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 Ch…
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).
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).