Did David Robbins renege?

I am absolutely certain, when David Robbins was campaigning for his seat on the Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education, he made a commitment to demand an impartial standards and accountability audit of the entire leadership of the APS.

He also made a commitment to restore the role modeling clause to school board policy; the one which used to read;

"In no case shall the standards of conduct for an adult,
be lower than the standards of conduct for students."

I cannot prove that the actual words "standards and accountability audit" ever passed David Robbins lips. I cannot. It did not occur to me that I needed to record his promise to step up as a role model of the Pillars of Character Counts!.

Any argument about the precise wording of the name of the audit, is a red herring.

The issue is, whether some independent auditor will come into the leadership of the APS to examine the standards of conduct and competence for administrators and board members.

They will determine if the standards are high enough to protect the public interests.

Then they will look at accountability to those standards. Do legitimate complaints see due process?

And then the auditors will report to stakeholders, and not just to those with such an oblivious conflict of interest in demanding sole access to the audit findings.

I heard David Robbins promise to pursue that end.

And this is what he is saying now, link You will be viewing
the archived recording of the August 2nd school board meeting.
If the link doesn't work, cut and paste;
http://model.inventivetec.com/inventivex/mediaresources/checkout_clean.cfm?ContentID=29980&TransactionID=226631&Checksum=%20%20385512&RepServerID=&JumpSeconds=0&CFID=3913352&CFTOKEN=14914955

At 37:22, David Robbins' begins his current position on a honest and independent audit. By 37:58 you will have seen his real character and his real courage, manifest.

At 20:21, Michael Myers, a local business man, begins his two minute petition during the public forum. He pointed to the need for an independent audit of APS' policies and procedures. He asked if even one single board would support commissioning an audit.


At 22:08, you will hear Board Member Robert Lucero, "explain" why board members don't answer questions during public forums, or anywhere else.






School Board President, Marty Esquivel once demanded an audit, and has changed his mind as well. He changed his mind when immediately after he insisted upon an audit,






school board heavy hitter, Paula Maes said, she will never allow any audit that names the names of the corrupt and the incompetent in the leadership of the APS.









APS Policy Committee Chair David Percy is trying to find and fix all of the standards an accountability issues before there is any opportunity to expose them publicly.

Begin listening at 33:30, and you can hear his absolutely lame ass excuse for his failure to provide open and honest discussions of standards and accountability in the leadership of the APS.

I will give him consistency, however. He has steadfastly refused to hold himself honestly accountable as a role model for students, of the Student Standards of Conduct, link.


Ask them why every single one of more than 150 whistle blower complaints that are in hands of APS administrators, have yet to see the due process of their complaint, as specifically and explicitly required by school board policy.

Ask them to show you the report they are suppressing, of the independent investigation of felony criminal misconduct by APS senior administrators, link.

Yet to pick a side on the record;
Lorenzo Garcia
Delores Griego.











APS Superintendent, Winston Brooks refuses to provide candid, forthright and honest answers about the audit, his role as the senior most administrative role model of the APS Student Standards of Conduct, or about the APS Student Standards of Conduct themselves; the Pillars of Character Counts!, link.

If you ask him to point to a time, a day, and a place where he, or anyone acting in his stead, will stand still and answer legitimate questions about the public interests, he will not answer.

Stonewalling is specifically and expressly prohibited by the standards of conduct that he enforces upon the 89,000 students in the APS.

If you ask APS' Director of Communications, Rigo Chavez to paint a picture of the district's current commitment to Character Counts!, he will not answer. He will not tell you that, although Character Counts! is still the student standard according to board policy, the administration is ignoring the mandate.




APS Executive Director of Communications, Monica Armenta cannot be depended upon for a response either. Her main responsibility is to put out a world class school calendar, link, and violating the civil rights of a free press, link.



None of this would be possible without the aide and abet of the good ol' boys who run the Albuquerque Journal, in their manifest refusal to investigate and report upon the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS; even in light of an upcoming election.





photos Mark Bralley

Has APS abandoned Character Counts! ? ??

In 1994 and by unanimous resolution, the APS Board of Education adopted the Pillars of Character Counts!, link, as the APS Student Standards of Conduct.

According to the APS Student Behavior Handbook, the Pillars of Character Counts! are still the standards of conduct that the leadership of the APS establish and enforce upon students. School Board Policy, a la the Student Behavior Handbook, reads;

Students are expected to model and promote
the Pillars of Character Counts!.

It looks very much that the leadership of the APS is renouncing the Pillars of Character Counts! as the student standards of conduct, and by logical extension, as their own standards of conduct; according to their obligations as role models.

My request of APS Director of Communications, Rigo Chavez, that he gather and surrender anything that speaks to the executive and administrative commitment to teaching and enforcing Character Counts!, produced nothing. There is nothing that he can or will show to stakeholders.

And I think, nothing describes their commitment precisely.

I have just received a letter from an APS middle school teacher. We both believe that the recently documented, culture of retribution and retaliation still exists. Accordingly, I will paraphrase.

The school year began with three days of professional development. Within the training, new methods of building character in students, were presented. They were defended as "research based", although the writer found them "offbeat".

In response to the new direction, one teacher asked several times about the Character Counts! program. A teacher apparently finally asked flat out; if the new methods were supposed to replace Character Counts!.

(It was a fair question since the normal beginning of the year activities included the distribution of Character Counts! related materials, and this year did not.)

