Integrity in the PG County School System

Integrity in School System.  This episode discusses a bill which would establish an independent Office of Integrity and Compliance for the Prince George's County School System.

Transcript

Tamara Davis Brown: 0:03

Hi, welcome to another episode of All Politics is Local, the Maryland edition, with me, your host, Tamara Davis Brown. Again, today we're going to be speaking on local Prince George's County bills. These are bills that have been introduced by the Prince George's County delegation in the Maryland General Assembly. And as I mentioned before, I just want to make sure that I explain this to you so that you fully understand. So the Maryland General Assembly obviously is our state legislature here in the state of Maryland, and it's made up of delegations. The delegations basically comprise of the various counties in the state of Maryland. So I happen to live in Prince George's County, so I'm following mostly the Prince George's County House delegation. However, there are some bills that we have are what they call bi-county bills because we share a couple of agencies with Montgomery County. And there are some local bills that deal with Montgomery County and Prince George's County. So for example, the Washington Sanitary Suburban Commission, what we know as WSSC that provides our water and sewer, serves both Prince George's County and Montgomery County. And there's a local bill that pertains to that. Second, there are three local bills for the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, which involves our parks and rec facilities and amenities for both Prince George's County and Montgomery County. And there are three local bills that have been introduced for Prince George's and Montgomery County that relate to those two jurisdictions. But today I'm going to, this in this episode, we're going to discuss just a local bill for Prince George's County that involves the Prince George's County Public Schools. And that bill is PG 50-23. It is entitled the Prince George's County Public Schools Office of Integrity and Compliance, and actually creating the establishment of this office. It was introduced by Delegate Alonzo Washington, who is the delegate in District 22. He has actually been asked or put his name in, and the Prince George's County Democratic Central Committee has recommended that he become the next senator for District 22. And that is because the current Senator Paul Pinski has been tapped by our new governor, Wesmore, to be the Maryland Energy Secretary. So, Delegate Washington, although this is his bill and he's been working on this bill, he is most likely going to be appointed by the governor as the new senator for District 22. I love Delegate Washington. He has some very common sense bills that I like to support. In fact, I supported his bill not only during the public hearing back on January 3rd, but I just testified in support of this bill before the education subcommittee of Prince George's County delegation. And so this bill, in summary, it establishes an office of integrity and compliance within the Prince George's County Public School System. The office will be responsible for investigating all allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse independent of the school board or the board of education, the superintendent and CEO, and the school system. So I'm going to repeat that. And what's different is that there's currently an office of internal ethics, internal investigations. And this office would be independent of anything related to the school board. So they don't adhere and answer to the superintendent and CEO. They would not adhere to and be uh answer to the school board or the school system itself. It's an independent office. And so that's why I personally like the bill and support the bill. Like similar offices in Prince George's County and around the state, this office, the Office of Integrity and Compliance, will have investigatory powers. It will have the power to subpoena and compel witnesses to testify. It will also have the power to ask for a production of evidence or documents, to turn over documents as well. To ensure that the office will have a functioning staff, this new office will absorb the functions, powers, duties, and some of the employees of the Prince George's County Public School System Office of Internal Audit. So that's the office that I was referring to earlier. Currently, the Prince George's County Public School System has an office of internal audit, but they are beholden to and must adhere to whatever the whims are of the Board of Education, the superintendent of schools, and anyone in the public school system. We want to bring that internal audit office out and make it an independent body that is more accountable to us as residents, to us as taxpayers, and make sure that there's no waste, fraud, and abuse within the Prince George's County school system. You should know that this legislation has actually been introduced by delegate uh Washington in previous years. It's actually passed the House delegation and the full House of Delegates in 2019, but did not pass the other chamber. Remember, we have to get past both chambers as well as get it signed by the governor. Um the new office also was included in a Board of Education workgroup that the Prince George's County House delegation established last year. They actually recommended it. So this is some resulting legislation. We're hoping that this time the bill will pass. I think we all are. I think we're all exhausted with uh negative news about something happening and occurring in Prince George's County school system. And so hopefully this independent office of integrity and compliance will help address some of those issues. But there's been numerous high-profile cases of waste, fraud, and abuse in the school system. And we've seen it plastered all over the news media. Um, but we hope to dramatically reduce the amount of our tax dollars that are being wasted, that's being mishandled, misused, mismanaged with this office. And we hope to bring some integrity to the school system by having this independent office that's not necessarily beholden to any particular person, whether it's the superintendent or CEO or the school board, but really answerable to us as residents of Prince George's County. So that's why I really like this bill. There, as I mentioned, there have been numerous cases, and I'm not going to go into go over those, those cases and controversies that involve the school system. They've been plastered all over the news. You can just put in and do a search on the internet