We Were Just Wondering . . .

Whatever happened to the request by the Board of Aldermen for an audit of the School Building Commission? After all, we’ve heard many promises from members of the Board over the past few months that they will operate proactively when it comes to the fiscal health of the City. The request for the audit, one must assume, was a move in that direction. The piece was referred to the Finance Committee, where it has been sitting dormant for several weeks, yet to make an appearance on an agenda, even though the Committee has met at least three times since the beginning of the year. Evidently, Alderman Van Campen, who was a sponsor of the piece, has requested that it be kept off of the Finance Committee agenda indefinitely.

It made us wonder . . . why has an issue that just six short weeks ago was of critical importance to the financial well-being of the City been put on the back burner by the very people who requested the action in the first place? Could it be that the sponsors of this piece have come to realize that they’ve allowed themselves to be pulled into the vortex of the storm that has been raging between the Superintendent & the School Committee and the Ragucci administration?

There is evidence to indicate that the Board is not unified in the quest to audit the School Building Commission. Alderman Joe McGonagle, who was the Board liaison on the SBC, is said to have resigned from the Commission after the Board requested the audit and had the Chairperson of the SBC appear before them. Alderman McGonagle’s feeling was that the Board could obtain all the information they needed through him as the liaison and, in fact, made that statement at a Board of Aldermen meeting. It would appear that Alderman McGonagle felt that the Board was working around him – and against him – and that being the case, his participation on the SBC was pointless. This is not an unreasonable reaction. Rumor has it that Alderman Jason Marcus has now appointed himself as the liaison, but the speculation is that the Alderman has no intention of attending or participating in SBC meetings.

Back to the question . . . why has the request for the audit been all but abandoned? We don’t know – but our guess is that the sponsors of the piece came to realize that they were being used by the Superintendent as instruments of subterfuge. They threw together an agenda item with no substance and have been unable to coherently construct a case as to why they feel this audit is justified. The members of the SBC and the Mayor have indicated their willingness to cooperate with an audit, but the Board has provided no parameters within which they believe the audit should be conducted.

Given the political climate this year, it could be the proponents of the audit felt they were hedging their political bets by ingratiating themselves with the Superintendent and the School Committee, who have actively supported an audit of the SBC – ostensibly because they felt stung over the audit currently being conducted on the School Department. It would appear that they entered into this gamble without checking the odds. Unlike the School Department, the School Building Commission is not operating under a cloud of indictment. The SBC has never tried to fly under the radar in their activities or operated in a vacuum. They welcomed the addition of liaisons from the Board and the Common Council, and they’ve indicated their willingness to cooperate with an audit. The Board lost the best source of information that they had on the SBC when they insisted on going around one of their own members in their attempt, once again, to make the administration look bad. And now the sponsors of this piece are trying to get themselves out from under the mess they’ve created by acting as though it never happened. They should be professional enough to have the Finance Committee review the matter, return it to the Board without a finding and refer the matter back to sponsor. In other words, it’s time to grow up.