It is reported that the question was ignored by the administration.

In response to a legitimate question, the administration chose to not respond candidly, forthrightly, and honestly, according to their obligations as role models of a student standard of conduct that specifically and explicitly prohibits stonewalling in response to legitimate questions.

There is no doubt what so ever, that every aspect of teaching and learning would benefit if students and staff were accountable to the higher standard of conduct that the Pillars represent.

There would be less disruption, less bullying, less truancy,
higher test scores, and higher graduation rates. No one in
the leadership of the APS has ever, or ever will dispute even
one of those claims.

So if Character Counts! (or any higher standard of conduct),
is so great, why not implement it?

The answer is as simple as; the leadership of the APS does not want to tell the truth. They are comfortable with a standard of conduct which only prohibits lying, and enables and encourages abuse of legal loopholes, technicalities and legal weaselry.

The leadership of the APS are the respondents in a long standing grievance. They want desperately not to settle an old debt. They want desperately to not admit to ethical and criminal misconduct by APS senior administrators and board members.

There are only two reasons for the leadership of the APS to refuse to hold themselves accountable to a nationally recognized, accepted, and respected code of ethics;

1. the lack of character, and/or,
2. the lack of courage.

Characterlessness or cowardice; if there is another reason, I cannot imagine it, and nobody, and I mean nobody, in the leadership of the APS can imagine it either.

The simple truth is that they bought in without understanding what they had bought into, and now they are scrambling for a way out.

The most disturbing part is that they intend to do it secretly.

Board Policy cannot be changed in secret; it is in fact, a
violation of the lowest acceptable standard of conduct of all;
the law.




photo Mark Bralley

Upton Sinclair wrote; we should not be so worried that our children never listen to us,

as we should be worried that, they are always watching us.

There are children watching as the story unfolds about the
Governor et al, and their handling of "ethical" obligations
in the aftermath of an otherwise, almost inconsequential
boating mishap.

Children will look at behavior, weigh the consequences, and
make a decision, based in no small part, on what they see
others doing.

So will adults.

There will be some drunk boater who wanders off from
a boating accident and hides for two days, because that
is the behavior that was role modeled this weekend and
is being condoned, still.

We tell children that good character is a good thing.
We tell them to step up to the consequences of their choices.

It is among the very first formal lessons we teach them.

We illustrate the point by telling a fable about a young man
who chose to chop down a cherry tree and then stood up
for the consequences of his choice.

Then we model before them, a completely different choice.

This is problematic because, as Christian Nestell Bovee
first noted;

Example has more followers than reason.

If William Inge was right;

The proper time to influence the character of a child
is about a hundred years before he's born.

we're already a hundred years too late for this generation,
and for the next generation, and for the one after that.

The responsibility falls upon the shoulders of
good men and women who are willing to do nothing.

Edmund Burke was spot on;

All that is necessary for evil to prevail in the world,
is for good men to do nothing.

.

"Latino Education a "Catastrophe"

The Journal headline, link, rests over the latest solutions to
the problem that if you group Latino students together,
together they perform less well on Standards Based Assessment.

Why "group" them together at all?

Public education is a failure in no small part, because the
fundamental premise;

you can, and should, group children together
for what is clearly an individual experience,

is fundamentally flawed.

You can't heard cats.

You can't make a horse want to drink.

You can't group kids in five rows of six and move them in
exactly the same direction and at exactly the same speed for
twelve years.

Even if you group them according to their ethnicity.

Diane Denish continues to "lead"? ethics reform.

Diane Denish is up on Haussamen's site, link, again claiming that she is a "leader" in ethics reform.

Her 2001, stance against opening legislative conference committees, is explained away as a "change of attitude."

At the same time that her attitude was that stakeholders are not entitled to know what is happening with their power and their resources, other people were standing up and demanding the opportunity to exercise their right to watch their sausage being made.

How ever many of those people there were, they are in line
between Denish and the leader of the movement. There are
enough of them to put her so far out of first place as to make
the claim, she is in the lead, laughable.

What ever the standards of conduct will be, there will be no
accountability to them except if the NMAGO, SAO, and the
Ethics Commission are fully funded.

So far, the "leader" has not said a word about increasing funding to the enforcement arms of government funding enough to allow them to do some real good.


There is a real leader in reform;
it is Rep Janice Arnold-Jones.

She has actually proven
her competence, her character,
and her courage, by standing up
to powerful politicians who told
her to shut down her webcast, link.

She has actually walked the talk.


If anyone has the right to claim "leadership" in the issue of
transparently accountable government, it is she; and not the
latecomer, Diane Denish.




photos Mark Bralley

Did Governor Richardson "have the conn" at Elephant Butte?

NMI's Trip Jennings provided for us, a link, to "the law"
that covers what happens when you drive an 81' party boat
into some poor schlub's happiness.

Note that the link isn't actually to the law, but to an apparently
reliable third party's website; Justia.com.

I point to this because, my investigation lead me to a state of
New Mexico website, that looked to me like I was looking at
the actual law.

In one version, the operator of the boat must

"... give his name, address and identification of his vessel
in writing to any person injured and to the owner of any
property damaged in the collision, accident or other casualty."

( Note please, it doesn't say; have someone else give over your identification. It doesn't say have someone else's breath smelled, or blood shot eyeballs examined. )

The other (apparently official) version of the law, reads the
same, except that, that particular line is missing.

