1) if you say "oh my gosh! i used to have a very similar wallet" or something, that potentially would afford you a little more leeway than some more obvious BS like "oh i didn't think you would notice and i was strapped for cash" I'm just curious the circumstances that prompted him to pay it back and how he tried to explain it (assuming …
1) if you say "oh my gosh! i used to have a very similar wallet" or something, that potentially would afford you a little more leeway than some more obvious BS like "oh i didn't think you would notice and i was strapped for cash" I'm just curious the circumstances that prompted him to pay it back and how he tried to explain it (assuming there's some record of that?) -- that might be more telling than simply "he let the Atlanta hotel charge the D65 P-Card.
2) I think that's a CYA comment from them responsive to the specific FOIA request, i.e. "here was the high-level problem (in their mind, unreimbursable expenses charged) and here was the solution (expenses reimbursed)", but it doesn't touch INTENT. Can you FOIA communications related to the reimbursement from Dr. Horton?
3) I think the narrative is getting lost. The big "so what" (IMO) is if Dr. Horton repeatedly charged personal expenses to the card, but I think there would need to be more proof of that. Right now, this has the look of he maybe used the wrong card for a week or two at the end of his tenure, but then paid it back right away when it got flagged. Heck, what if that card was at the top of his Apple Pay wallet or something?
The assumptions part is something less under your control, but I think a lot of people in the comments are piling on alleging crimes committed, or that the money is still gone, and we need more info to confirm if this goes beyond just incomptence/negligence. Intent is rather hard to prove, and I think there are a lot of assumptions made (regardless of likelihood of them being right or wrong) in the absence of a longer-standing pattern that extends beyond over-spending on food.
Yeah, I see what you're saying. I'll try to FOIA the communications tomorrow and see what comes back. Will take about 2 weeks.
It's possible that the this is some kind of mistake but some of these things are pretty suspect. If you look at the bills back in May 22, it was full of the same kind of stuff - like a $250 steak dinner in Los Angeles.
At some point, I'm not sure what's worse - continually making the same mistake, requiring you to pay money back or expecting the taxpayers to cover personal expenses? "He's just incompetent" is almost as bad! We paid a guy $262k to run our schools and he can't figure out Apple Pay?
Either way, I'll FOIA the communications - if you send me your email Pablo (email me tom@foiagras.com) - I'll share with you when it comes in and we can chat offline. I really do appreciate this comment.
I have a p-card for *my own business* and I am ultra careful not to mix business and personal expenses, lest the IRS knock on my door. I also have my business AMEX in my Apple Wallet and it's very easy to not mix them up.
I thought more about this question over night and I still don't have a good answer to this. I think you are right and I am right.
I've learned a lot about journalism doing this (I'm writing a book actually) and one of the hardest decisions is deciding when to run a story. Every story, no matter what, has unknowns and you have to evaluate the tradeoffs and context. In this context, D65 has a budget that is totally on fire and a big meeting in September to discuss new financial controls.
I actually think, had I waited until after the meeting, this story would be more likely what you describe - moot and much less newsworthy. But getting it out before the meeting gives the public and the Board (who are readers) information to make decisions and have conversations.
The problem to me, is that a FOIA request takes 2-5 weeks to get resolution. Next meeting is Sept 3. So, there was really no chance to get a FOIA filled before then, so I hit publish - I felt like I had enough information to run this.
Should people be speculating in the comments about Horton? I don't know - I don't really regulate my comment section like the RT or Evanston Now does, so people are free to say what they want (myself included) within some boundaries I've established. I think I have the most liberal comment section policy in Evanston, and that includes the RT, EN and the litany of facebook groups. I think that's a good thing.
Through the lens of trying to foster (see what I did there) the conversations ahead of some big upcoming meetings next month, publishing it now does make plenty of sense. Hopefully you've inspired the financial sub-committee to dig deeper on this issue.
The primary FB group is so frustrating. So much gate-keeping, spin, deflection, etc. Some of the shit that gets called out is valid, but there's a lot of unnecessary trolling, and the admins/moderators don't seem objective enough to help build some sense of community.