for Prince George's County public school system, and you'll see a lot of stuff pop up. But we're hoping that because there is going to be an influx of funds into Prince George's County public schools as a result of the Maryland Blueprint for Education, which is the seminal legislation to help close the education gap from those who are really struggling to meet basic reading and math statistics and scores to those students who are just excelling. The blueprint for education hopes to close those gaps. And to do that, there's going to be an influx of money. And we're talking billions of dollars into the Prince George's County school system as well as the Baltimore County School System, Baltimore City schools as well, in order to help try to close those education gaps. And we just want those funds to be used exactly what they're being allocated for and get down to the classroom and really help those students who are struggling and in need. So that's one of the that's one of the main reasons that we want to make sure that we have this office in place. The second reason, also monetarily, is that Prince George's County is the first school system in the nation that has a P3 uh public-private partnership for the construction of several new schools. There are, I believe, eight new schools under construction under the P3 partnership, and about six more are about to come online. Therefore, again, a lot of construction dollars, we're talking millions, if not billions of dollars in construction cost over the next few years. And it's it's so easy uh for a contractor, for a person, subcontractor, to try to pad bills, uh, make the bills costs more than what they really should. And therefore, this bill uh will hope to, this office will hope to oversee those type of construction contracts. So with those uh large construction dollars that are coming from the P3 construction projects to build uh that are currently uh ongoing with the eight new schools and the additional uh six more schools, we know that there is a possibility that again, bills could be padded, contracts could be take longer than necessary. And so we want to make sure that we have this office in place to be that independent overseer, if you will, of any of the funds that are are going out toward school construction, toward any operational cost in the Prince George's County public school system. So again, uh current delegate Alonzo Washington is our sponsor. So if you live in District 22 and you support his bill, we definitely want you to write and support the bill. The good news is, as I mentioned, uh I just testified at the education subcommittee in the House delegation. And the good news is that after that testimony, the education subcommittee and the House Prince George's County House delegation actually took a vote to support the bill. So the now, the next step for that particular bill, and this is how all local bills work, once you go through your own local subcommittees, then the full vote again goes through the Prince George's County House delegation. So we anticipate the next time that the House, Prince George's County House delegation meets, they will vote on this bill and then it will go to the education committee of the full house. So it has a few little more steps, and maybe I'll uh talk a little bit more. And let me just do that right now because actually that bill is the last that's going to be part of this episode. But just for clarity's sake, want to let you know that if you have local bills, they have an extra process to go through. So the local bills, again, they only affect the county in which those local bills are introduced. So if it's a bill by Montgomery County, it only affects Montgomery County residents. If it's a bill in Talbot County, it only affects residents in Talbot, Eastern Shore. If it's a bill in Calvert County, again, same thing, St. Mary's. So they have an extra layer of steps to go through. So they go through their subcommittees from each of the delegations, then they get voted out of those delegations, and then they go to the various committees on the House side. And then once they vote out, they go onto the floor for a full vote and send over to the Senate for a full vote. So as you can see, it can be a pretty quick process. And we're talking again, we have only a 90-day process in the state of Maryland to get all of these bills heard, voted on, made to the to the next committee, the next level, to the full House floor, voted on, and then switched over what they call crossover to the Senate side. So that's how those local bills work in the state of Maryland. And so with that, if you support bringing integrity and compliance and having an independent office, I would love for you to reach out to your local Prince George's County legislators to let them know that you support PG 501-23. And one final note that I'll say once these bills actually are voted out of delegation, they actually get new bill numbers because they're local bills right now. They have the name of the county, the initial of the county. So PG for Prince George's County and the bill number, and then the dash is the year. So once these come out, and what we'll do in our story notes is we'll follow the bills and we'll let you know what the new bill numbers are associated with that. So you can continue to follow those bills yourself. So thank you for joining me for this episode of All Politics is Local, the Maryland edition with me, Tamara Davis Brown. We're going to come back and talk about a few more bills that are still local, that are important for you to know about and for your legislators to hear from you about. Remember, this podcast, the purpose of this podcast is not only to educate and inform you, but to keep your legislative officials accountable. It's going beyond what you do at the ballot box. Voting is good, but you need to take that step further to get some actual action in your community, in your county, and in your state. So thanks for joining me. We look forward to having you back and continue to help spread the word, particularly to our millennials and newer generation who really do actually listen to podcasts and let them know that they can they too can get involved and be a part of the solution in helping to bring and improve their quality of life. Thanks for joining me, and I look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks for joining me today on this episode of All Politics is local, the Maryland edition, where we hope to inspire and activate a new generation of informed voters to move beyond the ballot box and take action. Remember, all politics is local.