Proctor: Frailey, Linebarger, Trustees and Consultants Part of ‘Good Old Boy’ System

COMPILED FROM NEWS REPORTS · JANUARY 23, 2012 · 12 COMMENTS
SCHOOLS NEWS · 

With possible action on a controversial proposal to award delinquent tax collection and tax office operation contacts on tonight’s school board agenda, one Katy ISD trustee described himself as “frustrated beyond words” over information apparently withheld from board members by the superintendent.

Over the weekend, Trustee Bill Proctor issued a statement saying Superintendent Alton Frailey withheld important information about ethical lapses by the firm he is recommending be awarded the multi-million dollar contracts.

Proctor also released a letter from Katy attorney Cormac Craven sent to Frailey last October outlining a lengthy list of ethical problems and criminal allegations against the firm of Linebarger, Goggin, Blair & Sampson in recent years. Proctor also said Frailey never provided board members with the lengthy attachments to the letter documenting those issues, as well as the findings of an inquiry Frailey promised Craven.

Despite a mounting list of ethical and criminal allegations against the Linebarger firm, Proctor said he was frustrated that Frailey appears to have tried to keep those allegations from trustees and the public.

“Every aspect of this situation bothers me,” Proctor said. “The superintendent has recommended a contract with Linebarger to be acted on (by) the board Monday night. He has consistently pushed this firm, even though the consultants said on Tuesday evening that there was virtually no difference between firms and did not make a recommendation.”
Proctor also noted the consultants said the school district “could not go wrong either way” during last week’s work study session.

In the weekend statement, Proctor also pointed out that former Katy ISD superintendent Leonard Merrell, shortly before his retirement, recommended the Linebarger firm to do the district’s delinquent tax collection. After his retirement, Merrell went to work as a consultant for the Linebarger firm. The same situation occurred in nearby Cy-Fair ISD with former superintendent Richard Berry.

Additionally, shortly after Frailey became superintendent of the DeSoto ISD, he recommended the board award that district’s delinquent tax collection to the Linebarger firm, Proctor noted. He called it a “good old boy” system.

“I feel like Terry Huckaby and I are the only members of the board concerned with maintaining ethics and integrity in our board decisions. The rest of the board, superintendent, our consultants, and Linebarger are part of a good old boy system and anyone who stands in their way will be run over,” Proctor said.

He also urged concerned residents to show up at tonight’s school board meeting.

Issues over the school district’s handling of proposals for delinquent tax collection and tax office operations have been simmering behind the scenes for several months, but the controversy erupted in public last week when Proctor and Trustee Terry Huckaby raised serious ethical questions about the handling of the procurement process.

Proctor and Huckaby challenged Frailey and the district’s consulting firm, Austin-based Gibson Consulting Group, over whether the process was unfairly skewed to favor the Linebarger firm of over Perdue, Brandon, Fielder, Collins & Mott.

Proctor challenged Frailey on whether he exceeded the authority given him by the board in preparing the request for proposals, saying trustees never authorized the superintendent to seek proposals for tax office operations.

Proctor also said trustees were never allowed to review the requests for proposals before they were distributed.

“We did not see the RFP. I feel like the administration took leave and exceed its authority,” Proctor said. “I’m extremely disappointed with the RFP and how it was written.”

Frailey bristled at the allegation he overstepped his authority, telling Proctor the matter had been discussed “at numerous meetings” and to “pretend it was a surprise was unacceptable.”

Huckaby agreed with Proctor, saying he only found out about the RFP after it had been distributed by the district. He also questioned whether the RFP for tax office operations was prepared in such a way as to give the Linebarger firm an unfair advantage.

“The only thing that was put in (the RFP) was what the superintendent wanted in it, not what the school board wanted,” Huckaby said. “We never had the opportunity to say so one way or the other.”

Proctor also challenged Gibson Consulting’s scoring of the proposals, particularly the firm’s evaluation of Linebarger’s ethics and reputation. He noted Linebarger had been sued some 30 times over tax issues, while Perdue had only one lawsuit filed against the firm. That single lawsuit was dismissed, Proctor noted.