I work for a school district and have a company card.
Using it for personal expenses is not allowed. However, once I forgot to switch over to personal card for a $20 dollar Lyft. Once I realized it, I changed the bill to my personal card. It never happened again.
Even if not a pattern, this is next level and beyond an individual oversight.
First, he should have returned the card when he off boarded with D65, and D65 should have deactivated it. So, there is already an issue with financial controls evident here.
Second, how can someone mistakenly use a company card over and over again?
Third, there’s already enough evidence from two p-card reports Tom has pulled, plus this, to indicate a lack of fiduciary care on his part that would warrant a deeper look. Because, guess what, it isn’t allowed - or typical - for an employee of a school district to order delivery from local restaurants over and over again in one month.
Dude! You say “ in the absence of a longer-standing pattern that extends beyond over-spending on food.”.
There IS a long standing pattern of his financial mismanagement and it goes back before he was even hired. In 2012 he was the central character in a NBC story where he was identified as the biggest employee deadbeat that the City of Chicago.
Other outlets subsequently reported on his multiple bankruptcies, so this guy has a bit of a record.
Ahh, I need to clarify what I was trying to get at. It's that I think the story is incomplete, without a deeper audit of his entire tenure and usage/expenses over that time. I'm not suggesting people should pretend there weren't previous red flags, I just meant the most "news-worthy" thing would be (to me) if there are yet-unrecovered funds that were improper expenditures. Absent any significant findings there, I don't think the policy leaves any further recourse beyond getting reimbursed, which it seems like they already did.
These are good questions. I think this is newsworthy for the following reasons:
1. It indicates poor financial controls on the district's part, including questions about their alignment to ISBE's rules governing reasonable spending from the Superintendent.
2. Evidence that has been gathered indicates Horton's pattern of spending was, at best, stretching those rules, and at worst openly violating them.
3. If the District made an arrangement with Horton around reimbursing these expenses to help float a move to Atlanta, that arrangement involved giving a person no longer employed by the Board open access to spend public dollars - and accrue interest on those purchases to also be paid by Evanston taxpayers - while not being under contract to the Board. That's kind of a big deal.
4. There is already evidence of financial largesse given to Horton by the Board and district administration in the form of reducing Horton's contractual kill fee, paying for travel that was largely based on enriching his personal profile, allowing or overlooking perks like expensive meals.
5. The District was essentially bankrupted during Horton's tenure, there is evidence of soft manipulation of financial records to improve the appearance of financial stability at critical times (floating bills etc.), now this.
6. And behind all of this, you have a Board - and specific Board members - who provided endless cover fire for Horton, essentially shutting down effective public oversight, and signaling to him and his staff that they could pretty much do what they pleased, because the Board wasn't going to actually hold him accountable.
7. While also not being forthcoming about how they hired him, what that process was, and what metrics were being used to extend his contract.
8. Even though there was publicly available evidence that he might not be the best steward of public dollars.
9. And in the end, all of this has resulted in an emerging avalanche of financial mud that is going to bury Evanston.
10. While Horton has moved on, leveraging a few "sugar high" initiatives into a bigger opportunity, but ultimately leaving Evanston even less financially equipped to support the very kids Horton claimed most to care about.
Yeah, you're right - the district's own policy basically says that you have to pay it back and you can get fired, which obviously, the second point is moot.
The expenses that Tom pulled into this post are the Atlanta charges for after his tenure, but he linked to the full p card statements the district gave him. There are 5 district p card holders and each was split out separately- for some reason the superintendent had two accounts (I have a feeling maybe a card was lost and the bank did not fully close the initial account before establishing the new one). In any case, anyone can look at the statements to see the type of transactions the superintendent made in Evanston before he left compared to other personnel who had cards (e.g., there was a Walgreens expense in Evanston for a similar amount to the one mentioned in this post).
