Journal endorses Paula Maes

The Journal has endorsed Paula Maes for APS School
Board District 5.

I will begin by pointing out that the Journal has endorsed
school board candidates without discussing student discipline,
administrative role modeling, or the need for an
immediate independent audit.

Worse still, is their endorsement of Paula Maes.

Paula Maes service on the board is already under a cloud;
her husband's law firm is making so much money off of
taxpayers and the APS, that they won't even respond to
requests for the public records of how much they have been paid, and for doing what, exactly.

The Journal editors have no problem apparently,
with the fact that when there was a discussion of a full scale
standards and accountability audit of the leadership of the APS,
at a Policy Committee Meeting on August 16, 2007,

Paula Maes said that she would never allow any audit
that would individually identify incompetent and/or corrupt
APS administrators and board members.*

And so far, she has kept her word.

There have been two audits of the APS Finance Division
since she declared protection for individual incompetence and
corruption. Neither, although reporting significant problems,
has mentioned the name of a single senior administrator who
was responsible for the problems.

We do not know for example, who should be held accountable
for the fact that the APS Finance Division was spending a
billion tax dollars a year;

• without adequate financially sound policies, and
• without adequate accountability, and
• without adequate record keeping.

And since we don't know who that good ol' boy was,
we don't know whether the good ol' boy that supervised him
was held accountable for their failure, or the person above
them for theirs.

And so on, right up to the highest levels of the administration
of the APS, and finally to the school board.

The Albuquerque Journal editors have really fumbled the
ball on this one.


*I have this on videotape and I am struggling trying to find
a way to put it online. When I figure it out, you will be able
to watch and hear her say exactly what I have been alleging
all along, that she said. The video I have, is of relatively poor
quality, because that is the kind of records that APS makes
and then surrenders under NMIPRA requests.

But it is legible and you will see the truth.

You just will never hear it from the Journal editors.


I have sent a letter to the Journal editors offering them an
opportunity to view the recording and then modify their
endorsement. I expect the letter to be ignored.




photo Mark Bralley