Houston ISD audit report on alleged threat raises more questions about 'how things operate around here'

Story after story has come out in recent weeks raising questions about how the Houston school district conducts business: Contracts going to friends of trustees; a trustee helping an acquaintance get a six-figure no-bid contract; even questions about why the district paid as much as it did for groundskeeping at schools.

The latest one to come out is perhaps the most shocking: A businessman representing contractors is accused of threatening the job of a top school district administrator if things didn’t go the contractor’s way.

Or, as it was alleged, if that administrator didn’t “figure out how things operate around here.”   

The businessman, Earl Jimmison, told Texas Watchdog he never said it. The school system’s head of facilities maintenance says Jimmison did say it. And the school district’s inspector general’s office found that Jimmison likely did say it, though no one has undeniable proof of it.

The allegation that someone doing business with the school district would suggest they could have an Houston Independent School District official canned likely won’t help the tarnished image the Houston schools’ business practices have gained in recent months — such as the Houston Chronicle‘s editorial board recently decrying “cronies and contracts” — though, in the end, the businessman didn’t get what he wanted, several hundred thousand taxpayer dollars were saved, and no one at HISD lost their jobs.

But the inspector general’s report into the allegation against Jimmison also raises other questions about the school district’s operations.

• It says Jimmison works as a consultant helping firms get business with Houston ISD, while also having ties to HISD Trustee Larry Marshall, including serving as a paid staffer on Marshall’s 2009 re-election campaign. Marshall has been under fire in recent weeks for setting the stage for an acquaintance, Dr. Kenneth Wells, to get a no-bid consulting contract from the district worth up to $640,000. Jimmison has also been serving on two school district committees, the Superintendent’s Public Engagement Committee and the District Advisory Committee. 

• It includes an allegation by a high-ranking school district supervisor that a contractor had been hired by the school system to replace school heating-and-air-conditioning filters in 2009 only because an unnamed school board member arranged for them to get the job. Two district auditors reviewed the contract records, however, and said school officials were in the right to allow the contractor to lower its bid by nearly 50% months after the school board had signed off on the contract.

• The report indicates HISD employees are communicating off-the-record with vendors and contractors about doing business with the school district — something the school system has tried to stop through means such as the “code of silence” rule — as Jimmison had inside information about the air filter contract that people outside HISD weren’t supposed to have. 

And, if Jimmison said what he was accused of saying, it suggests that HISD employees’ efforts to save the district big bucks were met with resistance by plugged-in vendors — or their representatives — who tried to pull rank when faced with losing out on lucrative contracts.

“It’s not the truth,” said Jimmison, who spoke with Texas Watchdog briefly, but emphasized that he was preparing a formal, written rebuttal to the school district. He said the report that was issued was “full of inaccuracies,” and said he submitted a formal rebuttal to the IG’s report yesterday.

“I’m going through the proper channels to make sure I clear my name,” he said. “That’s the only way to do business.”

NOT-SO- ’WONDERFUL RELATIONSHIP’

The allegation of the job threat came from Scott Lazar, HISD’s head of facilities maintenance.

Lazar, who did not return a phone message for this story, told district auditors that he sat down next to Jimmison at a crowded March school board meeting, and Jimmison began discussing the air filters.

HISD officials, including Lazar and his boss, Issa Dadoush, had previously decided the district should change the way the filters were replaced at Houston’s roughly 300 schools.

For the past several years, HISD had outsourced changing the air filters to a handful of contractors, which cost about $950,000 a year. Lazar, Dadoush and other officials estimated they could have HISD’s own employees change the filters for about $300,000 a year. They decided not to outsource the work again when the contracts came up for renewal this year.

Lazar said Jimmison began trying to convince him that continuing to outsource the air filter work was the best money-saving plan for the district, the auditors wrote.

Jimmison, in turn, was representing Stafford-based Glennlock Construction, owned by former Houston Texans Pro Bowl defensive back Aaron Glenn and sports agent Jason Medlock. The two men gave $10,000 to Marshall’s campaign in 2009. Someone from the firm appeared to have called a Texas Watchdog reporter’s cellphone and desk phone yesterday in response to a phone message seeking comment, but did not return additional phone messages after that.

Glennlock was one of the companies to which the air filter work had been outsourced. If the district did the work in-house, Glennlock and other firms would lose that business. Jimmison had earlier represented another firm that also bid on the air filter contract, Dixie Hardware, auditors wrote.

Lazar said he told Jimmison the decision had been made: HISD would doing the work in-house. No more outsourcing.

“He then commented that if Issa doesn’t figure out how things operate around here, he will be out before the contract is up,” Lazar wrote in an e-mail to Dadoush. “I did not respond at that point, got up and proceeded to move to another seat.”