There is confusion over whether Brian Condit "broke the law" with respect to meeting with the accident victims.

According to any higher standard of conduct than the law,
for example, any code of "ethical" conduct, Condit failed to
hold himself personally accountable for his conduct and competence.

One witness reported that Condit didn't even hang around
long enough to ask in person, if he had hurt anybody.

So who had "the con"; who was "in command" all the while?

Maritime "law" not withstanding; When the question was asked;

"Oh shit, what do we do now?"

if you don't think all eyes turned to Bill Richardson,
you would be wrong.

And when the guy who had the con gave the order, it was;

"Let's get the fuck out of here!"

All pure conjecture of course; I wasn't there.

Among those who were there, two "on duty" state police officers; whose names are not listed on the "official" incident report, and whose names have yet to appear, and whose testimony is apparently yet to be gathered.

Unless there is some controverting law, their names should be listed as among those on board when the accident occurred.

Don't be surprised to find that the governors personal safety
somehow rides on keeping their names off the list.

In which case, their names should be written down, and then
a line is drawn through them before the record is made public.

Who cares about the off duty (?) conduct of the governor's
chief of staff?

Not me.




It's not so much about what
Condit did, as it is about what
the guy who had the con
did.




photo Mark Bralley

Linda Lopez expressed reservations about the Denish Plan

In an interview with reporter and blogger Peter St Cyr, link, Lt Gov hopeful Linda Lopez expressed reservations about the ethics reform plan that gubernatorial candidate, Lt Gov, Diane Denish has placed on the table.

The Denish Plan is not a bold plan; it doesn't even mention funding the Attorney General's Office, nor the State Auditor's Office at levels sufficient to allow them to really root out corruption and incompetence in state government, and then bring to justice, those who have betrayed our trust.

If Lopez cannot even get on board with a plan as modest as
the Denish Plan, it seems very unlikely that she will stand
behind any meaningful reform at all.

Her continued insistence that the Ethics Commission not
be given "too much" power, is particularly disturbing.

The good ol' boy limits on power for the Attorney General, the
State Auditor, and now the Ethics Commission, are drawn,
historically, at a level where the really powerful are able to
except themselves from actual, honest accountability for their
misconduct.

Lopez repeatedly points to her own cluelessness on ethics
reform, when she argues, "you can't make people ethical."
By the same logic, there should be legal code because,
you can't make people "law abiding".

It is not the intention of laws to make people "law abiding".
It is to hold them accountable when they are not.
It is not the intention of ethics reform (laws) to make people
"ethical". It is to hold them accountable when they are not.

It becomes increasingly clear that a Denish-Lopez ticket
represents more of the same old, same old;
too much talk and too little walk.




photo Mark Bralley

The APD, BCSO, and NMSP have a tactical plan for the State Fair.

The APD, BCSO, and NMSP are planning to protect the public (interests) during the State Fair. The expectation is that they will make it impossibly difficult for some hoodlum to roll one of us while we are at the state fair (without getting caught). If a hoodlum is so desperate that they are willing to get caught, there is no protection from them.

I point out that, according to their own admission, a tactical plan exists. Somewhere there exists, a pile of paperwork that represents their plan to protect us. It is a public record; we have a right to see it.

On the other hand, it is a tactical plan and, there is a necessity to keep at least parts of it secret from the hoodlums.

Somewhere in between is a compromise solution. We have the opportunity to critically review the plan, and they get to hide what they need to hide (according to due process) in order for the plan to work.

The same holds true for the tactical plan to protect the public
not at the state fair, but rather in the state government,
when we give over the control over our power and resources,
to politicians and public servants.

Where is that plan?

The most we ever see from politicians is the promise of their
commitment. Not one of them is willing to show us their plan
to end corruption and incompetence in politics and in public
service. So far, two and a half candidates have laid their plan on
the table for critical review. I assign have to the candidate who
has no plan, but is the only one who had promised to tell us
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about
his spending of our power and resources and including,
about his public service.

A plan is not rocket science.

The Goal

The goal is;

• to make it impossibly difficult to hide corruption and incompetence in state government and,
• to provide inescapable accountability for public servants, even including the most powerful.

The Enabling Objectives

• Make government completely transparent, and
• provide for principled resolution of legitimate complaints against politicians and public servants.

The Devil is in the Details

There are some obvious tools; open meetings, robust webcasting, searchable archives, ...

Here is where I get in over my head. In fairness, is in not fair
to expect me to bear the burden of designing the ultimate answer.
There really is no legitimate expectation that I ought to be able
to lay out the administrative apparatus that will offer
transparent accountability to meaningful standards of conduct
and competence, in politics, and in public servants.

There are men an women, who in exchange for a few hundred
thousand dollars, can lay out a pretty reasonable administrative
tactical plan for transparent accountability. It is within their
bailiwick, wikilink; and not mine.

All you have to concede is that it could be done, and that there
are people who can do it, and according to some due process in
which, stakeholders have confidence.

The problem is not that there are no plans.

The problem is that there is no one who will show us their plan,
and then promise that they will execute it, or be destroyed in the trying.

If a candidate has no plan to end the culture of corruption,
how can it be explained except that,
they are not really planning to end it at all?

The Journal editors are much exercised over GOP phones and Richard Berry.

The editors are quite worked up that link;

"... current mayoral candidate Rep. Richard Berry is getting phone support from the state GOP."

