APS Accountability Audit; Equal Parts Sham and Shame

Taxpayers pony up a billion dollars a year to the APS.

They worry whether their tax dollars are being wasted.

As reassurance; the leadership of the APS offers the assurance of the personal trustworthiness of administrators and board members;

…and no real system of honest accountability to any meaningful standard of conduct for any of them.

Assurances of trustworthiness run a far distant second to real accountability when it comes to protecting the public interests, and insuring the integrity of public servants within their public service.

What ever else is true; it is true that honest and transparent accountability to a meaningful standard of conduct is fatal to corruption and incompetence in public service.

And it is true that, there is no reason to eschew honest and transparent accountability except to protect the corrupt and the incompetent from the consequences of their corruption and incompetence.

There really is no other reason. It is not too expensive; it is not unwarranted; it is not impossible.

The only downside is inescapable lethality for the corrupt and incompetent.

Honest accountability is fatal , only, to the self interests of the corrupt and the incompetent.

Yearly audits of the administration of the public interests in every corner of public service are not now customary, because public servants who do not want to be audited, do not allow audits.

APS Board Member Marty Esquivel has placed upon the table, for the first time in the more than one hundred year history of the APS, an impartial audit of the administration of the APS.

There are those in the leadership of the APS who will seek to limit the scope of the audit, only because their own self interests are served by avoiding an audit of their conduct and competence.

They would have an administrative audit that does not audit administrators; they would have no examination of the conduct and competence of administrators.

The prospect of an honest and impartial audit of the administration of the APS is being threatened.

There is only one reason to oppose an audit that will expose corruption and incompetence; and that is to protect the interests of the corrupt and the incompetent.

An audit is threat to no one who is not damned by the record of their conduct and competence as public servants.

Honest and competent public servants have everything to gain from any audit, any time.

An audit of procedures, and not of personnel; is not a step in the right direction.

It is an unequivocal “win” for those in the APS who do not want to be held accountable for their conduct and competence;

who have proved by their record that they are unworthy of trust; and that the public interests are not safe under their administration.

Whether or not the upcoming audit is a transparent, full scale, impartial forensic audit of the leadership of the APS, depends on who is more powerful;

those who would have the leadership of the APS held accountable to a meaningful standard of conduct, under a system over which they have no control; and even against their will;

or; those who would have the leadership of the APS continue the unethical and often illegal self-exception to honest accountability to any standard of conduct at all.


Mayor Marty Chavez could make a difference by showing up at the public forum tonight, and demanding a full scale impartial forensic audit of the administration of the public interests in the public schools.

Or he can side with those who would except themselves from accountability for their conduct and competence;


...by choosing not to stand to be counted
in defense of his purported belief that character counts.