1) if you say "oh my gosh! i used to have a very similar wallet" or something, that potentially would afford you a little more leeway than some more obvious BS like "oh i didn't think you would notice and i was strapped for cash" I'm just curious the circumstances that prompted him to pay it back and how he tried to explain it (assuming there's some record of that?) -- that might be more telling than simply "he let the Atlanta hotel charge the D65 P-Card.
2) I think that's a CYA comment from them responsive to the specific FOIA request, i.e. "here was the high-level problem (in their mind, unreimbursable expenses charged) and here was the solution (expenses reimbursed)", but it doesn't touch INTENT. Can you FOIA communications related to the reimbursement from Dr. Horton?
3) I think the narrative is getting lost. The big "so what" (IMO) is if Dr. Horton repeatedly charged personal expenses to the card, but I think there would need to be more proof of that. Right now, this has the look of he maybe used the wrong card for a week or two at the end of his tenure, but then paid it back right away when it got flagged. Heck, what if that card was at the top of his Apple Pay wallet or something?
The assumptions part is something less under your control, but I think a lot of people in the comments are piling on alleging crimes committed, or that the money is still gone, and we need more info to confirm if this goes beyond just incomptence/negligence. Intent is rather hard to prove, and I think there are a lot of assumptions made (regardless of likelihood of them being right or wrong) in the absence of a longer-standing pattern that extends beyond over-spending on food.
Yeah, I see what you're saying. I'll try to FOIA the communications tomorrow and see what comes back. Will take about 2 weeks.
It's possible that the this is some kind of mistake but some of these things are pretty suspect. If you look at the bills back in May 22, it was full of the same kind of stuff - like a $250 steak dinner in Los Angeles.
https://www.foiagras.com/p/district-65s-free-lunch-program-for
At some point, I'm not sure what's worse - continually making the same mistake, requiring you to pay money back or expecting the taxpayers to cover personal expenses? "He's just incompetent" is almost as bad! We paid a guy $262k to run our schools and he can't figure out Apple Pay?
Either way, I'll FOIA the communications - if you send me your email Pablo (email me tom@foiagras.com) - I'll share with you when it comes in and we can chat offline. I really do appreciate this comment.
Seriously. I have a company credit card. I keep it at work except when I’m going on a trip and then I am VERY conscious about when I use it.
Our compliance team drills this into us.
Part of the reason this story is important is that it sheds some light on the performance of a oublic entity’s compliance system
I have a p-card for *my own business* and I am ultra careful not to mix business and personal expenses, lest the IRS knock on my door. I also have my business AMEX in my Apple Wallet and it's very easy to not mix them up.
I thought more about this question over night and I still don't have a good answer to this. I think you are right and I am right.
I've learned a lot about journalism doing this (I'm writing a book actually) and one of the hardest decisions is deciding when to run a story. Every story, no matter what, has unknowns and you have to evaluate the tradeoffs and context. In this context, D65 has a budget that is totally on fire and a big meeting in September to discuss new financial controls.
I actually think, had I waited until after the meeting, this story would be more likely what you describe - moot and much less newsworthy. But getting it out before the meeting gives the public and the Board (who are readers) information to make decisions and have conversations.
The problem to me, is that a FOIA request takes 2-5 weeks to get resolution. Next meeting is Sept 3. So, there was really no chance to get a FOIA filled before then, so I hit publish - I felt like I had enough information to run this.
Should people be speculating in the comments about Horton? I don't know - I don't really regulate my comment section like the RT or Evanston Now does, so people are free to say what they want (myself included) within some boundaries I've established. I think I have the most liberal comment section policy in Evanston, and that includes the RT, EN and the litany of facebook groups. I think that's a good thing.
Through the lens of trying to foster (see what I did there) the conversations ahead of some big upcoming meetings next month, publishing it now does make plenty of sense. Hopefully you've inspired the financial sub-committee to dig deeper on this issue.
The primary FB group is so frustrating. So much gate-keeping, spin, deflection, etc. Some of the shit that gets called out is valid, but there's a lot of unnecessary trolling, and the admins/moderators don't seem objective enough to help build some sense of community.