“Yet you rate them the same on reputation of the firm,” Proctor told the consultants. “To me, that’s a big difference in these two firms.”

Proctor also noted several significant advantages of the Perdue proposal that appeared to have been ignored in the evaluation. While the Linebarger proposal offered its services for a fee of 20 percent of the total collected, the Perdue firm offered 20 percent “or what the board wants to negotiate,” Proctor pointed out.

He also said that while the Perdue proposal did not include tax office operations because of the appearance of a conflict of interest, the firm offered to pay the full cost of using the county for tax office operations for a full year. Linebarger made no such offer, Proctor said.

“That, to me, is a huge difference,” he told the consultants.

Proctor also took issue with the consultants using the number of employees as an evaluation factor. He said there was no correlation between employees and performance.
“That would be like us saying we’ve got more employees so we’re a better district,” Proctor said. “Scoring on the number of people makes no sense to me.”

He also said using the number of employees as a scoring factor gave Linebarger an unfair advantage from the outset.

“Going in, everybody knew the significant difference in the size of the two law firms,” Proctor said.

Huckaby also challenged the scoring of Linebarger’s reputation and ethics, noting that his online research found a multitude of complaints and incidents of alleged criminal activity by the firm. He noted that one Houston-based employee was found to be cashing checks the firm collected for taxing entities, while Linebarger personnel in Fort Worth and San Antonio had been involved in other instances of serious misconduct.

In one case, Huckaby noted Linebarger staffers were involved in a school district scandal in the San Antonio area that led to criminal indictments.

“It seems to me someone was given a definite directive on what firm should be recommended,” Huckaby told the consultants.

Huckaby also dropped what he called “another bombshell.” The trustee said he had evidence that someone within the district administration had leaked the Perdue firm’s confidential proposal to Linebarger in an apparent move to give that firm an advantage in landing the Katy contract.

“You want to talk about ethics? I don’t know who to trust,” Huckaby said.

Huckaby also said accepting the leaked Perdue proposal should disqualify Linebarger from further consideration.

12 Comments

lost my mind
JANUARY 23, 2012 AT 9:43 AM
Where does the majority of our BOT draw the line when it comes to Alton Frailey’s performance?
He intimidates employees, he calls anyone who disagrees with him village idiots, he openly disrespects BOT members, he has a cushy contract and for years was NEVER evaluated, the only employee in the district to earn this honor. He admitted, but only after being caught with his hands in the cookie jar the district violated federal election laws during the bond election, but no action was taken by our BOT.
Rest assured this is not the only good ole boy contract and not the only example of how he plays politics with our teachers, staff and the education of our children.
He imports assistant superintendents and creates jobs, one of which was to instill an IB program no one wanted but parents around Wolfe chose as the other option was to close their neighborhood school.
He tells us the district is broke and we need to lay off a few hundred teachers, note that none of HIS folks were let go, and today, the same broke district has an operating surplus and a padded bond to the extent there is enough money to build an entire elementary campus on just the savings. Many complained about the padding in the bond, but Frailey told all of us we needed every single dollar to take care of the items listed in the bond request.
He shoved the Astro turf fields, the score board, I. B. and other pet projects because it would make him look good.
It is time for him to GO!!!!!!!!!!!!! He should be fired for CAUSE and we should promote from within and save a few hundred K on the corrupt recruiting program we used to get Frailey which in itself is another good ole boy program times ten.
I am mad as hell and I hope the voters don’t take it anymore and bring two new faces to the BOT who can take the same approach to our money and the good ole boy network that Proctor and Huckaby are doing. Didn’t we elect three new voices???
Why aren’t these meeting being televised as promised?? The answer: the majority in power can’t afford for this to be a matter of the visual public record. I hope people start showing up to meetings and bringing video equipment to record this out of control behavior.
Just the facts

JANUARY 23, 2012 AT 10:12 AM
God Bless America, God bless us all, and God bless the work Bill Proctor and Terry Huckaby are undertaking.

