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9486 in the collection
Florida Whistle-Blower Relieved of Duties
TALLAHASSEE -- The state Education Department tried to cover up lax oversight of a corporate tax credit voucher program that channels $88 million to private schools, a top department official has charged in a whistle-blower complaint.
The whistle-blower, Robert Metty, was relieved of his duties as director of scholarship programs for the Department of Education's Choice Office after complaining of a "conspiracy" to falsify records concerning the financial state of some schools receiving the vouchers.
Metty's new job is updating a manual to conform to a federal law that has not been written yet.
"I sit at my desk all day," Metty said in a recent interview. "I look out the window."
His $53,000 yearly salary, however, is unchanged.
Here's what Metty says prompted the complaint: On April 24, he and his boss at the time, J.C. Bowman, saw Choice Office employee William Greiner "cutting the bottoms off of several pieces of paper. When we inquired as to what he was doing, he stated he was cutting off the date stamp from the fax machine."
The documents were letters of "fiscal soundness" from some private schools that Greiner had just received by fax from Patrick Heffernan, the head of Miami-based Florida Child, one of the state's two largest groups responsible for collecting donations from corporations and disbursing that money as educational vouchers to the poor, Metty's complaint said.
With the date stamp missing, it is unclear whether the state had the letters in hand, as is required by law, before the schools began receiving the vouchers. The law requires a letter of fiscal soundness from an accountant or proof of an insurance policy from any school that has existed for less than one year before that school can get the state's approval to receive the tax credit vouchers.
It's also unclear whether the state had the letters before The Palm Beach Post began requesting copies of them in early April.
That uncertainty becomes another unanswerable question concerning the corporate tax voucher program. Which children get the vouchers? Which private schools? What sort of curriculum do the schools teach? Are their teachers certified? How well do the students do? Do the vouchers help the state save money, as originally promised?
The Department of Education doesn't know -- because that's how the law is written.
But according to Metty's May 2 complaint, the department has failed even to undertake what little oversight is required of it, and then tried to cover up that failure.
The same day Metty found Greiner cutting the faxes, he sent a flurry of e-mails to Greiner and Bowman asking Greiner for copies of the original faxes "without the bottoms cut off."
The next morning, a department official who reports directly to Education Commissioner Jim Horne called Metty into her office and directed him "to 'be discreet' regarding the falsified public records by sending no more e-mail messages about it," according to Metty's complaint.
Neither Horne nor his aide who met that morning with Metty, Alexandra Penn-Williams, would return phone calls.
The department's second in command, Larry Wood, said Metty was transferred "for the good of the office," but would not discuss the ongoing internal investigation prompted by Metty's complaint.
"It's not a disciplinary thing," Wood said.
Schools needed approval
As director of scholarship programs for the Choice Office, Metty believed that giving new schools approval to receive the tax-credit vouchers was his responsibility.
The Choice Office manages the various "school choice" programs in the state, including charter schools, vouchers for students in repeatedly failing schools, vouchers for students with disabilities and the tax credit vouchers.
The tax credits are taken by corporations -- a $1 reduction in corporate income tax for every $1 given for vouchers to private groups called "scholarship funding organizations." These organizations in turn are supposed to give the vouchers, which are worth as much as $3,500 per student, only to families eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. The total available for such tax credit vouchers this year was $50 million, and the legislature and governor this spring increased the amount to $88 million for the coming school year.
Metty, 34, said he has spent the better part of the past year trying to establish a database detailing use of the corporate tax vouchers to provide some accountability for the state's millions. His interpretation of the voucher law is that the state needs to verify eligibility of the participating students and schools.
"There's $50 million out there, and I don't know where it's gone," Metty said. "I can't name a student. I can't name a school. I can't name a student in a school."
The department's official position, however, is that the law does not authorize the state to know what students or schools are using the vouchers, or how well those students are being educated. Because of this, Metty says, he has been prevented from starting his database project several times -- most recently on June 5, when he believed he had the approval of the new Choice Office director, Theresa Klebacha, only to be shot down by department general counsel Daniel Woodring.
Woodring, who spent three years in Gov. Jeb Bush's legal office prior to moving to the Education Department last summer, did not return phone calls concerning this story.
The lack of state involvement is the way the proponents of the voucher program want it.
Tampa venture capitalist John Kirtley in 2000 gave Jim King, then the incoming Senate Majority Leader and now the chamber's president, a check for $100,000 in return for GOP legislators' support of his voucher plan, said Republican sources who spoke on the condition they not be named.
State campaign finance records indicate that Kirtley's $100,000 went into Republican Party coffers on Sept. 22, 2000.
