.

That award recognized “a school business official who distinguishes himself or herself through service to urban education,” according to a district news release at the time.

Within weeks of Garrett receiving the council award, the council delivered a scathing critique of the district’s capital facilities program.

That 2010 report found substantial financial errors in HISD’s capital facilities program. It also stated that the program had been operating without annual budgets, standard contract forms and budget evaluations.

The review further concluded that the district’s capital facilities program had no set timelines for the completion of projects, and lacked standard guidelines as to how projects would be established, evaluated and completed.

The report also said no tracking existed of amendments to projects that enlarged their scope and price tag, and that district staff had “no understanding of the impact” of such changes on costs.

HISD referred to the 2010 council probe as an “audit,” including mention of it by that term in this press release still available on HISD’s own website.

***

Contact Mike Cronin at mike@texaswatchdog.org or 713-228-2850. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelccronin or @texaswatchdog.

"I (heart) being audited" mugs available for order from Zazzle.com.

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Fredericksburg councilman - accused of failing to pay taxes - targeted in recall effort

Thu Feb 2 12:36:00 2012 CST

Fredericksburg councilman Tommy Segner says he is a victim of politics, the truth of which depends on your perspective.

Segner, a rabble-rouser and business owner who managed to get himself elected to the City Council, is the target of a recall, the San Antonio Express News is reporting today.

As the paper reported last week the recall is being led by Segner’s fellow council members, Tim Dooley and Graham Pearson. Pearson said the ouster group was well on its way to getting the 457 petition signatures needed by Feb. 24 to force a recall in May.

The group believes Segner ought not be a voting member of a body that levies taxes when he, his wife and two of his businesses are being sued by the federal government for allegedly failing to pay $420,505 in taxes since 2001.

The lawsuit says the Internal Revenue Service tried on numerous occasions and failed to collect from Segner. “Furthermore, efforts to educate Mr. Segner as to the process and importance of these payroll tax statutes have proved futile, “ according to the suit. “Tax returns continue to be filed late, if at all, with little or no payments in them.”

As a council member Segner has displayed similar contempt for the government spending half of the taxation equation, criticizing the council and the administration along the way. It was Segner who called for a referendum in which voters said no to spending 3.2 million tax dollars on an aquatic park.

Notwithstanding the imperceptible curve of his learning about taxes or the federal laws he might have broken, Segner says the real trouble is his local government wanting him out of its hair.

“The bottom line is that I have caused some grief and embarrassment to certain members of this City Council, city staff and to some members of the swimming pool committee,” Segner said in a statement issued Tuesday. “So, my personal issues with the IRS seem to be a good excuse to get back at me.”

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo 'Tax Time' by flickr user Images_of_Money, used via a Creative Commons license.