Why will no one stand up?

Scandal after scandal wracks the leadership of the APS.

They are not isolated and unrelated incidents. They are the direct result of a culture that enables corrupt and incompetent people to assume positions of power and influence; people who will not provide the accountability necessary to expose and eliminate the corrupt and the incompetent.

The obvious cure is to have someone come in from the outside and audit accountability in the leadership of the APS; identify the processes that allow corrupt and incompetent administrators and board members to remain unidentified, and the problem to remain un-addressed.

Board member Marty Esquivel has laid the issue of an impartial accountability audit on the table. And there it sits. And there it will sit, until the audit is done or until
Mr Esquivel no longer sits on the school board.

There are obviously enough members of the leadership of the APS who are either corrupt or incompetent; or who are willing to tolerate corruption and incompetence, that it will be all but impossibly difficult to actually begin such an audit.

There are people of power and influence who are not corrupt, not incompetent, and who are not willing to tolerate corruption and incompetence. Aren't there?

Yet where are they; and why won't they stand up to be counted on the issue of the audit?

Where are the newspapers? Why won't they tell their readers about the controversy over the audit? Have Bill Slakey of the Trib, and Charlie Moore of the Journal, thrown in with the corrupt and the incompetent? Are they deliberately protecting them? Are they cowards; afraid to stand up and confront evil face to face?

Where is KOB TV? and KOAT TV? and KRQE TV?

Where is Mayor Marty Chavez? Is he silent on the issue of an audit because he wants to protect friends in the leadership of the APS, powerful friends who will lose their jobs after an honest audit? Is he afraid that his administration will be the next to be audited?

He has been a vocal critic on the subject of the lack of accountability in the leadership of the APS. He has proposed taking over (at least part of) the school board in order to instill some measure of accountability. Yet when the solution is staring him in the face; he is like a deer in the headlights, unable to move. Is he a coward; is he corrupt? Why won't he speak up?

Where is Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce President Terri Coles who has been as vocal a critic as the Mayor? Yet there she sits saying nothing; doing nothing to bring public attention to the subject of an audit.

Where are the City Councilors? They know about the audit. They too, have been asked to raise public awareness. They too, will do nothing.

The Character Counts Leadership Council knows that the leadership of the APS has betrayed the fundamental precepts of Character Counts by renouncing it as their own standard of conduct; yet they will do nothing. They are supposedly community leaders; but when it comes down to standing up; they are nowhere to be seen.

No other member of the school board will stand up in favor of an audit; Not Delores Griego, not Mary Lee Martin, not even Gordy Rowe; and especially not Facio, Maes, or Lucero. Yet if you asked their constituents, they would support an audit overwhelmingly.

One man, one public figure, one political leader, is standing alone. Mr Marty Esquivel is it. No one has the courage or the the conviction to stand beside him in calling for an immediate impartial audit of the leadership of the APS.

And as surely as night follows day; he will be quietly handed his ass by a bunch of corrupt and incompetent administrators and board members who don't want the record of their public service illuminated by an audit.

And it will all be watched by Slakey, Moore, Chavez, Coles, City Councilors, and every other influential Albuquerquean who is either too corrupt, or too cowardly to stand beside him.


Shame on them all.