Yes and I appreciate all your comments on this thread! And for that pun, I'd like to award you FOIA GRAS Commenter of the Month!
I work for a school district and have a company card.
Using it for personal expenses is not allowed. However, once I forgot to switch over to personal card for a $20 dollar Lyft. Once I realized it, I changed the bill to my personal card. It never happened again.
Even if not a pattern, this is next level and beyond an individual oversight.
First, he should have returned the card when he off boarded with D65, and D65 should have deactivated it. So, there is already an issue with financial controls evident here.
Second, how can someone mistakenly use a company card over and over again?
Third, there’s already enough evidence from two p-card reports Tom has pulled, plus this, to indicate a lack of fiduciary care on his part that would warrant a deeper look. Because, guess what, it isn’t allowed - or typical - for an employee of a school district to order delivery from local restaurants over and over again in one month.
Dude! You say “ in the absence of a longer-standing pattern that extends beyond over-spending on food.”.
There IS a long standing pattern of his financial mismanagement and it goes back before he was even hired. In 2012 he was the central character in a NBC story where he was identified as the biggest employee deadbeat that the City of Chicago.
Other outlets subsequently reported on his multiple bankruptcies, so this guy has a bit of a record.
Ahh, I need to clarify what I was trying to get at. It's that I think the story is incomplete, without a deeper audit of his entire tenure and usage/expenses over that time. I'm not suggesting people should pretend there weren't previous red flags, I just meant the most "news-worthy" thing would be (to me) if there are yet-unrecovered funds that were improper expenditures. Absent any significant findings there, I don't think the policy leaves any further recourse beyond getting reimbursed, which it seems like they already did.
These are good questions. I think this is newsworthy for the following reasons:
1. It indicates poor financial controls on the district's part, including questions about their alignment to ISBE's rules governing reasonable spending from the Superintendent.
2. Evidence that has been gathered indicates Horton's pattern of spending was, at best, stretching those rules, and at worst openly violating them.
3. If the District made an arrangement with Horton around reimbursing these expenses to help float a move to Atlanta, that arrangement involved giving a person no longer employed by the Board open access to spend public dollars - and accrue interest on those purchases to also be paid by Evanston taxpayers - while not being under contract to the Board. That's kind of a big deal.
4. There is already evidence of financial largesse given to Horton by the Board and district administration in the form of reducing Horton's contractual kill fee, paying for travel that was largely based on enriching his personal profile, allowing or overlooking perks like expensive meals.
5. The District was essentially bankrupted during Horton's tenure, there is evidence of soft manipulation of financial records to improve the appearance of financial stability at critical times (floating bills etc.), now this.
6. And behind all of this, you have a Board - and specific Board members - who provided endless cover fire for Horton, essentially shutting down effective public oversight, and signaling to him and his staff that they could pretty much do what they pleased, because the Board wasn't going to actually hold him accountable.
7. While also not being forthcoming about how they hired him, what that process was, and what metrics were being used to extend his contract.
8. Even though there was publicly available evidence that he might not be the best steward of public dollars.
9. And in the end, all of this has resulted in an emerging avalanche of financial mud that is going to bury Evanston.
10. While Horton has moved on, leveraging a few "sugar high" initiatives into a bigger opportunity, but ultimately leaving Evanston even less financially equipped to support the very kids Horton claimed most to care about.
I don't know, seems pretty newsworthy to me.
Yeah, you're right - the district's own policy basically says that you have to pay it back and you can get fired, which obviously, the second point is moot.
The expenses that Tom pulled into this post are the Atlanta charges for after his tenure, but he linked to the full p card statements the district gave him. There are 5 district p card holders and each was split out separately- for some reason the superintendent had two accounts (I have a feeling maybe a card was lost and the bank did not fully close the initial account before establishing the new one). In any case, anyone can look at the statements to see the type of transactions the superintendent made in Evanston before he left compared to other personnel who had cards (e.g., there was a Walgreens expense in Evanston for a similar amount to the one mentioned in this post).