To MoCo Delegation: Covering up crimes against children is costly to classrooms and to children’s lives. Will this be the year that the Maryland legislature decides to put children first?

 

Montgomery County Joint House and Senate Priorities Hearing

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Parents’ Coalition of Montgomery County, MD 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening. 

First, we would like to remind the Delegation that the Justice Reinvestment Act of 2016, included allowing sex offenders to have their records expunged and their names removed from the Maryland Sex Offender Registry.  We now have a list of former MCPS teachers who were convicted of sexually abusing school children, sentenced and put on the Maryland Sex Offender Registry who have now had their convictions and Sex Offender Registry entries expunged.  Why were sex offenders who were sentenced to lifetime registration included in this legislation? 

The Netflix documentary The Keepers focused on Maryland’s legislature and how the Maryland legislature protects sex offenders.  Is this really the international reputation that we want for Maryland? A sex offender friendly state?  

The presence of the Catholic Church’s sex offender facility in Silver Spring brings more international attention to Maryland along with concerns about reporting and registration of the sex offenders that reside at the St. Luke’s Institute. 

Second, we would like to thank the Maryland Office of Legislative Audits (OLA) for substantiating my investigation into the MCPS bus camera procurement. The OLA Report noted the MCPS bus camera procurement lacked a competitive procurement process, lacked financial terms, and didn’t monitor the vendor’s investment costs.

Third, we would like to thank the Maryland Office of Legislative Audits (OLA) for revealing the embezzlement that had been uncovered in October of 2021, involving the MCPS Transportation Department and the MCPS transportation vendor.  Without this 6-year audit would the public have ever heard about this multi-million dollar embezzlement of MCPS funds?

Fourth, not addressed by the OLA Report was that the MCPS use of electric school buses was from a company that did not participate in the MCPS RFP process and did not bid.  The company didn’t even exist until a few weeks before the Board of Education voted to award them a $168,684,990 contract.  And when the electric school bus company being used by MCPS was incorporated, it was incorporated at the same address as the diesel school bus company involved in the off the books embezzlement scheme referenced earlier by the OLA Report. Does the public have to wait another 6 years for an OLA Report to find out who owns the electric school buses that MCPS students are riding on and what is their connection to the diesel school bus company that the Board of Education is no longer doing business with?

Fifth, what is the cost of all of this subterfuge? At least $500,000 in overpayments for diesel school buses in August.  The Board of Education was told this purchase was an emergency, but we now know that this purchase was an attempt to hide the fact that the Board’s long time school bus dealer had been involved in an embezzlement scheme and a new dealer was quickly needed.

Covering up crimes against children is costly to classrooms and to children’s lives. Will this be the year that the Maryland legislature decides to put children first?

 

Janis Zink Sartucci

Parents’ Coalition of Montgomery County, MD

 parentscoalitionmc@outlook.com