CHICAGO BOARD OF EDUCATION EXPENSE ACCOUNTS

At Michael Scott’s first meeting as Board President on March 25th of this year, the expense accounts of the Board members were doubled from $12,000 a year to $24,000. Scott's allowance rose from $19,200 a year to $36,000. According to the Chicago Tribune, the allowable expenses include telephone charges, transportation to and from board events, purchase of newspapers and journals, and miscellaneous supplies. The Board members are not paid a salary, so while I have no problem with their expenses being reimbursed, I don’t understand how someone can spend $3,000/month on such trivial supplies unless one is buying Mont Blanc pens and engraved Tiffany stationery.

The Tribune reported last week that Scott used his board credit card to pay for a trip to Copenhagen to lobby for bringing the 2016 Summer Olympics to Chicago. Scott, who traveled with his wife, stayed at the 71 Nyhavn, a four-star hotel on the Copenhagen waterfront, from Sept. 29 until Oct. 3. The Tribune also reported that he charged more than $3,000 for airfare, hotel, meals and a bar tab to his board credit card.

Since $3,000 did not sound like a lot of money to me for a 4 day trip to Denmark, I decided to do some investigating. If one checked into the 71 Nyhavn hotel tomorrow, the cost per night for double occupancy would be 2880DKK -- or for those of us who prefer our currency in dollars, $564.84. Using the exact dates of Sept.29-October 3rd for 2010, the same room price is $897.18. That results in an average cost of $731.01/per night or almost $3,000 just for the hotel. We still have to account for two airfares, meals and a bar tab. So while the board was quoted as saying Michael Scott used his board credit card for “more than $3,000,” it is obvious that is must have been A LOT more than $3,000. How much more?

The Tribune requested records on board spending practices on November 2nd. The school board’s Inspector General James Sullivan began investigating board members' spending after the schools administration gave a copy of the Tribune's request for board spending records to him. How does that fit with the timing that school officials said Scott had begun paying back the money, writing a check on November 8th? Would Scott have written a check if the Tribune had not asked questions?

Clare Munana, the board’s interim president announced yesterday that they board is now hiring Walter Jones, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice to investigate separately how members use their taxpayer-financed expense accounts. Jones will be paid $295/hour for his work. His fees will be paid by us—the taxpayers. If the board does not trust its own Inspector General, then why do they have him on staff? The board expense accounts are for miscellaneous supplies required in one’s work on the board. Whether Michael Scott was paying back the charges or not is really not the question that should be answered. The questions should be how was it even possible for him to charge personal airfares, hotel and a bar tab on a school credit card? Why wouldn’t the charges be flagged as “unusual activity” and a call made to CPS, the issuer of the card? When someone stole my credit card number once, I received a call when they tried to charge $600 worth of shoes at a Payless Shoe store. VISA knew I would never be shopping there, so they questioned the charge. Who at CPS approved the “unusual activity?” Let’s see if Sullivan or Jones gives us answers to these questions.

Paying back CPS is not enough; justifying why the charges were allowed to be approved in the first place is the key.