City Will Take Over School Ethics Investigations

UPDATE: First posted at 11:32 a.m. then moved up with new information

• Sundquist, Clark, and Burgess

Seattle Public Schools announced today that it will hand over its ethics and whistleblower investigations to the City of Seattle’s ethics office, just weeks after a major financial scandal rocked the school district and led to former superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson getting fired.

Although Mayor McGinn had been hinting at forming a partnership with the district in the wake of the scandal by offering staff, fiscal management, and support, he had not offered too many specifics, and as of early last week the district had said that there was “nothing on the table yet.”

The Seattle School Board had said that although it welcomed the mayor’s proposal to partner with the district, it would not turn over its finances to the city. The board, however, said it was interested in borrowing from the city’s ethics policy, which was more rigorous than the district’s.

At a morning news conference, Interim Superintendent Dr. Susan Enfield and School Board President Steve Sundquist announced that the district intended to contract with the city’s ethics panel. The district and the city have already signed a memorandum of understanding (.pdf) that lays the framework for negotiating a contract by the end of April.

The school board and the Seattle City Council will have to sign off on the contract before it can be implemented.

The partnership means that ethics complaints in the Seattle school district will now be investigated by an independent body with 30 years of experience dealing with similar cases, and marks the first time a school district in Washington has handed over this responsibility to another agency.

Specifically, it will investigate complaints of violations of the district’s ethics policy and manage complaints of retaliation against whistleblowers who shed light on improper governmental actions. However, the power to prescribe penalties—as the ethics panel does in the case of ethics violations in the city—will ultimately lie with the school district. The district will also continue to have its own ethics rules, but could choose to borrow from the city’s, Barnett said.

The Seattle Ethics and Election Commission investigates allegations of improper governmental actions by whistleblowers, which means that if anyone finds a gross waste of money, violation of law, or abuse of power, they can complain to the SEEC. It also enforces the city’s ethics code to make sure there’s no conflict of interest and monitors all fundraising and lobbying efforts in connection with city campaigns.

The mayor appoints three commission members while the city council appoints the other three and those six members appoint the seventh member. The commission hires the SEEC’s executive director, currently Wayne Barnett, who was reappointed to a second term last summer. As SEEC’s executive director, Barnett receives the maximum protection from any kind of retaliation, which means he can speak out against any person or group without the fear of getting fired.

Barnett said the school district discussed the partnership with the city council, following which he got in touch with the district’s Chief Counsel and Ethics Officer Noel Treat. The two of them put together a MOU in the last two weeks. “I think the key element we bring is independence,” Barnett said. “Whistleblowers want to know that they are complaining to someone outside the district management.”

The district revamped its ethics and whistleblower policies following the scandal, making it easier for employees to complain when they witnessed any wrongdoing.

A state audit revealed that the district had wasted $1.8 million dollars on its now-defunct small business contractual program for services it never received or which benefited a private company owned by former district employee Silas Potter. The audit blamed top management for a lack of oversight, including Goodloe-Johnson former Chief Financial and Operations Officer Don Kennedy, and former Facilities Manager Fred Stephens, who is now a deputy for U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.

It found that district employees were afraid to complain to district officials for fear of retaliation and experienced a climate of intimidation, and in many cases didn’t even know that the ethics and whistleblower policy existed. The school board admitted that there was a “culture” problem in the district which needs to be fixed with open and honest dialogue and discussion.

The SEEC will also provide a training program for district employees and review the district’s ethics policy to see if it requires revisions. The district will pay the SEEC for its services. The amount is currently being negotiated, Barnett said, and would depend on how much of actual review the district would want his office to take on. The SEEC currently has an annual budget of $700,000 and employs six staff members. “At this point we are going to take on additional employees,” Barnett said.

Council Member Sally Clark, who negotiated the deal with Council Member Tim Burgess, said that the city council and the mayor’s office had been “working on parallel tracks to help the district.” “We looked at three areas—ethics, audit, and finance—and ethics ended up being the quickest thing we could help.” Clark, who chairs the council committee the SEEC reports to, said that she and Burgess, who chairs the council’s education committee, had met with Sundquist and school board Vice President Michael DeBell to talk about the partnership.

When asked if this could be considered a political victory for the mayor, who had threatened to take over the school district if it showed no improvement two years into his term, Clark said “I don’t think so.”

“It does not have a political overtone to it because the ethics panel is independent,” she said. “They are nicely standing away from the mayor and the city council. The mayor doesn’t have any control over the SEEC, I don’t have any control over the SEEC. It’s more of a practical step.”

In any case, McGinn seems to have softened his stance of taking over the district. He told reporters at the press conference that it would be wrong to characterize the whistleblower partnership as a first step by the city to gain control over the school district. “What we are talking about here are partnership opportunities,” he said.