Double-dipping the taxpayers: Should a DISD trustee be allowed to work a public sector job, too?

You've probably read or heard something about the ruckus at DISD over what some say is a non-existent "ethics policy" that doesn't preclude board members (or their companies) from contracting with DISD. School board chairman Jack Lowe, who is chairman of TD Industries, is particularly under the gun; his company has been paid more than $9.2 million for DISD-contracted construction work since 2002, according to the DMN. As far as I know, there has been no suggestion of wrong-doing; just the appearance of impropriety.

Trustee Carla Ranger and the DMN have been lobbying DISD to completely disallow any such contracts in the future; other board members favor tightening the ethics policy a bit but aren't necessarily in favor of completely preventing board members and/or their companies from contracting with DISD, provided that DISD bidding policies are followed. A three-member DISD board subcommittee is meeting to decide what to do about the issue.

Here's another log to throw on that fire: Why are people who are being paid by taxpayers allowed to serve as elected but unpaid DISD board members? Trustee Carla Ranger works for the Dallas County Community College District and trustee Adam Medrano works for the city of Dallas, according to the DMN, creating two other issues. For one, DISD contracts with both entities for work, potentially making them ineligible to serve as board member depending on how the policy change plays out. And two, we know a DISD trustee job takes a lot of time and in some way has to keep a person from performing a full 40-hour work week at a regular job, what with all of the meetings, speeches and phone calls that have to be addressed each day/week. So how can people who are being paid by the taxpayers find the time to serve DISD in a voluntary basis without somehow shortchanging the taxpayers footing the bill for their paying jobs?

This issue has bothered me for years; if my memory serves me correctly, I believe that a few city council reps over the years also have been employed by taxpayer-funded entities, again creating a potential conflict between the rep's taxpayer-funded job and his/her city council job. I mean, there are only so many hours in the day to handle civic, employment and family duties — how do these people juggle things so that taxpayers aren't short-changed? And maybe we shouldn't be allowing this double-dipping?

I hope DISD will add this question to the ethics issue. If the district is going to take a hard line on trustees contracting with DISD, perhaps a similarly hard line should be taken to disallow people in taxpayer-funded, public-sector jobs from serving as DISD trustees and Dallas city council reps.

Comments

[Matt Wood]

So Ms. Ranger supports a policy that would completely prohibit DISD from having an economic relationship with a company by which a Trustee is employed, or prohibit someone from running for Trustee if DISD currently engages their employer for goods or services? Considering how difficult it seems to be to find qualified people to take on this very difficult, largely thankless, much needed civic service, wouldn't such a policy eliminate anyone who is employed by . . oh . . TXU, or Exxon/Mobile, or KimberlyClark (to name just a few of our major local entities) from bringing the skills they learned in helping run these entities to the demands of improving DISD? Surely a policy can be put in place that would allow for conducting business in an ethical manner without making the pool of potential board members even more shallow?

[Carla Ranger]

It doesn't take a policy to know when something is wrong and doesn't pass the smell test.

The issue is not employment - it is ownership of a financial interest in a private business
that does business with the School District.

Both the City of Dallas and Dart have policies that do not permit what you support. Both
DART and the City of Dallas certainly have business people involved as elected and appointted
officials. So it is just not true that ethics must be compromised to allow some to profit
while serving in a public position of trust.

A city council member cannot contract with the city government they serve. A Dart
Board member cannot receive a contract from DART while serving on the Board.

The policy I proposed doesn't prevent anyone - business or otherwise - from serving on the Dallas ISD school board.

Instead, it would certainly prevent any Trustees from receiving financial gain derived
from contracts between Dallas ISD and private business entities which they own entirely
or in which they have a financial interest while in office.

If they want to serve the school district as a Trustee, they don't contract with the
same school district they serve. If they want to contract with the school district,
they don't serve as Trustee of the same school district.

It was expected that an effort would be made to confuse the main issue in this way.

The policy proposal I offered simply states:

"After __________, 2008 (date of adoption), the Dallas ISD may not contract with
a private business entity in which Trustee or anyone related to a Trustee has any
financial interest."

