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Mum's the Word for Employees of Florida Department of Education
TALLAHASSEE -- Employees of the Department of Education office in charge of voucher programs are forbidden to speak with legislators, legislative staff or even governor's office staff without permission -- a rule instituted the day after the department began investigating a staffer's whistle-blower complaint.
Related Content
• Education employees told to keep quiet
• Official: State altered voucher school records
• Read The Post's coverage of the voucher plan
• Read the letter from the whistle-blower
• Voucher groups' answer: Who's asking?
A Palm Beach Post report of that complaint also prompted Sen. Ron Klein to write to the state attorney general Thursday, asking him to investigate the department and its handling of a program that gives corporations tax credits for the money they give to private nonprofit organizations that provide poor children with educational vouchers.
"We are concerned that the internal investigation now reportedly under way by the department's own inspector general may not be as impartial or as thorough in probing what has occurred with these funds," wrote Klein, D-Delray Beach.
The Education Department's Choice Office, which manages voucher and charter-school programs, is the subject of an internal investigation based on a whistle-blower's May 2 complaint alleging the alteration of official documents and an ensuing coverup. The investigation by the department's inspector general began May 29.
Employees 'free to speak'
According to a May 30 memo from the Choice Office's new director, Theresa Klebacha, "No one goes to or talks with staff or members at the Capitol, Governor's Office, press, etc., without prior approval" from her.
Education officials said this was to make sure the appropriate person conveyed the requested information, not to keep anyone from speaking.
"There is no gag order," said department spokeswoman Frances Marine.
And Larry Wood, the department's "chief operating officer," said any employee is free to speak to anyone, including the press, at any time.
"I would not punish someone for talking," he said.
That, though, is not the employees' understanding.
Laura Heiselman, a Choice Office employee contacted by The Post regarding the alteration of the official documents, said, "I can't discuss this with you."
Legislative staff members have found similar roadblocks. A staffer looking for specific information regarding financial aid called the Education Department employee with that particular expertise, but was told he was not allowed to talk about it.
And when the whistle-blower in the Choice Office, Robert Metty, accepted a Senate invitation to participate in a task force to investigate allegations of fraud and abuse in a voucher program for disabled children, supervisors removed him from the panel. The supervisors said he had no right to accept the Senate's invitation.
The person now on the task force, Alexandra Penn-Williams, did not have the direct contact with the issue that Metty did -- the reason the Senate solicited his help in the first place.
Senate President Jim King, R-Jacksonville, questioned the department's new policy.
"We're not in the business of building information barricades," King said. "For someone who works for the government to be told they can't talk to other people in government without approval is more oppressive than I think it should be."
Metty directed scholarship programs for the Choice Office until June 10. He filed a complaint May 2 accusing his subordinate, William Greiner, of cutting the bottoms off of faxed letters to disguise when the office received them and accusing Penn-Williams of trying to cover up Greiner's alleged action. The letters were the subject of a public records request by The Post.
Metty was transferred to a job in which he says he has nothing to do -- he is supposed to update a manual to conform with a federal law, but that law has not been written -- despite having invoked protection under the whistle-blower law.
The governor's inspector general found that Metty did not qualify for whistle-blower protection and referred the probe to the education department's inspector general.
The Post had requested the records as a follow-up to its April 23 story that the department had no idea which students or even which schools were receiving money under the corporate tax credit voucher program. It also did not know whether the teachers at those schools were certified or how well the students were doing.
At the time, the program cost the state $50 million a year. In the coming year, that amount will grow to $88 million.
Bush defends vouchers
Gov. Jeb Bush is now ultimately in charge of the Education Department, as a result of a 1998 constitutional amendment that took effect in January. That amendment turned what was an elected position, state education commissioner, into an an appointee of the governor, education secretary. Charlie Crist, now the state's attorney general, was the last elected education commissioner, and he held the position during the time that the corporate voucher program was being created.
Bush said Thursday he was not aware of Metty's complaint, but he defended the tax credit voucher program, based on the 16,000 students who receive the $3,500 vouchers.
"I think it's a proven success," he said.
Klein, the state Senate's Democratic leader, said Metty's complaint proved to him that even the one small record-keeping requirement in the law is too much for the Department of Education to handle.
"This is the basic problem, what's wrong with the corporate voucher program: There's no accountability," he said. "There's something wrong, and we need to get to the bottom of this."
— S. V. Date
Education staffers told to clam up
Palm Beach Post
July 11, 2003
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/auto/epaper/editions/friday/news_f3e0d361e68871aa00b2.html
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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