I previously reported that the LISD school attorney had not been paid for his last few years. The school attorney told the school board at a meeting that he would request payment when he retired. The school board told him he would not get any money and so he just resigned without ever billing the school. So that led me into asking a bunch of questions. Why was he not getting paid? Why did the school board not know? What is going on?! Everyone denied that anything fishy was going on and some even stated that he was just being nice and working for free. that working for free story just did not add up though. Well after some digging, I found that there was indeed something very strange going on. The Hardin County News was investigating this too and they came out with a story about it revealing some very interesting facts. Basically, the former school attorney has not paid his Hardin County Property taxes on his house since 1998 and he owes over $40,000 in back taxes. It does not appear that he has made any effort to pay his past due taxes nor does it appear that he wants to.... hmmmm, after a while they might garnish a person's wages for something like that right? But what if you could hide your wages by not getting paid till later so that the tax collectors don't come getting the money from his LISD income? Why would someone who owes back taxes not want to get paid his lucrative pay from LISD? Why would he cut some strange deal with the LISD administration to not get paid till later without letting the school board know about it? Is it ethical to have someone legally representing the school and the city that refuses to pay his taxes? I don't know what exactly is going on but something is going on and no one can deny that facts. I just want government to be open and honest. I have never had any personal problems with Furlow and I know most of the school board and do not dislike them. But I do dislike everyone trying to hide the truth from the taxpayers who pay the bills. The people of Lumberton deserve to have open government so that way problems get addressed openly instead of swept under the rug. Lumberton ISD Superintendent Dr. Sims needs to come out and clarify what is going on here.
Showing posts with label sims. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sims. Show all posts
Monday, April 4, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Update on Lumberton ISD Secret IOU’s to School Attorney
In a previous email about Lumberton ISD hidden grant money, I suggested that something funny was going on with the payments to the School Attorney. Specifically I suggested that the Administration, without the knowledge of the School Board, was writing IOU’s to the school attorney. The School Attorney stood up and completely denied any allegations.[2]
That means I have to show everyone my proof or else it is a he said she said thing.
Here is the proof:
I requested an LISD Open Records Request for all the payments to the School Attorney for the last 5 years.
What I discovered was that the School Attorney received regular monthly paychecks from LISD up until the very last payment he ever got from LISD, which was on January 6th, 2006[3]. Well, the problem is that the School Attorney served in a full capacity until he resigned on June 11th, 2010 and the School Board accepted his resignation on June 22nd, 2010[4]. So that means there is a gap of about 4 years where the School Attorney was NOT getting paid. Do you still believe that there is nothing fishy going on here? Obviously, based on the facts, there was some kind of strange financial deal going on. What it was we might never know, but the School Board did not know about it and when they found out, one of the school board members questioned if the Administration had been lying on the audit when they claimed they had no outstanding debts. The School Board worked something out in an executive session so we don’t get to know anything. The School Attorney resigned. He did not get any back pay because he never billed the school because he was told by the school he was not going to get anything. My guess is that whatever was going on he wanted to keep secret so he did not pursue getting back pay and just let it go. Also, the Administration official who did this strange agreement is no longer at Lumberton ISD and is now at another School District.
For further evidence, you can go to the online LISD Operating Fund Check Register[5] and see that, as far back at the check register goes (2008), the previous school attorney did not get paid. On the other hand, you can see at the online check register that the new school attorney immediately started getting monthly payments when he took over in 2010.
I DO NOT care to make a nice man look bad. I know the previous school attorney and he is a real nice guy and it pains me that I had to bring all of this out about him.
But I DO care about school administrations ending their shady financial dealings and I DO care that our elected School Boards have more control over their Administrations. That meant I had to bring out all this dirty laundry about the School Attorney's situation. This situation brings many questions like, if the School Attorney was not officially the school attorney and not getting paid, then every executive meeting he attended might have been illegal because only the official School Attorney can be at those meetings. Or was he getting paid some other way under the table? I know this previous attorney and I would don’t think that he would not have been involved in anything illegal because he is a very nice guy and I wish him well in retirement. But we JUST DON’T KNOW. That is the problem, we don’t know because of the secrecy of School Administration and the inability for School Boards to oversee them like they are elected to do.
Obviously there was something funny going on behind the scenes with the School Attorney payments and the School Board SHOULD have known about it. They did not know about it and that is the point of all of this. What else does this, and other School Boards across Texas, not know about their School Administration’s financial practices?
School Financial Practices need to be reformed and elected School Boards need to legally have more oversight over the School Administration’s dealing.