I have added the word 'private' to clarify that the policy relates to private business
interests, not non-profit or government organizations in which there is clearly no
ownership or any financial interest involved.

Houston ISD is the largest school district in the state. Houston has banned such
Trustee contracts since September 16, 2004 because of a similar issue involving the
relatives of elected Trustees receiving contracts. The Houston policy clearly states:
"Business entity" does shall not include non-profit corporations or religious,
educational, and governmental institutions."

The Dallas ISD School Board has no authority to prohibit anyone from running for a
Trustee position. School Board election qualifications are governed by State Law
and no school Board has authority to change the requirements. Only the state
legislature can change election requirements. Even the state legislature might
not be able to do what you suggest.

If such a provision were ever adopted and found to be consistent with the Texas
constitution and election laws of the State of Texas, your suggestion would then
apply to all school boards in Texas.

Several other employees of Dallas County Community College District before me have
also served as Dallas ISD Trustees, including:

Ken Zornes - former Dallas ISD Trustee and Board President worked for Dallas County
Community College District while a Trustee.

Lois Parrot - former Dallas ISD Trustee and Board President worked for Dallas
County Community College District while a Trustee (over 10 years).

Rene Castilla - former Dallas ISD Trustee and Board President worked for Dallas
County Community College District while a Trustee.

Kim Olson - serves as a Weatherford School Board Trustee and still
lives in Weatherford, Texas - hired by Superintendent Hinojosa to head the Dallas
ISD Human Development area in 2007 with no previous HR experience. She remains an
employee of Dallas ISD while serving as a Weatherford ISD Trustee.

Do you also object to the service of these Trustees - all of whom were employed by
non-profit educational organizations?

My purpose is to ban unethical contracts between Dallas ISD and elected Trustees
while they are serving in office.

There is already a Dallas ISD policy that bans a former Trustee from receiving
contracts with the School District for one year after they leave the Board.

It appears you want to ban a class of citizens from running for the school board
based on their employment status with non-profit and governmental organizations.
(Some think this would be unconstitutional)

Serving as a School District Trustee is a public trust and no Trustee is automatically
entitled to profit financially from their District while serving as a Trustee.

The two issues are quite different.

One addresses the ethical problem and prevents unethical profit by Trustees from the
District they serve.

The other seeks to confuse the issue where no financial ownership or profit is involved
on the part of employees of non-profit institutions.

There is quite an ethical difference between profit and non-profit service. That fact
has always been well understood in public policy.

A final note on another matter: Comments were previously posted on the Back Talk blog
by Trustee Edwin Flores in which he totally misrepresented my position on the Dallas ISD
online transparency policy. While Trustee Flores makes excuses for not providing the
funding to post complete Dallas ISD information online - including full information on
the Superintendent's office, I remain ready not just to talk about online transparency
but to vote for the funding necessary to actually do it. Trustee Flores' comments on
the issue were simply an excuse for not doing something the administration and others
did not want done. Apparently, they do not want the information easily available to
the public.

[Christina Garcia]

Here's my problem with all of the time, effort and ink, especially in the Dallas Morning News--and frankly, by you, Ms. Ranger--wasted on this issue. It has nothing to do with issues involved in improving schools or helping the children of Dallas. Instead, it's a not-so-veiled attempt to make a power play and disgrace Jack Lowe in the process.

I only wish as much time were spent by you and the Morning News in trying to determine how to improve the plight of children in places like Pleasant Grove. If we can't focus on THAT important issue as a community, we will all lose in paying more taxes to incarcerate more people and fund welfare moms.

Ms. Ranger, with all due respect, please don't sweat the small stuff. This ethics policy, regardless of whether Houston adopted it (and since when did Dallas want to be like Houston?) is small stuff.

[Carla Ranger]

Thank you for your comment - especially for caring about the children.

The first comment here specifically mentioned my name and raised questions
that I answered.

The City of Dallas just revised its ethics policy again just last week at
the request of the Mayor. A City Council Committee spent considerable time
working on the ethics policy additions.