The editors freely admit that he has broken no law.

"As a self-employed contractor Berry doesn't have to follow the Hatch Act, but he should be aware of the strings often attached to partisan support."

Don't get me wrong, I am all for holding public servants accountable to a higher standard of conduct than the law.

I curious why the editors can see the need for Richard Berry to step up to accountability to a higher standard of conduct than the law;

but cannot see the need for the leadership of the APS to stand up to honest accountability to a higher standard of conduct than the law; and

cannot see the need for the leadership of the APS to stand up to honest accountability as role models of the Student Standards of Conduct; a higher standard of conduct than the law.

Linda Lopez; drawing "limits on power".

If you ask Lt Gov hopeful,
State Senator Linda Lopez about
creating ethics reform with some real
teeth, she will tell you, you have to be
careful not to give it "too much power".



Which begs the obvious follow up;
how much power is too much power?


Empowering an Ethics Commission, for example,
is represented on a continuum that runs from no power at all,
to "ultimate" power (whatever that might look like).

In a video that Peter St Cyr has up on What's the Word, link,
Lopez argues that we need to draw a line that keeps
the Ethics Commission from becoming "too powerful".

Being the cynic, I will suggest that Lopez would draw the line just south of powerful enough to hold her honestly accountable against her will, for ethical misconduct. She would like to be able to dodge the bullet if she needs too. She would have accountability less powerful than her ability to escape it.

I would argue that the line needs to be drawn exactly at; powerful enough to hold the most powerful public servant accountable for their misconduct, even against their will.

If Linda Lopez has another idea about where the line should be drawn, she should drawn it, and subject her decision to critical review. She needs to tell us what "too powerful" looks like, when the subject is ending the culture of corruption and incompetence in state government.

Otherwise, it is entirely fair to assume that her intention is to never empower any one or any process with more power to hold her accountable than, she has power to self-except herself from the consequences of her misconduct.




photo Mark Bralley

The appearance of impropriety.

Governor Richardson claims he was sound asleep at 5:30 in the afternoon, three minutes before he planned to be in his vehicle and high tailing it away from the cruise on Elephant Butte Lake. He claims wasn't there, when his Chief of Staff plowed into other boats that were tied up at the marina.

If anyone thought that Brian Condit was under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the crash, their concern could have been addressed, had the Governor and his Chief of Staff decided to hang around and deal with the consequences of the calamity that they had caused. That was not their choice however, and now no one will ever know for sure if the man at the wheel was BUI.

According to Trip Jennings' piece on NMI, link, one of the unlucky boat owners in the target rich environment of the marina on a Labor Day weekend, Carl Shaw, saw the events unfurl from his boat.

“It was like they tucked their heads and said see ya,”
“That’s the question, why?“The officers were there.
So why weren’t they there,”
“Typically when you have an accident you stick around.
You don’t leave the scene,” Shaw said.

Then why did they run away?

Interestingly, conveniently, fleeing the scene of a boat wreck, even before the debris has finished raining down from the sky, is "perfectly legal". "Legal" of course is a far different thing than the "right thing" to do. According to Shaw, they didn't even hang around long enough to see if they had hurt anybody.

And the "I didn't do it, no one saw me do it, you can't prove I did it" Governor dodges yet another bullet.

They need to explain why they ran away. Again, according to
Jennings' very comprehensive report;

Mr. Condit stated that he had not been drinking alcohol
and was not under the influence of alcohol prior to or
during operation” of the “Bloody Mary.”

All we have to believe here is that these folks spent a day on the lake in a party boat called the Bloody Mary, and nobody had anything to drink. It bears noting, that he carefully(?) stated that he was not under the influence of "alcohol", and not that he wasn't intoxicated at all.

The Journal coverage on the debacle, link, makes no mention of the Richardson party leaving without finding out if anyone was hurt. It was pointed out twice in the article; that Richardson "was not involved". Well yeah, he was! And so were two State Police Officers who were on board and who are not scheduled to give sworn testimony, or write any reports regarding Condit's sobriety and, his representation that he had not taken even one drink while spending the day on the 81 foot long floating bar.

As far as I can tell, the two State Police Officers names do not appear on the list of passengers on the boat when it came to rest in the back of the Floating Irish.

Can we not at least call into question the man' s judgment?

Can he not be held accountable
for the knee jerk,
"let's get the hell out of here"
response in time of crisis?

Can he not be held accountable
for yielding to that impulse?

... for two days!






photo Mark Bralley

Chavez campaign makes a mountain out of a mole hill.

The mountain began when Mayor Marty Chavez claimed to be River City's most "successful" mayor. Blogger Monahan took issue. Then the Mayor's people got in touch with Monahan, and told him that the Mayor actually said most "accessible".

Frankly, for the forum dodging Mayor, to claim to be the most "accessible" mayor in history is a bigger stretch by far than his claim to be the most "successful".

Never mind that "accessible" and "forum dodging" don't click; Monahan, who was once a campaign communications director for a Chavez political campaign, claimed to have re-listened several times and concluded that the Mayor had said "accessible". If you click on Peter St Cyr's, What's the word, link, you will find that there really is no room for doubt; Chavez clearly said "successful".

Apparently, the spot has been taken down from Chavez' website, which would be consistent with an effort to close the barn door long after the cow has left the barn.

