Let me explain.
On March 22, 2022, current BOE Member and former BOE President Angela Penna co-published what we now know to be an inaccurate letter to the editor in response to Sai Akiri’s condemnation of the budget process. This letter was not only quickly debunked but it resulted in an ethics complaint against the publishers of the letter by a resident and parent as it claimed to speak on behalf of the BOE and there was no evidence that a vote approving this letter ever occured.
On March 26, 2022,, I wrote to the Board asking specific questions about the letter to the editor. Over two years later, I still have no response.
So here is where it gets interesting.
The SEC validated the complaint. In other words, they agreed that Ms. Penna and the other individual who wrote this letter violated ethical standards by publishing it.
This victory was short-lived, as the Office of Administrative Law found that the Board did not violate ethical standards.
So what happened?
During the OAL hearing, the Board of Education seemed to admit to meeting to co-write the article and excluded two BOE Members. Board leadership emailed the letter to the Board minutes before it was published.
No notice to the public.
No public vote.
No record of a vote at all.
Only certain members of the BOE were allowed to see the email.
The OAL concluded that since they wrote the letter together with a quorum that it is basically the same thing as a vote.
The only evidence of this meeting are signed affidavits after the fact by their allies.
So even if you accept this fairy tale the judge accepted with no evidence, it means that the BOE violated the Open Public Meetings Act.
Why would the BOE admit to this in front of the OAL?
This is probably because the OAL has no jurisdiction over OPMA violations. Therefore, it was better to admit to violating the law than admit to an ethics violation, as the Judge could not do anything about the former.
In other words, it appears that the former BOE Majority spent money on their favorite Attorneys to engage in a legal ballet that avoided sanctions instead of admitting what they did from the start.
Sources close to this case reported pleading with the Union County Prosecutors Office (which does have jurisdiction over OPMA) to prosecute the case; however, they refused to pursue it. What would they have done anyway – write about how the BOE is awesome at following OPMA while forcing them to change practices because our BOE is not awesome at following OPMA?
Why are we reporting this now?
Because a former BOE Member, who persistently spreads disinformation on Facebook while falsely accusing everyone else of doing so, paraded the fact that the case was dismissed- as if it was some grand victory when what it really turned into was “Let play figure out which law I broke.” The same BOE Member that didn’t respond to my initial inquiry two years ago, is now going around local Facebook groups claiming victory.
Also to paint a picture of how the system and entities within that system that are supposed to help the public, fail either as a result of design or deliberate practice – it seems they are really there to ignore the standards and laws they are supposed to enforce.
This connects to more news on other developments related to ethics complaint we will be reporting on soon.
