The Journal reported this morning that Luis Valentino has landed on his feet; for a few months at least, link. In the report, it was mentioned tangentially, that a secret settlement had been reached with a player in Valentino's local scandal. I posted a comment on his settlement;
"Terms are confidential for six months."
The leadership of the APS is in hope that in six months’ time, people will have forgotten what happened here.
What happened here is; school board members and senior administrators have spent untold hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on yet another cost-is-no-object legal defense for APS insiders.
According to whoever wrote the headline, Valentino has landed a "lucrative gig in Portland". It is a shame (literally) that the Journal will not investigate and report upon the very “lucrative gigs” right here in River City; being a lawyer defending APS insiders; spending without limit or oversight from a large bore pipeline to the operational fund.
The APS school board has access to the operational fund. The operational fund is supposed to be spent educating nearly 90K of this city's sons and daughters. Operational dollars could, should and would be spent on education were they not being squandered instead on litigation and legal weaselry.
The board underwrites the cost-is-no-object defenses in secret from stake and interest holders. They steadfastly refuse to record their meetings in secret. They spend without oversight (subordinate oversight is not oversight; it is an oxymoron) and without (practical) limit.
“Terms are confidential for six months."
Then they keep the settlement secret from the taxpayers who thought their tax dollars were being spent on teachers and the others who actually work with children.
The Journal could have the record right now if they wanted it. APS tried to keep my settlement terms secret from the people who paid for the "most expensive lawsuit of its type" in the history of the United States. We prevailed, link, and the Journal had no choice but to publish the details (albeit in a manner that steered accountability and the leadership of the APS in different directions).
Nor will the Journal investigate and report in six months’ time, how the leadership of the APS is squandering trust and treasure in order to buy admissions of "no guilt" in unjustifiably expense legal settlements in their effort to escape any real consequences for their public corruption and incompetence.
It runs far deeper than complacency about the scandal and the cover up in APS; they are complicit. Kent Walz and the Journal are part and parcel of a cover up of an ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership.
Else, they would prove otherwise. They would investigate and report upon stewardship and the leadership of the APS. Are the public trust and treasure being squandered or are they being well spent?
Either truth is newsworthy.
No truth is a cover up.
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