So now, the ego-maniacal, and maybe even accidental off script use of the word "successful", a molehill by any reasonable standard, has morphed into what appears to be an outright and deliberate lie; a "mountain" by any reasonable standard. And what a stupid thing to be caught lying about.

More damage is heaped upon Monahan for his retraction. He claims;

The mayor's campaign checked the script and it says "accessible" and on a closer listen we agree. Our ears--obviously damaged by decades of high volume radio headsets--misheard the mayor.

Damaged ears or no; either he deliberately joined in the "cover up", or he really can't hear. Either way he has cast a shadow on his own credibility.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, ...!




photo Mark Bralley

Weh has no plan to end the culture of corruption.

I don't know that for a fact.

But if he has a plan, why does it need to be kept secret?

Are we supposed to believe that this is a tactical necessity because he is sneaking up on the good ol' boys?

Gubernatorial candidate Colonel Allen Weh says; he wants to
"clean up" Santa Fe.

If he has an objective, surely he has a plan to get there.






Surely he has a battle plan with a little more detail than,
beating the shit out of everyone with a baseball bat.

Diane Denish has a plan on the table. It needs some work,
but at least it is there. Greg Solano also put his plan on the
table for critical review. In fact, he was the first; Denish followed on a few days later with the plan that she had been working on "for months".

Why does this veteran combat leader, not have a plan?

Everyone that has ever been elected governor, planned
to "clean up" Santa Fe. None of their plans worked.

None of their plans were laid out for critical review.

I mean seriously, if Bill Richardson had showed us his
plan to hire hundreds of his cronies, and take ridiculously
large contributions in exchange for taxpayer milking contracts,

he might not have been elected in opposition to some more
workable plan to "clean up" Santa Fe.

Someone tell me please, why it is not reasonable of us to expect candidates for election to offer to critical review, their plan to actually do what ever it is that the are promising to do?

Planning to fix everything that is wrong with public education,
is far different from having an actual plan to fix everything that is wrong with public education. Or any other issue.

What ever their plan is, to do what ever it is that they are promising to do, must have two elements. They are fundamental. They are; inescapable accountability and unequivocal standards.

The standards are the easy part. The hard part is getting a powerful person to hold them self honestly accountable to those standards; by a system over which they have no undue influence, and powerful enough to hold them accountable, even against their will.

The hard part is getting a powerful person to expose them self to absolute transparency in their public service.

If a candidate for election, does not show us their plan for inescapable accountability to unequivocal standards of conduct and competence in public service,

we should deny them our vote. And then start looking for someone who will.

No one has a plan up that any body else has stood up for.

When Senator Linda Lopez hopped
on board the Denish train,
she made no endorsement of Denish's
ethics reform plan. She didn't even mention it.

It is because ethics reform,
is not really her priority, link.






If these people are such great consensus makers, why can't they get even one other heavy hitter to climb aboard with ending the culture of corruption and incompetence in state government, at once and for all?




photos Mark Bralley

David Robbins betrays the trust placed in him, again.

David Robbins is the Chairman of the APS Audit Committee. According to board policy, the audit committee provides an important check and balance on the administration of APS' whistleblower program.

The Audit Committee is required, according to school board policy, to provide "review and approval" of every single whistleblower complaint.

His committee has not reviewed nor approved even one complaint.

More that 150 people who trusted the board to protect their interests, have been betrayed.

The audit committee will meet tomorrow, the first time since
May 27, 2009, and "review and approval of whistleblower
complaints" is not on the agenda.

When asked about the apparent, blatant failure to follow his own policy, the only response that Robbins is willing to make is to assert that, "no federal laws have been broken" when the board reneged on its pledge to whistleblowers in deciding to not respect clear and unequivocal school board policy.

Never mind that the standards of conduct that he enforces
upon students requires them, at the threat of forfeit of their
very character, to do

"... more than the law requires and less than
the law allows."

He models before students, nothing but his blatant hypocrisy.




photo Mark Bralley

Rigo Chavez tells the truth. ...not.

I stood face to face with Rigo Chavez in a hallway outside the DeLayo-Martin room. I told him that I wanted him to gather together, the truth about the administrative commitment to Character Counts!. I would like to know if they are doing anything at all about implementing their commitment to Character Counts! except telling students that their character depends on their "modeling and promoting the Pillars of Character Counts!".


He told me to get him something in writing.

That's always a bad sign, because face to face looking in each others' eyes, I know that he knew what I wanted.

But since I had to write to him, I was forced to provide the words that APS/Modrall can twist into meaninglessness through their legal weaselry, in order to hide the truth; if only for thirty more days.

By good ol' boy logic, any day that you don't lose, you win.

Never the less, I did email him and guess what? nothing in my mailbox.

Most times when I email him, he claims that the email must have been misdirected and somehow did not get to him.

When I email him, I request a return receipt (Chavez would have to click on a box to indicate that he had opened the email). He steadfastly refuses to honor even that request. I suppose he is under orders to not create any paper trail;

• "because they can cause problems later", link.
• because you just don't know "how someone might want
  to use the truth". APS Superintendent, Peter Horoscak. link

I asked him a number of times why he would not honor that simple request and finally, he indicated that that's just not the way he rolls.

Chavez is APS' Director of Communications. He probably pulls down 70 or 80K to communicate. He also claims to be APS' Custodian of Public Records. I say "claims" because according to school board policy, the Custodian of Public Records is in the Student Service Center. I have asked Chavez two times, in writing, to clear up the confusion. He is yet to answer that question either.

