Muscogee County School Board keeps superintendent's spending authority same after contention

The Muscogee County School Board on Monday night rejected a proposal to reduce from $15,000 to $5,000 the superintendent's spending authority without board approval.

Representatives John Thomas of District 2, Mark Cantrell of District 6 and Frank Myers of District 8 were on the losing end of the 3-6 vote.

Thomas’ proposal has three parts:

• Change the spending limit from $15,000 to $5,000 per transaction, with the added requirement that no recipient can receive an amount greater than $5,000 in any 24-month period without the board’s approval.
• Each expenditure the superintendent makes without board approval shall be “prominently featured” on the Muscogee County School District’s website, including the date, purpose, amount and recipient.
• All expenditures made by the superintendent without board approval during the previous three years, including the aforementioned details, also shall be posted on the district’s website.

During last Monday’s work session, superintendent David Lewis’ administration presented the board a chart comparing MCSD with 14 other school districts, ranging in last year’s enrollment from 15,308 to 173,246. MCSD has the lowest purchasing threshold on that list, with the others ranging from $25,000 to $1 million.

Last fiscal year, Lewis said during the work session, MCSD had 429 transactions between $5,000 and $15,000. So if Thomas’ proposal were in effect, Lewis said, it would grind the purchasing process to a halt.

A week later, Thomas came armed with his own spreadsheet, based on an open records request he filed.

“This proposal would not do anything to interfere with the smooth operation of the school system,” Thomas said. “The vast majority of all expenditures that are made by the school district, they’ve already been approved by the board; the budget has been approved by the board. The ones that I’m addressing with this proposal (are) simply those expenditures that are made by the superintendent that are not part of the budget and because they’re at a certain limit do not require the board’s approval.”

According to the handout Thomas gave board members, during Lewis’ first 18 months as superintendent, from July 24, 2013, through Jan. 26, 2015, there were 95 expenditures totaling $401,165 that qualified under the policy, and “only 30 of these were over $5,000,” Thomas said. “… It’s not going to grind the system to a halt. All it does is provide greater transparency and accountability, and that’s what I think the board is here for. I’m not trying to introduce this policy to punish anyone or hold anyone up for any particular type of behavior. I’m just asking the board to take a closer look at this.”

Cantrell said he talked to the president of the Georgia School Boards Association, Doug Roper, who is chairman of the Vidalia City Board of Education, where the superintendent has a $5,000 spending limit without board approval. But that district has only six schools, roughly 10 times smaller than MCSD, Cantrell added, so “it looks like we’re in line compared to other cities in the state of Georgia by far. In fact, it looks like we’re a little bit below the line, so I wouldn’t say we’re off balance on this.”

District 4 representative Naomi Buckner said, “In a school system, all money is accounted for, but it may be assigned to the superintendent at some discretion.”

And it all is public information, Green insisted. “It’s not under lock and key,” she said. “Because there are several purchases over $5,000, that means we would have to have a board meeting each time to approve some of these purchases. It may not bring us to a grinding halt, but I can see it impeding the day-to-day function of our school system.”

Thomas contended that the public wouldn’t have to “dig” for that public information if it’s posted on the district’s website.

Myers then questioned the information the administration gave the board. He said he called the superintendent of one of the systems on the list, Butch Mosely in Dougherty County, and the spending threshold there is $20,001, not the $40,001 listed on the MCSD’s document. MCSD chief financial officer Theresa Thornton, however, said the updated version has Dougherty County listed correctly.

“Oh, this is the one for tonight,” Myers said. “So it’s kind of like the budget. You get one budget the week before, and then you get the new budget the night of the meeting.”

Myers continued, “I don’t want to think there’s something sinister going on. … It’s not a matter of whether this document is right or that document is right; it’s about making sure that this board gets the right information from day one, so we aren’t left guessing when we start doing our job, to set policy for the school district.”

Then he linked this issue to academic performance.

“It’s necessary that we start to conduct business in a different manner so we can get rid of these 10 perpetually failing schools,” Myers said. “We are being failed financially. We are being failed academically. Those things go hand in hand.

