The following is a copy of two articles that appeared in the Houston Chronicle on December 27, 1993 and December 28, 1993.  They are copied here to show what the superintendent and the Katy school district tried to do to a citizen who was speaking her piece. They tried to shut her up with an attorney letter.  Fortunately Mrs. Porto was married to an attorney (a member of the staff of the Federal District Attorney) AND KNEW HER FREE SPEECH RIGHTS.

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1993_1174191

Katy officials drawing fire/School district's openness being questioned

GEORGE FLYNN Staff

MON 12/27/1993 HOUSTON CHRONICLE, Section A, Page 13, 2 STAR Edition

Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: TUE 12/28/1993
Section: A
Page: 12
Edition: 2 STAR

A PUBLIC MATTER/Katy school trustees have to conduct open business

Staff

Another matter of a school board restricting public information to private indulgence has surfaced, and the explanations for doing so ring as hollow as any such breach of openness in government. In the latest, Katy school trustees voted in private, then much later in public, to award a $5,000 bonus to Superintendent Hugh Hayes.

That might seem hardly remarkable except that it came nearly six months after the payment had been privately authorized by the board president.

The board's public vote was taken only after district parent George Scott demanded accountability and retained a legal specialist in the Texas Open Records Act to back up the demand.

Two days after the belated board action, district activist and newsletter publisher Linda Porto found a letter from Hayes' personal attorney among the Christmas cards in her mail. It noted that she had "spoken publicly through newspapers in areas in which Dr. Hayes is seeking employment."

That referred to Porto's responses to questions from a Sioux Falls, S.D., reporter, in which she was critical of Hayes' administration in Katy.

If Porto voices such opinions again, the letter warned, Hayes will file a slander lawsuit.

Though unrelated, the letter and the board vote dramatized growing concerns about attitudes toward public openness in the operation of this school district of 22,500 pupils west of Houston.

Porto sees the letter as an effort to intimidate critics into silence.

"They've picked on the wrong person for this kind of harassment," she said. "I'm not about to be intimidated by these kinds of threats."

Scott says it distresses him to have to hire a lawyer before the board would reveal the payment to Hayes.

As a result of his efforts, trustees acknowledged awarding the bonus. It is based on board objectives set annually for Hayes, who is paid $115,000 yearly. Action by Scott also made public the new list of goals for use in next year's bonus evaluation.

"I was glad to have helped in the process of clarifying the superintendent's contract," Scott said. "It is a substantial victory for the public and the taxpayers of this district."

He points out, however, that while the list of goals is public, they include one asking Hayes to draw up a confidential memorandum for an upcoming bond election.

"You could search the Milky Way in its entirety and not come up with a goofier goal than that one," Scott said. "If I have anything to do with it, that will be an open memorandum."

Hayes, 53, who came to Katy from the Ector school district in Odessa in 1989, has refused comment on the issues. As board President Joe Adams was explaining trustees' actions to a reporter after last week's meeting, Hayes broke in and urged him also to refuse comment and refer questions to the board's attorney.

"You are talking about my business -- my money," Hayes told the reporter.

Adams, before being silenced, characterized the controversy as an honest difference of opinion on the technical process of approving the payment. Last week's vote was merely to ensure that everything be done above board, he said.

Hayes' 1992 contract calls for the board, by the end of each September, to set annual goals for him and to decide by the following June 30 whether he has met them.

If he receives a majority approval rating, Hayes is awarded an annuity payment of $5,000. He must remain with the district until retirement to get the annuity as a bonus.

Official district minutes show the board met in closed session on personnel matters for 65 minutes on June 23 and 90 minutes on June 28. On June 29, Adams wrote a memo notifying Hayes that he had received the majority's approval and Adams was authorizing the $5,000 payment.

Nothing about the authorization appears in board minutes or notices, however.

The first public mention came on Oct. 25, when Scott went before the board with his demand for information. After a closed session, the board issued a statement about the contract's bonus terms but did not disclose goals or whether the bonus had been awarded. That was only revealed in the Dec. 20 meeting, after Scott and his attorney continued to press for full disclosure.

Adams and board attorney David Thompson said trustees had never discussed the bonus in private before Adams' June 29 memo. Adams said he merely took an informal tally to get the consensus of the board.

The poll, Thompson said, was in the form of a questionnaire sent to board members. Trustees, the attorney said, were under the impression that no board action was needed to award the bonus if a majority rated Hayes' performance as satisfactory.

Thompson said arguments "could be made either way" on whether an open board vote was required on the bonus. He said trustees wanted to show good faith to district patrons through last week's public action.

Porto said Scott's lengthy effort on the bonus issue illustrates district officials' penchant for privacy and aloofness from parents and other taxpayers. That led her and a handful of others to form Advocates for Cooperation in Education (ACE) about four months ago.

Last month, Hayes sought the superintendency of the Sioux Falls school system. The Argus Leader newspaper there interviewed Porto about Hayes' administration.

She said her remarks included both praise and complaints about the board and Hayes, and focused only on their public actions. In a subsequent profile on Hayes in the newspaper, five paragraphs outlined Porto's criticisms of his work.

Hayes later dropped out of contention for the job. He cited personal and family reasons; although his attorney's letter to Porto seems to indicate she is held at least partly responsible.

The correspondence, on the letterhead of Katy attorney Thomas Adams III, accuses Porto of slandering Hayes with "words which effect (sic) Dr. Hayes injuriously in his office, business, profession or occupation." Further "injurious" statements will prompt a lawsuit, it warns.

Hayes could not be reached for comment about the letter. Attorney Adams, no relation to the board president, would not elaborate on the letter but expressed disappointment that Porto had revealed the contents to the Chronicle.

"I have consulted my own attorney and am satisfied that my comments were completely within my rights of free speech in expressing my honest views," Porto said.

 There was another editorial that appeared on December 28, 1993 as well. It was on the Editorial Page of the Houston Chronicle:

A PUBLIC MATTER

Katy School Trustees Have to Conduct Open Business

Another matter of a school board restricting public information to private indulgence has surfaced, and the explanations for doing so ring as hollow as any such breach of openness in government.  In the latest, Katy school trustees voted in private, then much later in public, to award a $5,000 bonus to Superintendent Hugh Hayes.

On its face, there is nothing wrong with giving the school superintendent a bonus, assuming it was deserved based on the merit of his work.  There is a problem when trustees vote in public -- a little more than a week ago-- as if they were doing the public a favor, when the deal was done privately nearly six months ago.

There is no comfort that these trustees understand the error of their ways when the attorney representing them asserts that "arguments could be made either way" on whether a public vote was required on the bonus, and that the board wanted to show good faith to its constituency by the public vote.

It seems the trustees did not learn any lesson from this attempt at secrecy.  They revealed the bonus and released a list of goals to be used in next year's bonus evaluation as a result of a taxpayer's legal action. But at the same time, they directed the superintendent to draw up a confidential memorandum for an upcoming bond election.

As is frequently the case, the Katy trustees' belated public action was forced by a concerned taxpayer [George Scott], who had to hire an attorney to make the school board come clean on the bonus payment.  There are approximately 22,500 pupils in the Katy Independent School District, which means there are at least 22,500 reasons why trustees have to conduct the public's business in the public light.

[Joe Adams was President of the School Board in December 1993.  Larry Moore was the Vice-President. Other members were Ken Burton, James Williams, Mary McGarr, James Peters and Stanley Thompson.  Hugh Hayes was the Superintendent.]