There are two possibilities, I think. One is that board policy is wrong. In which case, all he has to do is to say so. The other possibility is that, he is pretending to be the Custodian of Public Records. If so, he would be breaking the law.

It is violates the law just like Darren White was violating the law when he pretended that he was the Custodian of Public Records for the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office, link.







APS Custodian of Public Records(?) Rigo Chavez is hiding the truth about the fact that the leadership of the APS has no intention of ever being held honestly accountable to any standard of conduct which requires them to actually tell the truth.

And when I write that there is corruption in the leadership of the APS, this is exactly what I am talking about.

An honest standards and accountability would reveal the truth about standards and accountability in the leadership of the APS. They won't tell the truth about the audit either.

Most responsible?

School Board President
Marty Esquivel;

the senior most rolemodel
of all, of the APS
Student Standards of
Conduct, the Pillars of
Character Counts!.


photos Mark Bralley

Digging deeper into the Journal report on APS crime stats.

I am out of town, and trying to figure out friends' and relatives' individual computers, browsers, etc. makes it a little less than convenient to post, AND I am on "vacation", but never the less, I would like to build on the Journal story a little before it is really, really old news.

You can read the whole story here, link.

There is a lot to comment on, so I will simply highlight the article itself, followed by my reactions.

How safe are Albuquerque Public Schools? The answer to that is anyone's guess, ..."

That premise is unacceptable. Although the words are the reporter's, stakeholders really are limited to what they can guess, when it comes to safety in schools. In my experience, APS goes out of its way to not gather any statistics on safety and crime in schools.

On a related side note, everytime that APS crime statistics have come up, in litigation or where ever, they are up. APS' response is normally; "The numbers are up, only because we are getting better at collecting the data."

There really is no growth curve on collecting data. If they are getting any better at it at all, it is because they are being dragged kicking and screaming into actually collecting the data at all.

APS stopped collecting the data "...when the state stopped requiring the information from New Mexico school districts.

That "the state no longer requires it", is not reason enough to stop collecting the data, analyzing the data, and addressing the data by implementing whatever response we can to reverse the growing trend. If the state, for some indefensible reason, decided not to ask for test scores or drop out rates, would we stop collecting them as well. Or, if the state jumped off a bridge, would APS jump off too?

Sidebar. I apologize for the digression, but I simply must share a war story with you. I was talking to a student who had just done something inappropriate, I can't recall what, and I had asked him, if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you, too? He answered; "Probably, ... because all of my friends would be dead."

"APS Police Chief Bill Reid said ... the data are "not very scientific.""

Why not? Why cannot data this important, be gathered "scientifically"? After all, we pay a million dollars a year for a department called Research, Development and Accountability, whose primary function is data gathering and crunching.

Two of the schools, Manzano and La Cueva, use city police and don't share their data with APS police, Reid said.

Why in the world not?

"He said he doesn't have enough money to hire an analyst or buy a software package that would help catalog the district's crime stats, which were compiled by APS Research, Development and Accountability when the data were required by the state."

If there is so much crime in the APS, that it requires a full time analist, above and beyond RDA's contribution, just to deal with the numbers, shouldn't we be paying a little more attention to the problem?

Several school board members said they would like APS to start compiling the crime data again.

Duh!

Until 2001, the state compiled an annual Violence and Vandalism report that documented crime reports by district. It was replaced by the Safe Schools report, which reported on crime statewide. That report has not been issued since 2007 because of inconsistent reporting by the districts.

Why does the State Department of Education permit school districts to report inconsistently? Why are there not investigations and penalties for districts that are not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about crime in public schools?

Federal regulations under the Gun-Free Schools Act now require states to report only "persistently dangerous schools," which New Mexico does not have, ..."

Say what? Imagine the most dangerous school in the entire state; the one where good kids are most afraid to go to school everyday, the one where learning is truly disrupted by relentless fear. And now tell me that New Mexico does not have even one "persistently dangerous" school. What is necessary to qualify, daily ax murders?

Even when APS was releasing its annual crime report, the data were often not reliable because some schools were better about reporting than others. (emphasis added)

What the auditors from the Council of the Great City Schools wrote was, there are administrators who routinely falsifiy data in order to make their schools look good.I sat in a meeting where, later an APS senior administrator, then Principal, Tom Savage said, "If I told the truth about what was going on in my school (Albuquerque High School) the realtors in my neighborhood would have my neck!"

"I was getting the impression some schools weren't reporting to make themselves look a little better," said APS board president Marty Esquivel...

And did what about it? exactly.

While APS has its own police force, school principals can opt instead to use the city police or county sheriff's department as their law enforcement, which means inconsistency in what crime is reported to the district, spokesman Rigo Chavez said.

If APS schools are able to make use of the APD, and the BCSO, why are we paying millions of dollars for the APS to have a publicly funded, private police force, in the first place?

Also, some schools are better about reporting student suspensions than others.

Why are principals who decide not to report suspensions, or any other relevant data, not fired on the spot?

"Nonetheless, Esquivel believes the information is important and that the district should be compiling it."

And still the data would not be shared with stakeholders, because if you ask Marty Equivel if he will tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about what he has found out, he will not.

And if you ask him why he is not accountable as a role model of the APS Student Standards of Conduct, a standard of conduct that would require him to tell the truth, he will not answer.