“I get that you’ve got the votes tonight to vote this down. It’s a sad day, but I do understand it. We have got to quit doing the same things and expect a different result, and I’ll leave it at that.”

But he didn’t.

“I’m not in the trust-you mode anymore,” Myers said. “… It is our job to make the superintendent tell us where the money is.”

Lewis responded, “And the CEO must have the opportunity and the flexibility to purchase those items that, from time to time, are necessary to run the organization. … We have one meeting a month, one regularly scheduled meeting in which we can actually take action, and that’s a long time to go with purchases that fall below $15,000. … I think most reasonable people understand the need to have that flexibility.”

Thomas emphasized that he understands the need for emergency spending, but the routine expenditures under the current policy appear to average 20 per year. “If that can’t be addressed at our monthly meetings,” he said, “then something’s wrong.”

Smallman and Chambers said they wouldn’t support lowering the threshold, but they do favor requiring the superintendent’s expenditures under the current policy to be posted on the district’s website. The board, however, got sidetracked before the vote.

As the discussion dragged on, Thornton noted the number of transactions under the current policy is more than what Thomas received in his open records request.

“Either we’re not getting the truth tonight,” Myers said, “or we didn’t get the truth in February. I don’t know which one it is, again, and I am sick and tired of guessing.”

Lewis clarified, according to the finance department, the past fiscal year contained 722 transactions without board approval, including 429 between $5,000 and $15,000.

“Somebody’s head ought to roll,” Myers said. “… The idea that you can rely on an open records request, clearly you can’t. We’re finding out there’s 722 expenditures, when we were told during the SPLOST campaign there were only 95, and it was put in writing. Well, that’s about a 700 percent mistake.”

Lewis tried to interject that the figures represent different time periods, but Myers told him, “I’m sorry, sir. I’m not through speaking. I have the floor. Excuse me. … I want to know why we were lied to, and we were lied to, and the public was lied to. … This is shocking to find out that there’s seven times as many transactions subject to this as we were told when the taxpayers were duped into forking over $192 million (in SPLOST projects).”

Varner suggested to check the wording of both requests “before you start throwing words like ‘shocking’ and ‘duped’ and ‘lied to’ and things like that, because I think those are inflammatory words.”

“I don’t care what we asked for,” Myers said. “This is what they represented what this list was, and that’s not true.”

This time, Lewis made his point audible over the sound system: “And that’s a different time period, sir.”

After the proposal failed, Cantrell then asked for a separate vote on the part of Thomas’ proposal that requires the superintendent’s expenditures without board approval to be posted on the school district’s website.

The board, however, first needed to unanimously agree to amend the meeting’s agenda to consider that motion, but chairman Rob Varner of District 5 was the only holdout. He explained that he also wants to see such information on the website, but he wants to wait until next month’s meeting to give the administration time to inform the board what it would take to comply with that request.

After the meeting, Smallman sent the following email to board members:

“I tried to ask this at the meeting, but was misunderstood I believe. Just to clarify tonight’s discussion about the $15,000 and below expenditures, I think we were talking about two different aspects of accounting, hence the large difference in line items. ‘Expenditure’ and ‘transaction’ seemed to be used in reference to the same thing. There is no way that the list of 95 or so ‘expenditures’ we were all looking at tonight were only paid out with one ‘transaction’. For example, Westaff USA was paid $4,583.00 for a temporary clerical in MCPEC lobby. I believe this ‘expense’ was approved and multiple ‘transactions’ were made over the course of months (a cleric (sic) position doesn’t make that much in one check). So, if this is correct, the final amount in the Superintendent has approved under $15,000 should be the same amount as the 700+ transactions. I believe your request was for expenditures, not transactions, but the two words were incorrectly used so interchangeably tonight I couldn’t tell. Frank and John, please clarify if you want to see every transaction or every expenditure. Also, please clarify what you requested in your ORA. You can’t make accusations of lying if you were not clear in the first request.”  

This story was originally published August 18, 2015 at 10:09 AM with the headline "Muscogee County School Board keeps superintendent's spending authority same after contention."