All is quiet on the news front as Hamblen County Commissioners prepare to select a replacement for Joe Swann in the 5th District. I haven't seen any news in the Tribune about those who are interested in the position.
[Swann was elected to the county commission in 2006 but resigned in April 2009 to take a position on the Hamblen County Election Commission---a post he said that he had always wanted. ]
At least two individuals have apparently expressed an interest in the appointment to take Joe's place. Louis "Doe" (sp?) Jarvis is interested in the position as is Ernie Horner. I don't believe Mr. Jarvis has ever run for office---which should be a plus.
Ernie Horner, on the other hand, is a politician and longtime school board member. He was chairman of the Hamblen County School Board during the last school building program. As a teacher at West View Middle in an "open" classroom, I supported school renovations and improvements in 1997-1998.
The problems in the building program that surfaced later were brought about by a school board that took $35 million dollars for a needed building program and wrote up contracts that permitted conflicts of interest, that wasted money paying people to manage themselves, and that even paid the construction managers "fee on fees." While my support of the building program was well-documented, I spoke up to oppose the conflicts of interest and fees on dees and that's when the personal attacks began.
When you are confident in what you are doing, political and even personal attacks don't matter much and don't really faze you. I started out trying to use logic and common sense with the local school board. That was a waste of time. When that didn't work, I went straight to the State Comptroller and ended up getting state law changed to address the conflicts and craziness of paying people to manage themselves.
Yes, I remember several things about Ernie and the 1998 school building program.
I remember that Ernie didn't see a conflict of interest in paying someone under one a construction contract to build a school and then paying them a second time under a construction management contract to manage their own construction work.
Ernie also thought it was OK to pay a construction manager a 4% fee plus a little bonus "fee on a fee." Back in 1998 when the school board hired construction managers, the contracts said that the managers would get a fixed fee of 4% of the estimated cost of each project. But those same contracts miscalculated the fixed fee.
When it came time to pay the managers, Ernie and the school board ended up paying the 4% fee of estimated costs and then kicked in an additional 4% of the 4% fee. When you're talking about millions of dollars of construction, paying an extra 4% of the contractual 4% fee meant that tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars were wasted--money that could have been spent on schools went to managers as a bonus for the difficult job of largely managing themselves!
Another thing I remember about Ernie is a press conference he called in November 1999 right after I first raised questions about Hamblen County School Construction Managers being paid to build schools and also being paid to manage themselves. The board always hated the term "paying people to manage themselves" but that's what happens when you allow a conflict of interest.
[I also had questioned the illegal West High Baseball Stadium bidding where an advertisement for bids ran in the local paper, but potential bidders--all except the firm that was the only bidder--were told by the architect that there were no plans. Later it was discovered that the "plans" that the one bidder had been allowed to have were stamped with the same date as the bid date. With the West High Baseball Stadium bidding, Ernie had to admit that the school board had made a "mistake" but then came the spin explaining that it was a really good bid and no one could have bid lower even if there had been one of those silly old, time-consuming, legal and competitive biddings.]
When Ernie tackled the sticky question of construction managers getting 17-18 no-bid contracts and being paid to build schools while they were also paid a management fee to manage their own construction work, Ernie proudly announced that the School Board's attorney Scott Reams had reviewed everything and had given everything his seal of approval. Ernie even had a letter from the attorney to back him up. When Ernie was asked to provide the Reams letter that presumably supported the board's version of construction management and paying people to manage themselves, Ernie claimed that the letter was attorney client privileged. In other words, Ernie would TELL you his version of what Reams said, but Ernie would NOT let anyone see the actual letter.
A Judge later ruled that the letter was attorney-client privileged communication, but the question always remained as to why Ernie would "use" the letter to say everything was OK but would not agree to release the letter. The attorney-client privilege can be waived, but the School Board voted unanimously to keep secret what its attorney really said about the construction management arrangement.
If you are a School Board member who has a legal opinion that says that what you have done is on the up-and-up, wouldn't you want people to see that opinion? Even if you could hide the opinion behind attorney-client privilege, why would you do that? Government attorneys give opinions all the time--sometimes publicly in meetings and sometimes in writing at the request of a government official. Most of those written opinions are public record. And the opinion is made public---especially if it actually supports the opinion or actions of the requester.
Just about everybody--except those involved--knew that paying people hundreds of thousands of dollars to manage themselves didn't pass the smell test and at that time the question of paying a "fee on a fee" was not even being discussed.
Ernie left the School Board in September 2002--but I believe he was still around in the summer of 2002 when the state legislature unanimously passed a clarification to the school construction management law that made it clear to the Hamblen County School Board --and to any other Board that might have been thinking of the same thing--that you can't use public dollars to pay people to manage themselves.
The clarification of the law came about after I had gotten tired of talking to the Board and had gone to the State Comptroller's Office in August 2001 to explain exactly what was going on in Hamblen County. At the beginning of the very next legislative session, the Comptroller introduced the clarification that stopped the sham no-bid construction contracts and the paid self-management that was taking place in Hamblen County (paying people to manage themselves!). The legislative vote was unanimous. The Hamblen County School Board didn't see a problem but every legislator in the state did--including the state representative and state senator for Hamblen County!
Ernie was also closely involved with the dismissal of former superintendent Sam Shepherd and the confusion surrounding the handling of the evaluations of Dr. Shepherd.
As I recall, Ernie moved out of the school board district (13/14) that he represented before his term was up but did not resign his school board seat.
I can just imagine the behind-the-scenes deals and contracts that Ernie will engineer or be involved in if he is appointed to serve on the county commission. Time will tell if there are commissioners who have forgotten or simply don't care about these and other things that Ernie has been involved in.
Of course, everything may change between now and Thursday. We'll just have to wait and see who ends up being nominated and who ends up getting the appointment.
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