If you ask him to point to a time, a day, and a place where he will sit and answer legitimate questions about the public interests in the public schools; candidly, forthrightly and honestly, he will not.

If you ask him to begin an open and honest discussion of standards and accountability in the leadership of the APS, he will not.

And, why would any of this crap surprise anyone?



photo Mark Bralley

APS "hiding" crime reports.

Our Journal reports this morning that the APS is no longer issuing crime reports. The criminal activity in your school system is none of your business.

It is important to view this latest development in context.

If you go to a school board meeting, stand up at the public forum and ask the leadership of the APS to point to a time, a day, and place where they will sit still and answer legitimate questions about the public interests, their response means, no.

If you ask them to review and approve of whistle blower complaints, the due process required by school board policy, they will not.

More than 150 people who trusted the Board of Education and their promise to provide due process, have been cheated of that due process; because the leadership of the APS doesn't want to tell the truth about their whistle blower protection plan, or about administrative and executive role modeling of the APS Student Standards of Conduct.

If you ask them to tell the truth about standards and accountability in the leadership of the APS, by means of an impartial standards and accountability audit, they will not.

No matter how you frame the question, they will not tell the truth.

The most important piece of the context in which the current scandal sits, is that the APS Police Department and the leadership of the APS, is suppressing evidence of felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS administrators. Although then superintendent Beth Everitt promised stakeholders that the results of their investigation of themselves, would be handed over to the District Attorney, it has not been. Even though statutes of limitation on felony criminal misconduct have long since expired.

During the audit of that scandal, the Council of Great City Schools wrote that the leadership of the APS routinely ignored audit findings. One of the findings of that audit was that APS administrators routinely falsified crime statistics at their schools in order to avoid damage to their schools image.

The Journal relayed that finding to readers by writing; ... data was unreliable because some schools were "better at reporting" than others.

At one time I sat with a team negotiating the teacher contract. I was arguing in favor of contract language that would require the district to tell teachers, and by logical extension all stakeholders, the truth about crime in their school.

APS senior administrator Tom Savage was on the district's team. He was then the principal at Albuquerque High School. He said; "If I told the truth about what is going on in my school, the realtors in my neighborhood would have my neck". Savage was one of the APS senior administrators involved in felony criminal misconduct in the APS Police Department.

A few days later, I found myself in a one on one meeting with then superintendent and West Point graduate, Peter Horoscak. He would not agree that teachers, and by logical extension all stakeholders, had a right to know about crime statistics (among other things) in their schools. Then he offered,

"You can't just tell the truth, you never know how someone might try to use it."

Have you had enough yet? Or are you still going to trust them with another $650M, next February?

Watch APS Board meeting live.

There is a regular meeting of the APS BOE today at 5pm.
If you would like to watch it, click on this link.

The public forum starts after they finish congratulating
themselves; usually around 5:30.

Among those being honored tonight, the senior administrator
most immediately responsible for the TIG scandal, link;
Dr. Tom Ryan, APS Chief Information Officer.
He will be receiving the Distinguished Service Award from
the Council of Great City Schools.

Unclear how an organization that has done a number of APS
administrative audits is giving an award to someone who
they really should be auditing instead of applauding.

If you want to speak at the forum, you have to sign in before
the meeting begins at 5pm.

The priorities of the press

An awful lot of bloggers have written in the last day or two
about Greg Solano's misstep.

I can't remember the last
time, that anyone of them
wrote about the fact that
one of the most powerful
politicos in Santa Fe,
Speaker of the House
Ben Lujan is still getting a
highway interchange built
next to his land.



It is a shame that no matter how corrupt the act,
all they have to do is to survive one news cycle,
and then they're home free.

It not that the "Solano thing" should not have been reported;
rather that, the "Lujan thing" is not being reported.




photo Mark Bralley

Richardson's budget ignores corruption and graft.

Governor Bill Richardson rolled out his talking points for
dealing with the budget deficit.

Nowhere in his proposal, can I find any mention of saving
money by ending corruption and incompetence in state
government.

State Auditor Hector Balderas has said that if his Office
were funded according to its needs, he could forensically audit
corruption and graft out of existence; conceivably saving
hundreds of millions of tax dollars.

So where, in an already strapped budget, could money be found
to fully fund the SAO and the AGO? In can be found in the reserve fund.

Richardson has proposed leaving the rainy day fund at 8%
of the annual budget; .08 X $6B = $480M. The reserve fund
has been as large as 10% and as little as 5%. (Monahan).

Clearly, one puts oneself at risk by lowering the amount of
money in the reserve fund. Perhaps the risk of lowering the
fund from 8% to 7% would be justified if the benefits were
great enough.

The benefits are a squeaky clean government where it is
impossibly difficult to hide public corruption and incompetence.

There would be huge savings, and a demonstrably more
efficient and effective government. The loan from the reserve
fund could be paid back with interest.

It seems like a risk worth taking.

So why is the prospect not even on the table? Why hasn't
Richardson brought it up? Why hasn't Lt Gov Denish?

Consider the recent scandal in the Jemez Mountain School District, it was reported to State Auditor Balderas that there was a likelihood of current embezzlement. By the time he finished his audit, he had uncovered embezzlement ten years past. The point is, once you start looking, there's no telling where it will stop.

