When greed and hubris go unchecked
A former HISD board president stands out among the indicted in a case tied to kickbacks.
How could she?
That was our first thought when news broke Thursday that former Houston ISD board president Rhonda Skillern-Jones had admitted to accepting bribes in an alleged kickback scheme that also led to the indictments of the district’s former chief operating officer and a vendor.
This is a trustee who constantly talked about standing up for kids and struggling against periodic budget crises to address the inequities among HISD’s campuses.
“If you have schools that we have to budget, because they are in the red, toilet paper for — because their small school subsidy didn’t cover it — then you have schools that have enough money for two or three years to put a marble floor in, there’s a problem,” she told a Chronicle columnist in 2018. “Anybody who doesn’t see that’s an issue is obviously very, very biased or very, very dumb.”
And anybody who thinks it’s OK to steal from those children? What’s the word for that?
Most of the headlines Thursday led with the indictments and arrests of the district’s former chief operation officer, Brian Busby, and contract vendor Anthony Hutchison, announced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas. According to a 26-count indictment, Busby is accused of helping award HISD construction and grounds maintenance contracts to Hutchison in return for cash bribes and hundreds of thousands of dollars in home remodeling. The scheme, allegedly spanning 2011 to 2020, involved Hutchison systematically over-billing the district for services, causing HISD to lose millions of dollars.
Busby, through a lawyer, maintained his innocence. Hutchison’s lawyer couldn’t be reached by the Chronicle.
The allegations against them are no doubt troubling as well. But neither man was elected and entrusted by the people of Houston to safeguard taxpayer dollars and the education of thousands of children in the state’s largest school district.
Skillern-Jones was. As part of her plea, the Justice Department says she admitted that, in return for bribe payments from Hutchison, she caused an expenditure of funds for school landscaping and construction projects to be placed on the 2017 board agenda and voted to approve it.
In her plea agreement, Skillern-Jones said Busby personally delivered thousands of dollars in bribe payments to her from Hutchison, according to federal prosecutors.
Skillern-Jones and four former district employees pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and face up to five years in prison, a Justice Department news release said.
It’s another sad testament to the legacy of failed leadership at HISD. The district, still at risk of a state takeover due to chronically underperforming campuses, made headlines repeatedly during Skillern-Jones’ tenure for infighting among trustees and meetings that spiraled out of control.
We have to wonder, in the days after she allegedly accepted the payments, did she pass by any of HISD’s many schools surrounded by unkempt grounds and wonder if they might have benefited from the millions of dollars in grounds maintenance funds that were apparently siphoned off to enrich a few?
Did she take any complaints about moldy classrooms with leaky air-conditioning units, or plumbing so bad kids are forced to use portable toilets, and feel a twinge of guilt? Did she look into the eyes of some of the lowest-paid teachers in the region and have second thoughts about her role in draining the trough of taxpayer dollars?
The only good news here is that all of the people named in the indictment are no longer with HISD. Unfortunately, Skillern-Jones was elected in 2019 to a position on the board of Houston Community College.
But the new leadership at HISD, Superintendent Millard House II, appears to have no tolerance for these shenanigans. In a district once accused of suspending a chief auditor for asking too many questions, House has already ordered an audit of the procurement process. We encourage him to continue to do everything he can to root out corruption and enact policies that prevent it in the first place.
The bookkeeping at HISD, known for its decentralized system that gives principals on individual campuses much freedom over their budgets, has long been a mess. It’s hard for district officials, let alone watchdogs and journalists, to keep track of expenditures, payments to contractors, or even if the services were actually rendered.
While the failures of HISD trustees did inspire a crop of new candidates for board positions, the strongest among them did not prevail. We can only hope that the winning challengers whose campaigns hinged on denunciation of critical race theory and masks will wake up once they take office to the gravely serious responsibility they’ve been given.
Will they use this latest development as easy ammo against the current administration that had no part in it? Will they play politics or get serious about reforms to bring accountability and transparency into a district that desperately needs it?
This is a time to look long and hard at what happens when greed and hubris are left unchecked. This is a time for HISD’s board to truly focus on children whose many challenges in learning need not be exacerbated by the dishonesty of adults elected to help them.
“We will not stand idly by when there are people in positions of trust who are suspected of such wrongdoing,” acting U.S. Attorney Jennifer B. Lowery said in a statement.
Nor should any of us.
How could she? We may never know. Our concern now should be making sure she, or any other unscrupulous public official, never will again.