It might be time for the Downtown Houston Pachyderm Club to issue pads and a helmet to their speakers. Or, if you are scheduled to speak there, you might want to bring your own. Harris County Department of Education Trustee Roy Morales could have used a bit of protection during his speech yesterday. Just kidding! The members of the club prefer verbal jousting to physical. I’m guessing that Morales felt like a pin cushion when he walked out yesterday.
Morales was defiant in the face of tough questioning about the Harris County Department of Education and his role in pushing for a new startup business that would have been funded with a tax rate increase. He managed to avoid answering most questions, saying several times “if you think there is a better way, call your school district or legislator”. He claimed that the board couldn’t hold a vote to disband the department, that the legislature had to do that. Ed Johnson challenged him on this one, saying that the entity no longer exists in the education code. Morales insisted that it was.
Well, I decided to check that one. Here is what is on the Harris County Department of Education’s own website:
Harris County Department of Education is governed by Chapter 17 of the Texas Education Code.
Chapter 17 was repealed by Chapter 260, § 58(a)(1) (S.B. 1), 74th Legislature, 1995, but § 11.301 of the Texas Education Code provides that a school district or county system operating under former Chapter 17 could continue to operate under that chapter as the chapter existed on May 1, 1995 and under state law generally applicable to school districts that did not conflict with Chapter 17.
Note that it says that the department is governed by Chapter 17, then immediately states that Chapter 17 was repealed in 1995. In fact, if you go to the Texas Constitution and Statutes website and try to find Chapter 17, you will discover that there is no Chapter 17. But, as noted on the department’s website, Chapter 11, section 301 allows them to continue operating under the old code. I think that Ed has the upper hand here because Chapter 11.301 simply says “may continue” not “shall continue”.
For whatever reason, Morales can’t seem to grasp that using taxpayer money as seed capital for a startup is incompatible with conservative Republican philosophy. When he was asked directly about this, he claimed that he wasn’t for it. When I pointed out that he testified at the tax rate increase hearing that most of the increase would be used to fund a cloud computing start up, he said, well, that isn’t a private business, never understanding that the business he was promoting would displace private business.
At one point, he started lecturing the crowd about their priorities, telling us that there were huge bond issues on the ballot that we needed to be against, not worrying about such a small thing as the Harris County Department of Education. How do you even respond to that? Most of the people in the room have been working against those bonds – I can’t recall seeing Morales even one time during this campaign. Unreal. Besides which, who cares how small a government agency is? Waste is waste and I do not consider $18 million in tax money small. I’m beginning to understand why so many people think this department is a waste if this is their defense – and after attending two of their meetings in addition to this talk, I think that it is their main defense.
One of the questions brought up a great point but let me backtrack a bit to the tax rate vote meeting I attended this past Tuesday. During that meeting, for the discussion about the cloud project, the staff brought in the IT heads from CyFair and Goose Creek ISD’s. After being called Frank twice and then being ignored, Frankie Jackson from Goose Creek left the meeting. The staff then introduced Harold Rowe from CyFair, noting that he was an expert and had just received an award. Hey, a little PR doesn’t hurt when you are trying to convince elected officials to increase taxes. Mr. Rowe proceeded to tell the board that CyFair wouldn’t really benefit from the cloud project because being a large district, they already have economy of scale, but it would really help out the little districts like Goose Creek that didn’t. Think about that carefully, reminding yourself that the Harris County Department of Education charges an administrative fee for managing the contracts involved.
Back to the Morales/Pachyderm meeting, the question was asked, if you proceed with this cloud project, aren’t the larger districts simply subsidizing the smaller ones? Obviously, the question was posed by someone that had been at the meeting Tuesday and heard Mr. Rowe talking about that. Morales couldn’t grasp this one either – yes, this project in effect has larger school districts subsidizing smaller ones. Very good point and one that I think applies to the entire “Choice Partner” program – remember, they don’t get business with low bids or best value, they use “relationship” selling, paying consultants huge fees to schmooze clients and “open doors”.
The meeting was loud and rancorous, with some apologies being said after it ended. Obviously there is much passion in the Republican community about the Harris County Department of Education. Curiously, with all of this passion, it was a Democrat, State Rep. Harold Dutton, that carried the only recent bill to eliminate it. You’d think one of the enterprising Republicans we have in the state legislature would want the spotlight on this one. Perhaps next session someone will step up and see what they can do.
Every program that the Harris County Department of Education handles can be handled through an existing government entity. The question is one of cost – who does it most efficiently? Answer that one and we might get a better sense of the future of the department. One thing to consider: you get taxed at least twice for every child that passes through their schools – once by the department and once by your school district.
I’ll finish this one up with a passage from the Sunset Advisory Commission’s staff report on the Texas Education Agency (page 35). This is a reference to the TEA outsourcing a part of its Adult Learning program to the Harris County Department of Education and it directly addresses the “relationship” selling used by HCDE:
While state law does not explicitly require contracts between state agencies and local governments to be competitively bid, TEA’s noncompetitive award of a contract worth $2 million a year to an existing adult education provider raises questions of fairness and transparency.