Thankfully Lumberton ISD has a few new School Board members and they are cracking down on all of these problems from the past. They just aren't really coming out about it all so that there is no bad press for the school. but the people need to know the truth because it is their tax money at stake.
Lumberton ISD Superintendent Dr. Sims needs to come out and clarify what is going on here.
Lumberton ISD Superintendent Dr. Sims needs to come out and clarify what is going on here.
Sincerely,
David Bellow
Friday, February 18, 2011
Lumberton School Board Quietly Calls Out School Administration at Meeting
In a very politically correct manner, and hidden in a long speech, the Lumberton School Board last night agreed that the Administration had been hiding millions of dollars from the School Board. While it is true that the federal grant money does not have to be voted on by the board in the yearly budget because the grant money comes in after the budget is already voted on, it is also true that once the money comes in the Administration cannot hide these funds from the School Board members who have been elected to oversee everything.
In a statement read by the School Board President, the School Board said that they cannot "fulfill their responsibility for oversight" as they were elected to do unless they know about all the money coming in and being spent. The School Board president said that from now on the School Administration must allow the Board to "review the use of these funds in the future." The School Board also said that they have "contracted an audit firm to conduct an internal audit" to do a complete review of the "the federal funds" that were hidden as well as all other financial operations of the District.
Did the school board make a big deal out of the issue? No. But that was expected because most school boards do not want bad press coverage. Did the school board do the right thing by telling the school administration to tell them about future money and by also hiring a firm to do a complete internal audit of finances? Yes! The Lumberton School Board, in a very quiet sort of way as to not bring attention to themselves, is standing up and fighting back. The people of Lumberton should be happy to know that their elected school board members are taking this issue of hidden money head on! Please note that this is a completely different school board than just a few years ago so the people did the right thing when they woke up and elected these new faces to the board. Now if only BISD could get some new faces to clean up their big financial mess....
Also note that my previous letter never mentioned anything about slealing money. The local newspaper did that. My previous letter simply said that they were not telling the school board about millions of dollars. The school board is elected by the people to oversee everything and the Administration CANNOT hide this money from them. Government needs to be more open and honest. I also believe there are Great people on the Administration and the Administration as a whole did nothing wrong. It was really one or two people that were not telling the School Board about the money... Lumberton ISD Superintendent Dr. Sims needs to come out and clarify what is going on here.
Sincerely,
David Bellow
mdbellow@gmail.com
In a statement read by the School Board President, the School Board said that they cannot "fulfill their responsibility for oversight" as they were elected to do unless they know about all the money coming in and being spent. The School Board president said that from now on the School Administration must allow the Board to "review the use of these funds in the future." The School Board also said that they have "contracted an audit firm to conduct an internal audit" to do a complete review of the "the federal funds" that were hidden as well as all other financial operations of the District.
Did the school board make a big deal out of the issue? No. But that was expected because most school boards do not want bad press coverage. Did the school board do the right thing by telling the school administration to tell them about future money and by also hiring a firm to do a complete internal audit of finances? Yes! The Lumberton School Board, in a very quiet sort of way as to not bring attention to themselves, is standing up and fighting back. The people of Lumberton should be happy to know that their elected school board members are taking this issue of hidden money head on! Please note that this is a completely different school board than just a few years ago so the people did the right thing when they woke up and elected these new faces to the board. Now if only BISD could get some new faces to clean up their big financial mess....
Also note that my previous letter never mentioned anything about slealing money. The local newspaper did that. My previous letter simply said that they were not telling the school board about millions of dollars. The school board is elected by the people to oversee everything and the Administration CANNOT hide this money from them. Government needs to be more open and honest. I also believe there are Great people on the Administration and the Administration as a whole did nothing wrong. It was really one or two people that were not telling the School Board about the money... Lumberton ISD Superintendent Dr. Sims needs to come out and clarify what is going on here.
Sincerely,
David Bellow
mdbellow@gmail.com
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Financial Corruption in Texas Schools
This Thursday at 7PM, the Lumberton School Board will reveal that the School Administration had been hiding, and spent, several million dollars last year without the knowledge of the School Board. To put this into perspective, the LISD Budget was only about 30 million last year. Several million on top of that is a huge chunk of change. The Administration has acted as though practices such as these are no big deal because this is how it has been done for many years. This is east Texas after all where old Democrat politicians have controlled the political landscape and have been doing what they want behind the scenes. In this instance, the LISD Administration has been applying for federal grants and taking and spending the money without informing the School Board of the grant money or having the School Board vote to spend the grant money. I am not saying they stole the money or used it for non-educational expenses. I do not know what they spent it on and I would hope it was all on educational expenses. But ergardless of how they spent the money, the fact is that they have been secretly getting and spending millions of dollars without telling or getting approval from the School Board members who were elected by the people to oversee everything. That is a scandal. It is not that much of a surprise though because this is long time Democrat controlled east Texas politics at work and because the LISD Administration was also found recently to be lying to the auditor about debts LISD owed. The LISD Attorney had been receiving IOU’s from the Administration for some time. When the School Attorney needed the money he finally came out and asked for payment and that is when the School Board discovered the debts owed because the Administration had been lying to the Board, and the Auditors, about debts owed. This Thursday the School Board will reveal the Administration’s cover-up. (unless of course they decide to push back the issue to a later board meeting in hopes that things will quiet down). Lumberton ISD Superintendent Dr. Sims needs to come out and clarify what is going on here.