This flies in the face of good ol' boy accountability which says, if don't get caught immediately, the corruption falls under "let's let bygones be bygones" theory of accountability, and is no longer subject to investigation or prosecution.

Once the Auditor's Office gets rolling, who knows what they will uncover.

Being a cynic, it is my belief that, that is the reason why none of the good ol' boys are talking about getting the Auditor's and Attorney General's Offices running at full steam is;

they don't want anybody poking their noses into their bygones.




photo Mark Bralley

Deeply disappointed, I was

The first statewide candidate to lay a plan on the table to end
the culture of corruption in Santa Fe; Sheriff Greg Solano
stepped in a political cow pie yesterday. He used his office to
promote the candidacy of his under sheriff.
SF Reeper, link, Haussamen, link, perhaps others I missed.

Although in the overall scheme of things, this was no a huge
gaff, one finds themselves at the top of a very slippery slope
when they begin talking about big and small ethical lapses.

That said, I would argue, there is a difference between careless
and deliberate lapses. Not that careless lapses are completely
excused.

To his credit, Solano stepped up and took the heat.
He took his swats.

It is also worth pointing out that, if the
Ethics Commission that the Sheriff
is proposing, actually existed, a complaint
over this issue could be filed there,
if anyone actually thought it needed to be
pushed that hard, and he would be held
accountable under the law, under a system
over which he would have no undue influence.

And also, that not one of his opponents has a reform plan as comprehensive as Solano's, nor one up on the internet, subject to critical review.




photo Mark Bralley

School Board Meeting agenda still not posted.

There is a APS School Board meeting tomorrow.
The agenda for that meeting is not yet posted on the internet.

It should be and it isn't.

It has nothing to do with their dysfunctional website.

... just sayin

Update; by 4:12 the agenda was up. The minutes that are
going to be approved, are not posted, as required.

Let's put less emphasis on the less important.

Candidates for elected office should not be held accountable for the (alleged) sins of their parties or their predecessors.


Diane Denish is not responsible for the sins of any other Democrat. She is not even responsible for Bill Richardson's.





Janice Arnold-Jones is not responsible for George Bush's sins, nor for Allen Weh's, nor Darren White's, of nor any the other of the good ol' boys that apparently run the NMGOP.

She is not responsible for anything Rush Limbaugh says, nor Sean Hannity, nor Michael Savage. She is not accountable for any misconduct at public health reform town hall meetings.

Candidates are necessarily attached to political parties.
But most fundamentally they are individual human beings,
with different priorities, different skill sets, and different intentions.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could elevate the level of the discourse from the unimportant to the really important?

It seems to me that, if you have a decent plan, you can sell the
plan by explaining the plan; period.

We need to start holding candidates accountable for every effort they make to divert the discussion from the important to the unimportant, simply to hide the inadequacy of their plans, their skill sets, and/or their intentions.

By holding ourselves accountable to the same standard.




photos Mark Bralley

The burden is on Denish's back.

The Office of the State Auditor needs to be funded at a level
that will enable the forensic auditing that will end the stealing
of tax dollars.


Governor Bill Richardson
has turned a deaf ear to the
problem. His body may
still be in Santa Fe, but his
heart and his interests are
long gone; off on some cushy
assignment in some far off
corner of the world.



The burden is on the
Lt Gov, Diane Denish.

But she won't shoulder it.

She has had more than enough
opportunity, and has said nothing.

It has been well over a month
since she rolled out her plan
to end the culture of corruption.

The Denish Plan didn't include funding the State Auditor's Office when it was rolled out in July, and it still doesn't.

Whatever else is done in the upcoming legislative special session, the Office of the State Auditor, and the Office of the Attorney General could be given the tools they need to protect the public interests.

Bill Richardson won't even talk about it.
Apparently, neither will Diane Denish.
And, you have to wonder why.

What do they need to hide?




photo Mark Bralley

Jemez Mountain Schools had a "clean" audit.

In the Journal this morning, link, we read that three months
before it was revealed that millions of dollars had been
embezzled from the Jemez Mountain School District, an
independent auditor had given the school district a clean audit;
no findings of any irregularities.

The embezzlement averaged $500K a year, approximately
one dollar of every eight, of the district's annual budget.

According to the Journal report, a partner in the firm that
did the audit said;

"...embezzlement would not typically be discovered in the
course of an independent annual audit."

I have an idea; the next time taxpayers pay for an independent audit, lets add embezzlement to the list of the things that auditors look for!

In the Journal article we find;

"Balderas said he's not surprised the independent audit
failed to detect alleged embezzlement.

"In the short two years that I've been state auditor,
I've concluded that the financial auditing system we
have in place is really inadequate to provide the type of
protections and assurances that citizens deserve," he said.

Balderas said hundreds of millions of dollars in state funds
are at risk because the state auditing function is
massively underfunded. He said while his office is
responsible for overseeing 600 to 700 state and local
government entities, it has only about a dozen in-house
auditors."

At the risk of endlessly repeating myself, State Auditor Balderas says he can find all of the embezzlement that independent auditors apparently cannot find, if only given the necessary resources.

Fund the Balderas Plan to forensically audit the culture of corruption out of existence.
It seems like another no brainer.


Sheriff Greg Solano, a candidate for Lt Governor, is still the only candidate who has promised to fund the Auditor and Attorney Generals Offices at the level they need to make it impossibly difficult to hide corruption and escape accountability.




photos Mark Bralley