Wednesday, June 25, 2008

"Legal counsel" conflicts with opinion of Attorney General

From: "Mark Zandberg"
Date: Wed, June 25, 2008
To: publicrecords@sao.wa.gov
Cc: kapekc@sao.wa.gov, cooperj@sao.wa.gov

Please provide;

1. any and all records of communication between the Washington State Auditor (and all designees, employees or consultants) and the Edmonds School District since January 1, 2007,

2. any and all records of communication between the Washington State Auditor (and all designees, employees or consultants) and any other entity regarding the Edmonds School District since January 1, 2007,

3. any and all records of communication regarding consultation with "legal counsel" regarding the Edmonds School District. It is my understanding that such communication is not legally protected or privileged information.

Please provide an estimate of costs for copying prior to generating copies.

Sincerely,

Mark Zandberg
9003 Olympic View Drive
Edmonds, WA 98026

You can read the opinion by clicking here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So...if the excess money were used to, say, MITIGATE THE PROPERTY OF THE CONTAMINATION, it would be appropriate to pay more than the appraised price. But since, as in this case, there were no other apparent benefits to the District in the sales contract, this becomes a "gifting of public funds" to the seller which has clearly and repeatedly been found to be illegal.

And why didn't the Auditor's office pick up on this?

And who's the District lawyer that signed off on the deal? Perhaps s/he needs to refund their fee to the District. But of course, that's not going to happen; in fact, the District will end up shelling out MORE money to try to vindicate itself. Money that probably could have been used in a classroom-perhaps to pay for a paraprofessional to assist a teacher who has 6 behaviorally challenged kids in his/her class, so that the other kids can actually learn something from the teacher rather than the teacher having to spend their time managing the rowdies.

Don't think these things aren't connected. It's just like your family budget: the more you have to spend on gas, the less you can spend on food. The more they pay to fix the screw ups, the less there is for the students.