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Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts

Thursday, February 19, 2009

HARTFORD SCHOOLS BUDGET CUTS

More on this as I have time to put my thoughts together, but after reading and hearing about budget cuts and layoffs at the Hartford schools, it makes me wonder what the primary function of the Hartford school system is.

I may be over simplifying this, but I feel that job number one of any school system is educating its students. To that end, I also feel that the most important tool to achieving that is qualified teachers. Yet, here in Hartford we are laying teachers off while at the same time we are keeping the media people employed.If the numbers presented in Helen Ubinas' blog are accurate, which I believe they are, $219,000 is spent for two positions in the "Communications Department" for Nancy Benben and David Medina, both former Hartford Courant employees. In addition, Kelvin Roldan, a former Perez staffer and State Representative, was recently handed a $99,000 a year position with the school system, for what is any ones guess. There are many more positions that should be looked at before one teacher, guidance counselor or teacher's aid is laid off.

The business of the Hartford Schools should be educating students, not rewarding people beholding to Mayor Perez.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

HARTFORD: UNBELIEVABLE BUT TRUE



"RELAX, YOU'VE GOT MASTERCARD"


Just when I thought that the Perez Corruption scandal would give me plenty to stay occupied for a while, I received a call about an e-mail that was sent to all employee's in the City of Hartford's IT Department, Metro Hartford Information Services (MHIS). Apparently Eric Jackson, the Chief Information Officer for the City never received the word that the City of Hartford is in a budget crisis, and never saw the stories that we broke about the misuse of City of Hartford credit cards, known as "P" cards or purchasing cards.

Well, recently Jackson hosted two breakfast meetings for his staff, coffee, juice, bagels, muffins, all the trimmings and spared no expense. Relax, no problem, the City is paying for it on its credit card. Only one problem though, the person in purchasing who has now been forced to do their job because of all the scrutiny, rejected Jackson's charge card purchase as apparently not a valid use of the card. I guess there is hope for City Hall, isn't it amazing what a Grand Jury arrest warrant can cause.

So today, Jackson sent an e-mail to all of his staffers through his "Principal Administrative Analyst" Dawn Meucci requesting that they all kick in $10.00 to cover the cost of his mistake.

You can't make this stuff up, is any one capable of showing leadership and managing this city? Mr. Jackson has not returned my call for comment. Maybe Mayor Perez could collect from his staff to pay for those two airline tickets to Ireland.

Here is the e-mail:

Mhis Breakfast