5 responses to “Audit Used to be a Dirty Word”

1. holyroller

   January 19, 2011

   Pouring Millions/Billions of dollars into the education system to support the multitude of children of illegal immigrants is draining the State dry.
   Why is the truth so hard to come out of the mouths of our elected representitives?
   I bet dollars to donuts if you asked any state of CA represenitive this question in a public forum you would not get an answer.
   Even an Audit would be deemed political.
   Numbers do not lie.

2. Janet C. Campbell, Architect

   January 10, 2013

   Hello Joe,
   I was the one that wrote the letter the SF Examiner printed. They also did one with the same subject from myself previously, and called the State Auditor to check it out. It’s true. Call the BSA in Sacramento – they did the only thing they were allowed to do in my whistleblowing case at UCSF – I caught onto massive kickbacks for illegally sole-sourced roofing and other contracts. The FBI “Strongly recommended prosecutions” of my bosses but of course nothing got done. The SAG was in the roofer’s union and as we later discovered, it’s a massive scam plaguing schools in California (and the US and Canada and beyond – in roofing). So nothing got done there…and then the State Auditor, clued in for the second time with information downloaded on me from over 200 people in the roofing industry calling out of the blue (and the press) for about 9 months after it went around like wildfire in the industry that I had reported the problem to the FBI- first architect to ever do so – scary!)…but they were hampered by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, who refused them access to the rest of over 20 years’ worth of bid specs badly written to one company (in at your schools, too!) on over 110 buildings and all those hospitals at UCSF… After my case went nowhere (we went to the US Supreme Court and also laid out in detail how UC is operating illegally, totally against their Charter), we tried to get a major statewide audit of school roofs to be done…in 2005. The political consultant barring the door at JLAC hissed angrily at the Minority Whip’s staff and myself, saying he was going to send it over to the (involved) SAG…and then we found out from Sacramento roofing contractors and consultants he had been a City Councilman and School Board member approving the scammer’s products in their projects. It’s common in this state for folks to be involved…and not just in an approval way, if you get my drift. So that’s when we learned how hampered the BSA was…and they have tried every year since to get the mandate expected in every other state – auditing school spending on every level.
   So there you have it. Call Mike Urso or any of the other staff there, particularly legal – they’ll tell you like they told the SF Examiner editors!

3. Joe

   January 10, 2013

   Thanks, Janet. Your comments are very timely given the recent news out of Sacramento about the governor’s desired changes. Here’s an excerpt from a Jan 2. SacBee article:
   SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California Gov. Jerry Brown will push this year to upend the way schools are funded in California, hoping to shift more money to poorer districts and end requirements that billions of dollars be spent on particular programs.
   Brown said he wants more of the state’s dollars to benefit low-income and non-English-speaking students, who typically are more expensive to educate.
   “The reality is, in some places students don’t enjoy the same opportunities that people have in other places,” the governor said in an interview. “This is a way to balance some of life’s chances.”
   He would also scale back – and possibly eliminate – dozens of rules that districts must abide by to receive billions in state dollars. Some of those requirements, such as a mandate to limit class size, have been suspended amid Sacramento’s recurrent budget problems but are set to resume by 2015.
   Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/01/02/5087828/brown-plans-extensive-changes#storylink=cpy

4. Mom

   January 10, 2013

   Does anyone know who has the roofing contract for McKinley?

5. hillsider

   January 10, 2013

   This story probably does not have a good ending. McKinley seems to be taking forever to do something simple like add some brick siding. The roof was probably an inside job to.