Editorial: Analysis to continue
In this issue of Substance, we begin an ongoing analysis of the Chicago Board of Education’s $4.8 billion annual budget by stating some general problems with the budget and reporting some of the many critiques that were made of it during the budget hearings in mid-August.
In an era when budgetary “transparency” is supposed to inform both public and private financial reports, the Chicago Board of Education, under CEO Arne Duncan, has deliberately made the budget less and less accessible to the public over the past five years. Last year, for example, the budget was placed on a CD, making it impossible for most citizens to even read it without the assistance of a powerful computer.
Another example of the cynical mendacity with which the budget was created is the fact that last year, Duncan made lawyers (formerly called “attorneys”) disappear from the budget by simply changing the name of everyone who had been employed as an attorney in the Board’s massive Law Department (which fills the entire 7th floor at Board headquarters at 125 S. Clark St.). In addition to the mendacity that resulted in lawyers suddenly becoming “Officers” and “Senior Managers” (or, our favorite, “Team Leaders”), CPS has routinely covered up the additional cost of its contractual work from outside lawyers.
A system that employs an entire floor of lawyers and support staff should, the public might assume, have enough lawyers to negotiate its own labor contracts.
But not for CPS. Since Arne Duncan became “CEO” in July 2001, CPS has paid one outside law firm — Franczek Sullivan, PC — a total of $3.2 million to handle its union contracts. In this special edition of Substance, we offer just a few examples of why this analysis will take all year.