Mary McGarr
JANUARY 23, 2012 AT 10:30 AM
Frailey is clearly causing problems for the entire Board. Good for Proctor and Huckaby for making those problems public.
We hear that Frailey is trying to get out of Dodge. Won’t someone PLEASE take him off our hands?
I’m still waiting to hear the results of the superintendent’s evaluation that was on the December Regular Agenda. That’s supposed to be made public. There is no indication of the vote anywhere that I can find. Guess one had to be there to hear it!
Did Frailey get his raise that’s built into his contract? Recall that last year he made certain that he had one before the announcement of “no money” was made and teachers were let go. We won’t find that out until someone does another Open Records Request.
The way to get rid of him is to stop extending his contract into perpetuity (5 years at a time), and stop giving him automatic raises. If the board did that, I think that he’d be out of here in a heartbeat because a vote of no-confidence (which is what that would be) by his board is worse than a curse for a superintendent when it comes to finding another job. Of course if he, like no one else in Katy, Texas, has job protection into the distant future, why SHOULD he leave? He can keep doing the same sloppy work and make a bundle. Nice work if you can get it.
I can’t imagine that the evaluation of Mr. Frailey’s performance last year was very good. It appears to me that he hops from one mess to the next all year round. If nothing else, in my opinion, he’s to blame for the incumbent members of the board losing their seats last year. That alone should have made their Board friends vote against giving him a “good” report.
And my next question is, “Does approval of the evaluation” mean that the board approved of his performance, or was the evaluation bad and they approved THAT?” Ah, words–they can mean so many things.

Old Katy Guy
JANUARY 23, 2012 AT 10:47 AM
Fire Ole Sneaky Fraley! He shows over and over he is of low ethical character. He is a con man only looking out for his own interests. KISD is not a high priority to him as he really has no roots in the community except for his paycheck and what he can get out of it.
Maybe the BOT will promote someone from within the district who has built it to the high standards that it is and has roots and a stake in this district and community. I would like to see Dr. Linda Menius as superintendent as she has worked her way all the way to her current position and has invested time and energy into making this one of the best districts in the area, and done so with honesty and integrity.
Fraley has done nothing except fall into his position and been shady about his actions while he has been here
Lets not forget about the firing of teachers for no good reason, the purchase of land for no good reasons, astro turf in a recession, Fraleys raise for no good reason, teachers having to purchase supplies with there own money (I doubt if Fraley has to worry about printer paper and ink toner to do his job) and now Fraley is not forthright and upfront in dealing with taxpayer business.
Fire him and maybe he will know how the teachers felt when they were fired.

ciri93
JANUARY 23, 2012 AT 12:03 PM
This garbage is part of the reason I haven’t gone to work for KISD. It’s the idea of either helping to fix the system from inside the district as an employee as opposed to being a board member. I am thinking the community as a whole might be better served if I ran for school board this spring and see if I could get elected to help out Proctor and Huckaby.

James Yaklin
JANUARY 23, 2012 AT 1:28 PM
The more I see the problems being caused by the school superintendent in Katy ISD (really across the State of Texas) the more I think it may be time to re-consider the way this position is filled and retained.
Several States of adopted the Missouri Plan as a method for selecting judges. This plan allows for the selection of judges in a independent and fair manner somewhat insulated from the political pressures that usually comes with this process. At the same time it has a component that allows the people to have a voice in the process as well.
The way it works is that an independent commission selects a slate of names for consideration to fill a judicial vacancy. The Governor of the State then selects a person of the list and appoints them. This person will serve for a term in the position and then will have to face a “Confidence” vote by the people. In this confidence vote the people are asked to vote to retain the judge or remove the judge. If the judge wins a vote of confidence they serve another term. If the judge wins a vote of No-Confidence they are removed from the office and the process starts over.
It seems that this plan would work very nicely for filling vacancies for the school superintendents. It allows for the Board of Trustees to select the superintendent. But then for the people to decide if the superintendent will be allowed to continue in the job or not.
Do you think Alton Frailey would survive a vote of confidence in Katy ISD if he were made to? I think the people would show up in droves to throw him out because he is incompetent and is evident to everyone except the Katy Kowards.
Just the facts

