APS' incompetence and corruption, inevitable?

Auditors have found another APS Department lacking adequate standards and accountability. KRQE's Ian Schwartz reports that APS' Fleet Maintenance Department is "wide open for thieves", link.

This is at least the fourth audit of an administrative division of the APS, where auditors have found inadequate standards and nearly non-existent accountability. First M&O, then their Police Department, then their Finance Division, and now their Fleet Maintenance Division. According to Schwartz;

"APS does not even know how many vehicles it has in the fleet because a complete inventory has never been done."

School Board Member Paula Maes believes administrative corruption and incompetence on this scale is normal;

"Any big organization is going to have these problems."

If true, Maes has made the argument for west-siders who want to split the district.

Maes is wrong. APS has these problems because she, and they, refuse to do an independent administrative audit district wide. In particular, Maes and they, "... will never agree to any audit that individually identifies ..." corrupt or incompetent administrators or board members.

A district-wide standards and accountability audit, who's results are made public, will end "these problems" in the APS.

The story on this audit has not yet been reported.

The audit results have not been addressed on APS' "world class" website.

Most importantly, they have not been addressed in the Journal;
as a manifestation of their ongoing complicity in the effort
to cover up the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

At best it is journalistic non-feasance. At worst, perhaps criminal
journalistic malpractice.

While KRQE and Schwartz are to be applauded for their expose of the corruption in the Fleet Maintenance Division, they have yet to investigate and report upon the Caswell Report and its indictment of senior APS administrators, the ongoing denial of final hearings to hundreds of whistle blower complaints, nor about their abdication as role models of the Student Standards of Conduct.

KOAT and KOB TV similarly, are staying away from the big story; the story than brings down the corrupt and the incompetent in the leadership of the APS.

Which brings us back to APS Board Member Paula Maes.

Her fist pounds the table last in the New Mexico Broadcasters Association, where she hangs out with the broadcasters who won't broadcast the truth about the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

I blame;
Editor Kent Walz and the Journal,
News Director Sue Stephens and KOAT TV,
News Director Julie Szulczewski and KOB TV, and
News Director Iain Munro and KRQE TV.





photo Mark Bralley