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.
