Showing posts with label Larry Bowers signing for BOE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Larry Bowers signing for BOE. Show all posts

Sunday, November 17, 2019

County Council Ratifies Illegal Contract Action by Board of Education, Will Take NO ACTION on Inspector General's Report

On Monday, November 18, 2019, the Montgomery County Council will hold a hearing to discuss the contract that the Board of Education entered into to place cameras on the outside of school buses.

The County Council will take no action with regard to this contract even though this action by the Board of Education was not authorized by the Maryland legislature.


Maryland law is clear. LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES are authorized by the legislature to place cameras on the outside of school buses.  




Yet, in Montgomery County, Maryland where laws are apparently optional, the police department did not enter into a contract to place cameras on the outside of school buses.  Instead the Board of Education entered into a contract with a company that has long since been shut down after the FBI began arresting, convicting and sending those involved with that scheme to prison.  The company reformed with a new name, but with most of the same officers and the Board of Education kept sending them money with out a discussion of the original, now void contract.  

The Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, MD made the Board of Education contract available to the public in September of 2019, three years after it had been signed by Interim Superintendent Larry Bowers on his last day in office as a MCPS employee.

The contract shows that the Board of Education President Mike Durso never signed the contract.  

The Maryland legislature did not authorize Maryland Boards of Education to enter into exterior bus camera schemes, nor did they authorize a Superintendent to enter into a bus camera scheme.  

In July of 2019, the Montgomery County Inspector General issues a report with regard to the Montgomery County Police Department's involvement with the bus camera scheme, but did not evaluate the role of the Board of Education.  The IG's report did not mention that the Board of Education's contract with a bus camera company was not authorized under Maryland law.

The Montgomery County Council will discuss the IG's report but will ignore Maryland law and will take no action with regard to the fact that a private company is sending out citations to County citizens for a bus camera scheme that was not authorized by the Maryland legislature.

Monday, July 13, 2015

Auditors critical of Baltimore County schools' contract process

A legislative audit of Baltimore County's public school system released Friday found that officials haven't always followed purchasing rules that would give the system the most competitively priced services and contracts.
In a review of about 10 contracts, the Department of Legislative Audits found instances in which the school system had decided to "piggyback" off other government contracts rather than use the more common process of asking for bids from multiple companies.
 
"These contracts were issued by other governmental entities that allowed other jurisdictions to use the contract terms and prices," said the audit, which covered fiscal years 2013 and 2014. "However, we found that BCPS did not use the contract terms and prices established by the other government entities, but negotiated their own unique contract terms and prices."
Among the contracts the auditors criticized was a $875,000, three-year contract with SUPES Academy to train principals. The contract, which has expired, became controversial because Superintendent Dallas Dance was found in violation of the ethics policy for working for the company without getting school board approval.
The audit said the county did not provide good reasons why the SUPES contract and others should not be competitively bid.
In the future, auditors want school officials to provide further analysis to school board members before they vote on contracts. George Sarris, the school system's executive director for fiscal services, said they agreed with the audit's findings and "have created an analytic procedure with a check list that we will use."...

 http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/sun-investigates/bs-md-sun-investigates-audit-20150711-story.html