The front page article in The El Paso Times the other day, Firm Didn’t Alert EPISD To Audit Expenses Hike, did not ring true to me.
According to the article the Texas Education Agency (TEA) ordered the school district to have an audit of the activities involved in the cheating scandal. The accounting firm that was awarded the $587,685 contract evidently overshot their estimate by just at $200,000. The article claims that the firm did not warn the district that it would not be able to complete the audit within the original contract amount.
That just does not make sense.
The firm involved is a CPA firm. My suspicion is that once they got into the details of who did what and when, they found that they needed to dig deeper than they had estimated originally. I cannot imagine a public accounting firm proceeding on their own past the scope of a contract. They must have had someone’s permission.
If not then the firm should be branded as unworthy of performing jobs, in my opinion. They know what the rules are and I cannot imagine them not acting accordingly.
Then there is the issue of the contract itself. The contract evidently did not agree to pay any amount over the original $587,685. Why would the board authorize the additional payment? Could it be because staff recommended it? They did according to the backup documents given to the board at the meeting. You can see that here.
This is a difficult situation. The TEA ordered an audit — not part of an audit. The school board is under attack for among other things turning a blind eye to cheating. Were they supposed to stop the audit mid stream?
Then again even the village idiot would not pay a variable charge on say his cellular phone when he has a fixed price contract.
More troubling to me is the article. This issue should have been apparent to the reporter and editor.
The Times has openly taken the stance that the school board should step down or be replaced. They repeatedly write stories that cover issues that they have flogged many times before.
The Times disrespects the voters much like city council does. They support the imposition of a management board appointed by the commissioner. Elections are coming in May of this year. If the commissioner wins the legal battle and gets to install his own management board will he dissolve it after the elections? What if the newly elected trustees do not meet his personal standards? Will he keep his board in place? Don’t the voters have a right to choose the district board, even if they choose a bad one? The TEA has other sanctions that it can apply instead of disenfranchising us.
To me the Times is just making trouble here. They did this years ago with Young Insurance. They wrote negative article after article about a local businessman. He started getting pressure from his local government customers because of public opinion. No criminal or administrative charges were ever filed against him that I know of. He ended up selling his business to people that are at the heart of another local corruption scandal that the Times writes about like it had nothing to do with helping open the door to the very people who were involved in the wrongdoing. The Times even wrote a front page apology to the owner of Young Insurance years later — the damage had already been done, both to Young Insurance and to the community.
Yes I believe that the Times should have covered this recent story. It would have been nice if they wrote it for a purpose other than their own agenda.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
Cato
elpasospeak 
Maybe we need to now hire an audit firm to audit the CPA firm that is conducting the audit of a school system, which I would assume already has a CPA/audit firm. When was the last time you saw an estimate for professional services that was a number like $587,685, rather than a round number? If in fact their original quote was that precise, they certainly should not have overshot it by more than 40%. If in fact they over-ran their own estimate by 40% and also failed to tell anyone, they certainly are not qualified to be a CPA firm.
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Estimates for professional services are often not in round numbers, particularly to public firms. The proposal has to include travel estimates, misc expenses, besides the personnel fees. Those expenses are based on verifiable rates like airfare and car rental rates plus taxes. Perhaps a better entity to audit or investigate is the TEA itself, not only for giving EPISD a pass three times, but for its recent actions. They’re troubling. Oh what an open records request between Williams and local electeds like Escobar, Byrd, and Marquez might reveal. Heck, just the e mails between editor Bob Moore and these same politicos would be ” interesting.” It may be like reading William Randolph Hurst’s efforts to fuel the zoot suit riots and the hatred against young Mexican Americans during that unfortunate moment of history. Unfortunately such good government remedies are not within the financial possibilities of everyday citizens.
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The EPISD Board is now in a position that no matter what they do, the EPT will find fault. They could invent unlimited clean energy tomorrow and the Times would find something wrong. The Times fails to mention AGAIN, that the Board is essentially getting their marching orders from Dr. Castelberry and TEA. Whatever they do, TEA knows about it in advance.
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