Things got down and dirty in Kyle last week when parents lashed out at certain former Hays Consolidated ISD trustees and officials over seemingly extravagant travel expenses. Not to be outdone, the objects of the parents’ ire — one of whom is the front-runner for a board seat May 3 — fired back with charges of dirty politicking designed to cripple their candidate.
The current dustup began in February, when a $104.5 million Hays CISD bond measure was defeated 2-to-1 at the polls — a victory for a political action committee called Citizens for Responsible Education, which chastised the current Hays trustees as poor stewards of tax dollars. Among CFRE’s members are former board President Bryce Bales and VP Tommy Sergeant, as well as former Hays CISD business manager Joe Graham, now a candidate for one of two board seats up for grabs Saturday. But according to John Hatch — a political consultant, parent of three, and supporter of the pro-bond PAC Citizens for Better Schools — the members of CFRE are attempting a grand-scale subterfuge to bully their way back into power.
Indeed, according to Hatch and CFBS Treasurer Gene Lusby, it is Graham and his cronies that are the real fiscal absconders. Through an open-records request, CFBS obtained a copy of the travel expenses incurred by Graham, Bales, Sergeant, and other Hays officials (and a couple spouses) during 1996 and 1997 trips to New York for bond sales — expenses ultimately paid by Hays taxpayers out of bond proceeds. In two separate trips to the Big Apple, 17 Hays reps in all spent more than $41,000 in tax money for expenses — including limousine rides, Broadway plays, a Yankees game, and accommodations at the Helmsley Park Lane Hotel — during their effort to sell just over $45 million in bonds.
In contrast, current trustees sold more than $89 million after a 2001 New York trip involving just five Hays reps and $9,500 in expenses. “The anti-bond group kept saying that the current school board could not be trusted with safeguarding our tax dollars,” Lusby said at a press conference April 23. “[T]heir own record now reveals a history of wasteful spending and frivolous expenses.”
The reaction was swift; on April 24 Bales issued a press release of his own, defending candidate Graham. None of the CFRE members were given any advance notice of the press conference, Bales said, noting that Hatch has been a paid consultant for incumbent board member David Wiley, whom Graham is hoping to unseat. Bales wrote that he and his colleagues had gone to New York on the advice of the district’s financial advisor — “We have not seen the costs that we allegedly incurred. Whatever the financial advisor decided to spend for the trip was not a concern of the district.” For his part, Graham dismissed the new allegations as mere political posturing. “Actually I think there’s not that much to it,” he said. “It’s a shame that politics would come up in this forum.”
This article appears in May 2 • 2003.