No Safeguards or Oversight

This is what the school board does with money nobody's watching.

Measure M has no independent citizens' oversight committee. The superintendent or the district's finance chief writes a yearly report and hands it to the same board that controls the spending. That's the entire oversight structure. So it's worth knowing what this board did in the eight weeks before ballots went out.

July 30. The board adopted a $158.6 million rescue plan built on a labor deal that pulled roughly $97 million over three years out of the retirees' health trust and other accounts. The next day the county's fiscal adviser rescinded it, saying it would delay the crisis by only a few weeks and make long-term recovery harder. The state did not overturn that decision.

September 10. The board tried again. A new agreement drawing on the retirees' $199 million trust fund went on the consent agenda — the part of the meeting with no discussion. The packet's "Financial Considerations" section contained no dollar figure. The county and state got the agreement the night before the vote. The next day the fiscal adviser stayed it: the district hadn't disclosed the cost in public or given the county the review time state law requires.

Every dollar taken out of that trust today is a dollar the district, or its retirees, has to make up later. County officials said the July version would increase the district's long-term liabilities. That fund is the retirees' money, not the district's.

Same period. Trustees discussed raising their own stipends from $826 to $3,000 a month, with the increase triggered even by a qualified budget or state receivership. They set it aside. They didn't vote it down.

This board wants $10 million a year, with no watchdog, no strings, and no end date, and the tax money can't pay trustees or administrators, but the money it frees up can.