What is the point of all this? The point is that this situation in Lumberton is not unique. The fact is that the entire educational system is becoming corrupt. Money is being raised and spent all over the state with little or no accountability. Education costs are 40% of the budget in Texas while the average education costs of the other States is only about 30%.[1] Financial reform is needed in order to save money from being wasted and to make education better by focusing money on education and not so many side projects.
For example, just down the road from Lumberton is a city called Beaumont, TX. This place is a cesspool of waste. The city is just over 100,000 people and the superintendent of this medium sized city is very likely the highest paid public official in Texas. He receives a 360,000 base salary per year (plus extras) to run the School District.[2] The waste does not end with his salary. The BISD passed a few hundred million dollar bond recently and the bond was voted on to pay for a long list of things, but then BISD tried to use the money to pay for something completely different. For instance, they tried to tear down an historic school using the bond money even though they had sold voters the bond on the premise that the school would not be torn down. A judge granted an injunction on using bond money to tear down the structurally sound historic school.[3] Even worse, BISD is looking into building a hotel and convention center right by the new Educational Support Center (Football Stadium).[4] The School District wants to use extra bond money and other taxpayer education funds to build a hotel and compete with private businesses? Something is wrong here. The people are being swindled, taxes are getting raised, and education is suffering.
Statewide, school administrators are currently attacking our Governor, Rick Perry, because he refused federal money for education due to the strings attached. Governor Perry did the right thing. Instead of blaming the Governor’s defending of our state’s educational sovereignty , the best use of our time is in cracking down on the waste in Texas Schools that is sucking up so much of the money we already have here in the State.
Local school districts should have freedom to determine their own education locally by an elected school board. I am in no way advocating for the state to make specific financial or educational decisions regarding local education. In fact, some of the reason that schools have money problems is also due to unfunded legislative mandates.[5] So I am not advocating for the State to take educational decisions out of local control. What I am advocating for is reform that requires schools districts to spend their taxpayer money on EDUCATION and not so much on non-educational waste. Also, the local communities need to be protected from local political machines that hide the finances from the people and that deceive the people with tax increases from shady bonds elections.
Here are some ideas:
1) 1) When the people of a School District vote to raise taxes for a bond, that bond money needs to be spent on exactly what the people voted on and if there are major changes in how the funds are to be spent then there needs to be a new vote. Leftover bond money should be used to pay down the bond debt and not spent just because you have it extra.
2) 2) School Administrators should not so easily be able to get grants for the school without the knowledge of the school board members who are elected to control the budget.
3) 3) School Districts, especially in this tight economical setting, should spend money on education and not so much on completely off the wall, non-educational things like building a hotel. School Districts should especially not be able to create a non-educational business that competes with hard working private businesses.
I am not sure how much of this can be done on a legislative level, but certainly the people should know about this so, at the very least, they can take action themselves through voting. Beaumont is starting to. see a change already. The people of Beaumont have woken up and recently they did a petition to change the way the school board is elected so they can crack down on this taxpayer fraud. It is interesting to know that the wake up of the people and the crackdown on the government waste coincides with these old democrat counties turning republican and bringing in new conservative leadership. Jefferson County, Beaumont, TX, recently elected their first county wide Republicans in nearly 150 years right at the same time that the people are waking up to the BISD taxpayer waste.[6] Hardin County, Lumberton, TX, just had many new Conservative Republicans elected to county offices and also to the School Board, and many of the old Democrats are switching over to the Republican Side. This switch happened right at the same time that Lumberton voters started waking up to educational waste and they just rejected an unnecessary 30 million School Bond.[7] Like Beaumont, Hardin County is also starting to wake up to the waste in their good old boy, decades long Democrat controlled county. So as People wake up to the fraud and waste of the Government, these very same people start voting Republicans into office to clean up the mess that the old democrats left….. interesting how that goes hand in hand
Sincerely,
David Bellow
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