Former auditor: Lee County Board broke law

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Former auditor: Board broke law

Deposition testimony claims mismanagement, rule violations

By LEE MELSEK, lmelsek@... Published by news-press.com on March 14, 2004

The Lee County School District’s former auditor has described in sworn statements how school board members ignored Florida’s open meetings laws, plotted the ousting of a superintendent and told her not to audit school construction contracts she was questioning. The allegations were made Tuesday by Martha in a deposition that now is in the hands of two lawyers. was the district’s director of internal auditing for three years until last July when the board dissolved her position in a reorganization. She is now a witness in a lawsuit filed against the school district by the district’s former safety and security director, Ernie . In 121 pages of testimony, describes private meetings that eventually led to the March 13, 2003, firing of Superintendent and the appointment of Fort Myers High School Principal Browder the same day. claims to have attended at least one illegal meeting and said she knows of witnesses to others. She also claims board members purchased cell phones to get around public records and meetings laws. School board members Elinor Scricca and Chilmonik, two of those claims met together in private meetings to discuss school board issues, denied any involvement Saturday. “I don’t know where she is getting that idea. It is absolutely not true. I was not there, if indeed they existed,’’ Scricca said. “I never met with other board members. That would be a violation of the Sunshine Law,” Chilmonik said. School board members Teuber, Jane Kuckel and Jeanne Dozier didn’t return calls for comment on Saturday. A judge in January upheld the school board’s firing of . He is considering appealing. ’s attorney, Geraghty, said he notified ’ lawyers about the Sunshine Law accusations, which, if proven, could void the school board’s firing of . “In my opinion the deposition is explosive. It talks about a pattern of criminal activity by the school board members,” Geraghty said. “It certainly calls into question their actions, if true, and also their qualifications to sit as the school board. I think a local grand jury should certainly look at this.” said Saturday that it was clear to him the three candidates had made up their minds about his job before they met in their first meeting in November. “This lays credence to the fact that this was our contention all along. When they came in with three of them making the same charges, that doesn’t happen by chance,” he said. Florida’s Sunshine Law requires elected officials to conduct public business in the open and prohibits government boards from meeting in secret to discuss issues coming before a board for a vote. Any actions arising from illegal meetings are voided. In the deposition, also said that during her three years with the district, officials were letting contractors write their own contracts on school construction, failed to get adequate warranties on the work and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money repairing sloppy construction on new and renovated schools rather than forcing the builders to do it. Despite her concerns about those things, she said, she was told her auditing department could have nothing to do with the construction projects. said she was told that by former board member Terri Wampler. Wampler couldn’t be located for comment Saturday. “The politicians wouldn’t, did not feel, the board members did not feel that internal auditors should have any role in the construction area, period,” said. Later in her deposition, told the school district’s attorney Shearman: “There were lines drawn that, no, you can’t do anything in construction. ... There were things that we were not allowed to look at or talk about, or we just, internal audit was not to be involved in those.” In one case, said, school officials failed to inspect one school’s construction for a year and, when they did, discovered a contractor had installed used air conditioners. She said she thinks it was Caloosa Middle School. “It caused problems in increased maintenance, but it also caused some of the mold issues,” she said. Used fire alarms also were installed in Lehigh Senior High School, she said. In another case, said, a roof was built incorrectly during renovations to Dunbar High School and the taxpayers, not the contractor, paid to replace it. “The construction contract was way, way over budget and the maintenance department did run the roof through maintenance,” she said. Asked by Shearman, “Was it run through there to hide the figures?” replied, “Yes.” said that cost taxpayers $200,000. At Dunbar Middle School, she said, “when we took Dunbar Middle in, it was full of rats and we had to exterminate it. None of the facilities that we took on line during my three years were properly turned over by the contractor. They all had defects of some sort, and the warranties weren’t — according to the maintenance people, maintenance went in and did the work that should have been warranty work.” said she was involved in at least one private meeting with two school board members and named people she said witnessed other such meetings between as many as four members at a time. The private meetings, she said, began among school board candidates Scricca, Chilmonik, Teuber and incumbent Dozier before the 2002 elections and continued after the election when they were subject to the Sunshine Law in October and November of 2002. Two months before the election, in August 2002, said, Teuber took her to Bacchus, a downtown Fort Myers restaurant, and, during a two-hour lunch, told her how he and candidates Chilmonik and Scricca were planning to fire and some other administrators once they were elected. The three also met with Browder at his high school office after they were elected in October and November of 2002, said. Browder also denied meeting with board members in private. “That isn’t anything close to being the truth,” he said. “I talked to several of those people individually but not in a group. I don’t remember which ones it was.” A little less than four weeks after the three were sworn in on Nov. 19, 2002, they told in a public meeting his job was in trouble. Two months later, Teuber, Scricca, Chilmonik and Dozier voted to fire and named Browder superintendent. Only board member Jane Kuckel voted against the move. also told Shearman she was present on at least one occasion when Scricca and Chilmonik met together in their school district offices to discuss ways of settling the district’s busing issues. “I was with Chilmonik, I was in his office talking about the plans for the internal audit department. Ms. Scricca came in asking questions about the busing issue, and they had a conversation about the busing scenarios and about their feelings on what needed to be done and how,” said in the deposition. “That’s not supposed to be, that’s not supposed to occur. You’re supposed to do that in public.” Scricca and Chilmonik said Saturday they couldn’t recall such a meeting. said Teuber told her he and other board members had purchased cell phones for the purpose of avoiding the public records law. “He did not want public records of his phone calls. He did not specify to who.” Shearman asked , “Did Steve Teuber tell you if other individuals began using phone calls instead of e-mails as to avoid creating public records?” “Yes, it was a group decision by the four of them,” responded. Shearman asked her who Teuber told her had the phones. “Chilmonik. I’m not sure about Scricca. Dozier. And it was being suggested to Kuckel,” she said.