Journal walking back spending spree claim

About five weeks ago, the Journal offered a report, link, on a report on Don Moya, the embattled former APS CFO.

The report was created at the behest of the leadership of the APS.  Their intention was to use the report to discredit Moya in his whistleblower lawsuit against the district.

At the time, the Journal and APS' shared interest was in defaming Moya;

• APS to create an advantage in their cost-is-no-object legal defense against Moya's complaint, and

• the Journal's complicity or complacency regarding the cover up of an ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS.

In any event, the Journal's effort to help smear Moya has backfired.  The outrage is so intense that it is affecting voting in the Ground Hog Day school bond issues and mill levy elections.

Now, in two Journal feature stories in as many days; one on the 20th; link, and another this morning, link, the Journal is desperately trying to walk the scandal back,   Voters are now to believe; they're all sitting on upended crates in front of desks made of old doors resting on cinder blocks.

Whatever.  It's a red herring.

The real issue in the elections is whether the leadership of the APS is going to be held accountable for their ongoing abject stewardship failure.

Stewardship;

honest to God accountability to meaningful standards
of conduct and competence within their public service. 

Where is the Journal report on the ethics and standards that protect the public interests in the public schools?  Where is the Journal report on the (abject absence of any real) honest to God accountability to those ethics and to those standards?

There isn't one; there will not be one.

The Journal is up to its eyeballs in a cover up of a culture of corruption and incompetence; a widespread and deeply rooted ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS.

• If there is not an ethics, standards and accountability crisis, the democracy needs to know.

• If there is an ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS, the democracy needs to know. 

Not Walz' call.

Journal Editor in Chief Kent Walz and the Journal have made a deliberate decision to leave the democracy in the dark on the issue either way; scandal or no.

Ayn Rand has offered;
to fear to face an issue is to 
believe the worst is true.

The stewardship of the leadership of the APS has been an epic fail.  They are unaccountable to any higher standards of conduct at all, and demonstrably unaccountable even to the law.

Walz and they may think that it's in the public best interests to pass the bond issues and mill levy, despite the accountability crisis.  However noble their intentions might be ...

it really isn't their call.




photos Mark Bralley