Kirtley now heads the state's other large "scholarship funding organization," Tampa-based Florida Pride.
Lawmakers obliged in the spring of 2001, creating a plan with limited state involvement, leaving it to the private "scholarship funding organizations" to enforce the state's rules.
One of the few regulatory responsibilities left to the state is the "fiscal soundless" letter requirement.
It was as a result of a Palm Beach Post records request for these letters that Metty inadvertently learned that Greiner had been, according to Metty's whistle-blower complaint, "approving schools to participate in the program surreptitiously, without my knowledge or approval, and apparently also without supporting documentation."
'Soundness' letters sought
On April 23, The Palm Beach Post published a story saying the state was not tracking who was receiving the corporate vouchers or how well they were being educated. The newspaper on that day also renewed its request for copies of the financial-soundness letters.
Also on that same day, Greiner contacted Heffernan to get copies of his own e-mails giving schools approval to receive the tax credit vouchers, according to e-mails obtained by The Post under a public records request.
On April 24, Metty and Bowman walked in on Greiner and saw him cutting the bottoms off the fiscal soundness letters that Heffernan had just faxed to him, according to Metty's complaint.
Greiner, 33, was supposed to report to Metty. But according to Metty's memo, Greiner said he "had 'nothing to do' with the (corporate tax credit) program." After realizing Greiner's involvement, Metty sent the e-mails asking for the fiscal-soundness letters, but even then Greiner did not turn them over, instead answering only: "I have them."
Before coming to the Department of Education, Greiner worked for Bush's 1994 campaign for governor for six months and later for a Republican lobbyist and, in 1996, for GOP congressional candidate Bill Sutton. Since Metty filed his complaint, Greiner also has been moved from the Choice Office, but Wood, the department's second-in-command, said he did not know what Greiner's new assignment is. Greiner did not return phone calls for this story.
Bowman, the former Choice Office director, agrees Greiner did not have authority to grant the schools permission to receive the vouchers.
"He wasn't supposed to," said Bowman, who in early June moved from the Education Department to a job at Florida State University. "We were unaware that he was doing that."
Metty said what he saw April 24 leads him to believe the Department of Education had not collected the financial soundness letters until after The Post requested the records and that Greiner's action had the effect of disguising when the Choice Office received them.
Metty also said he believed a part of a coverup was the directive by Penn-Williams, the department's executive director of independent education, on April 25 to stop sending interoffice e-mails regarding the letters.
"It is my belief that Mr. Greiner has committed a first-degree misdemeanor in falsifying documents for a public records request. It is also my belief that Mr. Greiner and Ms. Penn-Williams are engaged in a conspiracy to coverup this misdemeanor. It is my further belief that Ms. Penn-Williams has solicited my participation in the conspiracy," Metty wrote.
Metty closed his three-page May 2 memo: "I wish no part of this conspiracy. Therefore, I am making this report per the provisions of (the whistle-blower's statute) and invoking the protections of the same."
Whistle-blower role denied
The whistle-blower statute states: "An agency or independent contractor shall not dismiss, discipline, or take any other adverse personnel action against an employee for disclosing information pursuant to the provisions of this section."
However, a June 12 letter from the governor's Inspector General's Office said that the alleged wrongdoing in Metty's memo did not rise to the standard necessary for Metty to be afforded whistle-blower status. Chief Inspector General Derry Harper wrote Metty that his concerns were still "considered serious" and would be referred to the Department of Education's inspector general.
Neither Penn-Williams nor Horne returned phone calls for this story. Horne did write The Post a letter in response to the April 23 story, saying, "While the law does not require the Department of Education to track voucher data, we do keep records on the program. ... Since this program has been in practice for less than a full year, the information is not yet complete."
Horne, however, has not provided any records, and Metty said the department kept no such records.
Department spokeswoman Frances Marine said the department's inspector general began his probe May 29 and likely would need 60 days to finish. She said the department would not discuss the case until then.
Metty said that he was transferred from his job to his current assignment on June 10 -- when he refused to give his approval to a list of private schools participating in the corporate tax credit voucher program. The list had been assembled by Greiner based solely on lists submitted by the scholarship funding organizations, Metty said, and had not been checked by anyone within the Education Department.
Marine said she did not know specifics about the list or why Metty had been prevented from compiling a database about the voucher program participants, but she said the department was abiding by the law.
"The Department of Education," she said, "has been and is in full compliance with this statute."
— S.V. Date
Official: State altered voucher school records
Palm Beach Post
July 10, 2003
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/auto/epaper/editions/thursday/news_f3c02ec5168bc07900bf.html
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