The Mayor and City Council did not think they were wasting time.
It was clearly important to the Council to improve the ethics policy.

It is even more important that Dallas ISD do the same and ban contracts
with Trustees and their relatives.

[Louisa Meyer, Dallas ISD Parent since 1993 and Member Dallas Achieves Commission]

Ranger's first order of business as a newly elected trustee in 2006 is one example of where her heart is. She proposed that all building plaques on 2002 bond buildings and additions be redone to include the names of the recently elected trustees. She wanted students to know a black woman represented them and commissioned a team of district employees to review the building plaque policy.

I don't know one student who could a) find the building plaques or b) tell me the ethnicity of someone named Carla. The new plaques cost $60,000 and didn't include the cost of the plaques that had already been installed but she had replaced.

TD Industries' contracts with the district over a 6 year period totaled $9.6 million. For the same period TD had roughly $1.8 billion in revenues. So the Dallas ISD portion of that business was 3% of TD's total. Both figures are revenue from the many HVAC units TD installed on our campuses. We don't know the income and it's possible TD incurred a loss on those projects. If there was income, Jack Lowe shared it with the 1,600 partners of the employee owned company.

Let me repeat. 1) The figures thrown around by DMN are revenue for goods and services received. We do not know the income and TD could have incurred a loss on any or all of those projects. 2) Any income is shared among 1,600 partners. The company started by Jack Lowe's father is employee owned. What does that say about the heart of a family that starts a business and shares its success with its employees?

I got my figures from the TD Industries website where I also found this:
Jack Lowe, J. Erik Jonsson Ethics Award from the SMU Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility, 2002.

Peer review trumps DMN review.

[Michael Davis-Dallas Progress]

To attack a trustee over a irrelevant issue is often used to try to discredit that person instead of focusing on the issue at hand. It's a distraction point which is also out of line. This thread is about the ethics proposal, isn't it? I'm sure BackTalk's readers can see such an attack for what it is. And as far as the "pleasant grove" comment, most of the schools in that area are represented by Nancy Bingham, not Carla Ranger.

The amount of ink used on this issue is large only because the revised policy received such a strong pushback from some trustees.

We are at a point in time where we must continue to build credibility for DISD. We are hemorrhaging needed parents and students to private and charter schools in all corners of the city. If the percentage of income for TDI was 3%, then why all the fuss over forgoing that revenue?

This issue is bigger than a financial analysis of whether or not a given company actually made money on a project. That's more of an internal business issue.

Being on City Plan Commission, I cannot vote on any issue that involves a company in which I have ownership or is within a certain radius of any property that I own or have a financial interest. In short, I cannot do business with the city; and I'm fine with that.

Why the pushback for ethics reform at a time in which the image of DISD must move in a positive direction? The City Council reformed their ethics policy with zero resistance - why can't DISD do the same?

[Louisa Meyer, Dallas ISD Parent since 1993 and Member Dallas Achieves Commission]

Okay. I veered off course because I like Jack Lowe and I still have lingering frustration with Carla Ranger as described above (plus Medrano and Ellis who joined in then.) I also believe having people with a strong business background in trustee leadership is critical to managing such a huge organization. I fear this critique of Lowe is unfair and will discourage others from serving.

Let's get back to basics: One sure control with any bidding practice is the opportunity to protest by the losing bidder. If that had happened, I believe we would know by now. We do know that Jack Lowe was in compliance with existing policies by fully disclosing the pre-existing relationship with TD and by abstaining from all votes involving TD. Another sure control is that any of the remaining 8 trustees could vote against TD each and every time it came up. Since the contracts were approved, we know a majority voted in favor. So it was only 3% of TD's business and the company would survive without district business. But why should the district reject the low bidder with the superior product? And there's yet another control in place - the electorate.

If laws and policies were followed, no other bidders filed a protest and the district received quality goods and services, why are we having this discussion?

DMN needs to sell more papers and controversy sells. http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2008/05/30/leading-off-228/

This discussion takes our eyes off the children and I suggest that's the reason for push-back. I'm in favor of policy reviews but on a designated cycle.