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| Since December 22, 2004 |
No matter how many chumps count the change, the chump change stays the same
At a recent board meeting, president of the Measure E bond oversight committee John Moore complained about comments made by a union member in the East Side Teacher Association’s newsletter Panorama. The article spoke to foxes being in charge of the henhouse and the appearance of cronyism in a bond committee that formed under the previous school bond. While Moore took issue with the satirical tone of the article, the members of Team Unruly have been scratching their heads about his failure to understand why anyone would question the integrity of a bond committee in East Side dealing strictly with construction, property acquisition and land development. After all, two of the five members of the board of trustees are lobbyists by profession.
George Shirakawa’s reputation as a land developer lobbyist is common knowledge in San Jose political circles. (
). His campaign opponents send out last-ditch effort hit pieces hoping to put a dent into the slick campaign that gives this well-connected lobbyist a sizable advantage among voters (). Wouldn’t anybody raise an eyebrow when the member of a high school board of trustees running for a county board of supervisors seat receives campaign contributions from land developers and builders equivalent to those raised in a congressional race? ( ).
In 2006 we reported on the questionable use of bond funds given to The Seville Group (). That was around the same time that Shirakawa successfully lobbied for Comcast corporate lobbyist Eddie Garcia’s appointment to the ESUHSD board. As far as our research got us, we discovered The Seville Group provided “oversight” in navigating state bureaucracy relating to construction bonds, even though plenty of other people connected to the ESUHSD performed similar bureaucratic oversight functions. It’s kind of like an electrician hired to rewire a home hiring another electrician to hire some guy with wire cutters and a roll of electrical tape to do the wiring job you hired the first electrician to do. A 0 It seems the ESUHSD, on the advice of the Measure E committee, has hired a third electrician. At the June 16th board meting, the trustees voted 4-1 to pay Staubach, a real estate consulting firm (), $200,000. While the company claims it can save corporations “an average of 20%” in real estate acquisitions (), paying the Staubach company has not been without controversy. A purchase order consent item was put on hold in February while the trustees waited for a report from Staubach (). When the report finally came in June, questions arose about its necessity. What purpose did such a report serve given the level of oversight already in place? Was giving $200,000 to a real estate advice firm a wise expenditure of public funds? Given that the land purchase in question — a surplus property from a neighboring school district purportedly intended to house the various charter schools operating in the ESUHSD — was a negotiation between to friendly parties in the public sector, did the Staubach group really need to be in volved? Was the quality of the final report really worth the money? Trustee Frank Biehl voted against the motion because of questions like these, and should be commended for his courage.
Does anyone truly believe a school board with overt ties to the land development and construction industries will never use public funds to directly or indirectly profit from a real estate deal and thereby avoid a conflict of interest? That isn’t skepticism for skepticism’s sake. Given ESUHSD’s recent history, it’s an unresolved question of integrity.
OTHER ISSUES |
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| December 2006 |
| September 2006 |
| Summer 2006 |
| December 2005 - January 2006 |
| October 2005 |
| August-September 2005 |
| June-July 2005 |
| May 2005 |
| April 2005 |
| March 2005 |