HOUSTSON CHRONICLE EDITORIAL ON FRAILEY'S LACK OF OPENNESS:

A Public Matter

Katy school trustees have to conduct open business

Editorial Page  December 28, 1993

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 are 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 [George Scott] legal action.  But at the same time, they directed the superintendent to draw up a confidential memorandum for an upcoming bond election.  [See that memorandum elsewhere on this web site.]

As is frequently the case, the Katy trustees' belated public action was forced by a concerned taxpayer, 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.

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The Board president who caused the Board to vote in "secret" was Joe Adams.  As a fellow Board member, I objected to his actions at the time.  I was not alone in my objections, but I can only tell what I did, not what others did in this executive session.  Mary McGarr

Other Board members at the time were Ken Burton, Larry Moore, Jim Williams, James Peters, and Stanley Thompson.