JANUARY 23, 2012 AT 1:36 PM
I understand the plan, but do NOT favor it in this case. How about we get 7 level headed persons on the board of trustees and allow them to select a person to lead the district. Then, beginning this past May and hopefully continuing their this May and next, fire those who can’t or won’t do the job?
I have no problem allowing Proctor and Huckaby and other like minded persons to select the superintendent.
Bottom line: We need a functioning and accountable BOT which takes its job seriously which is to set the tax rate, determine district policy, and closely SUPERVISE the superintendent.
If they do that, we are all in good shape.
Your frustration is justified.

Truth B Told
JANUARY 23, 2012 AT 5:46 PM
Truth is INK did a good article titled “Proctor, Frailey, Fox Clash Over Access to Service Bid Documents” dated 12/14/2011 #30898. Truth revisited this article and still has concerns.
“Frailey resisted the request citing confidentiality concerns and telling Proctor his request deviated from the district’s past practice.” Paragraph 3
Truth is once seen by Dr. Proctor, the RFP went above and beyond board guidelines.
“Frailey’s e-mailed response also strongly suggested Proctor has previously contacted the attorney general in regard to conflicts with the superintendent.” Paragraph # 9 What is the problem about getting clarifications from the AG? Why would a superintendent not follow the law and require a directive? The need for a “security guard” to watch Dr. Proctor is another concern.
Truth is the end of the article has the accusations by Ms. Fox where Fox said that Dr. Proctor was being a divisive presence. What is being divided? Following the duties of oversight and review by a trustee within the laws of the state of Texas is NOT DIVISIVE.
Truth is the personal attack of Proctor needs to be addressed. It was stated several times that the district is loosing $40K/month needs to be proven or completely withdrawal.
Truth is Ms. Fox owes Dr. Proctor a public apology for her now famous words, “Sometimes just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”
Truth is the current board needs to consider some additional policy issues.
Does ‘confidentially concerns” of the district prevent a trustee from doing their oversight duties? What if the district staff goes out or beyond the board’s directives?
If it is proven that district staff gave the Linebarger firm a copy of the Perdue proposal, what will happen to the employee[s]? Will the Linebarger proposal be sent to Perdue to even the playing field? Is this worthy of an AG’s investigation into this district’s past practices under the old trustees? Does a superintendent have the ability to deny a trustee access to legal contracts that involve the district’s business?
Truth is asking the AG’s office, TEA, TX Association of School Boards, and the Legislature for intent, opinion and clarification, is what school districts do, and do it often to make a strong, successful district. Exercising legal rights and performing trustees’ oversight duties should be appreciated by the Katy ISD voters.
At what point does “interfering in the duties of the district staff” happen?
Requiring a “security officer” to supervise a trustee needs to be addressed. Require it for all or withdraw this practice or policy.
Truth is Alton Frailey and Joe Adams owe a public apology to Dr. Proctor.
lost my mind

JANUARY 23, 2012 AT 10:18 PM
Fat chance of that happening!

determinedmom
JANUARY 23, 2012 AT 10:34 PM
To those at the meeting tonight….can I also whisper sweet nothings in Joe Adams ear before I speak publicly? LOL sorry could not resist. The public show of having several men speaking to him privately during public comments was a blatant show of something rotten in KISD tonight. When left to assume of things done in secret during a public meeting you have to ponder.

katymom4change
JANUARY 23, 2012 AT 11:23 PM
I so agree. For all those fighting tonight about the boundary modification, hopefully you got what you wanted One thing I did pick up is that KISD BOT have some ISSUES.

di
JANUARY 24, 2012 AT 8:16 AM
Is that even allowed, speaking privately during the open session of the board meeting? Seems like that should be some sort of violation