Jimmison told the auditors he didn’t threaten Dadoush’s job. Jimmison “said he simply wanted to share the pros and cons of providing in-house preventative maintenance versus outsourcing the work,” auditors wrote. “He said when Mr. Lazar got up and left, that (Jimmison) thought (Lazar) left because (Jimmison) was ‘talking too much’ and thus ‘annoying’ him. He was not aware that anything he said had offended Mr. Lazar.”

Lazar wasn’t exactly a fan of Jimmison when this happened, the auditors said.

“Although he could not identify specific incidents, Mr. Lazar stated Mr. Jimmison is known to be harassing, has never operated ethically, and uses political ties to obtain his goals,” Moore wrote. Lazar “said he believes Mr. Jimmison has ties to several HISD board members and uses ‘name dropping’ to influence district contracts.”

Later, Lazar told an auditor, “in his opinion, people like this should not be doing business with HISD.”

On the other hand, Jimmison said he thought he and Lazar had a “wonderful relationship,” an auditor wrote. And one of Lazar’s colleagues, Brian Busby, called Jimmison “soft-spoken” an “minister-like.”

THE CONSULTANT

Jimmison’s firm is Cornerball Sports Marketing, sometimes called Cornerball Sports Consulting.

Cornerball “is designed to develop partnerships between large and small community businesses and local universities’ athletic programs,” according to the firm’s website, which also says the company has done work for two of the Houston area’s largest historically black universities, Texas Southern University and Prairie View A&M.

Jimmison was also once on the basketball coaching staff at TSU, according to a Chronicle story from the mid-1990s. He is now on the board of directors of the nonprofit Touchdown Club of Houston.

But Jimmison’s firm does work outside of sports as well.

“He helps minority entities obtain business and navigate through large entities such as HISD,” an auditor wrote after interviewing Jimmison.

Jimmison taught in HISD for two years and then worked five years for what is now Dadoush’s department, in the risk and compilance unit.

“Mr. Jimmison feels he has extensive knowledge in the workings of HISD,” the auditor said. “His knowledge allows him to serve (as) a consultant for companies wanting to do business with HISD, but do not know how to maneuver through the system. He assists his clients in various areas including the RFP/bidding process and project management.”

Jimmison also told the auditors that he is “passionate” about the air filter contracts “because during his employment with HISD, teachers would always complain about mold and lack of fresh air.”

HISD records show Marshall paid Jimmison and Cornerball nearly $6,500 in fall 2009, when Marshall was last up for re-election, for campaign work.

In addition to his ties to Marshall, the inspector general’s report says Jimmison learned he was under investigation from another school board member.

“Mr. Jimmison stated HISD Board President Paula Harris called to inform him of the allegation,” an auditor wrote.

But Jimmison told Texas Watchdog that’s not the case.

“She did not call me. I called her,” Jimmison said. He had phoned Harris to talk to her about an issue she was dealing with in the HISD area Harris represents, District IV.

“That’s when she told me I was under investigation,” Jimmison said. “Until she told me, I had no idea.”

Harris did not return two phone messages last week requesting comment.

An HISD spokesman did not respond to an e-mail message Friday afternoon inquiring who had sought to appoint Jimmison to the two district committees and whether that person knew Jimmison was in the business of helping companies do work with HISD.

Two HISD construction auditors signed the May 18 report, which stated a preponderance of evidence supported Lazar’s contention that Jimmison threatened Dadoush’s job.

“The report was very clear what they’re findings were, so we’re satisfied,” Dadoush told Texas Watchdog. “Scott Lazar is an incredibly honest man. At the end of the day, the contract was not renewed. We feel very strongly that we made the sound decision” by saving HISD $700,000, he said.

“Any threat by any vendor to any of our staff members will not tolerated. Period,” said Dadoush, who previously served as head of General Services for the city of Houston.

He added that it was up to HISD Inspector General Robert Moore to impose any sanctions on Jimmison.

But Jimmison calls it ridiculous that he would knowingly violate regulations that he helped enforce during his five years as manager of policy and employee compliance for facility maintenance, operations and transportation.

“Now they’re saying I’m breaking the rules that I used to make sure everyone else complied with?” Jimmison asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”

He questioned why it took Lazar more than two weeks to report the alleged threat to Dadoush, a delay the auditors noted and admonished him for. Jimmison also thought it unfair that he had to file a state public information act request with the district before he could be provided a copy of the investigation about him.

CONTRACTOR SELECTION QUESTIONED

The audit also includes allegations that a school board member helped Jimmison’s clients get a piece of the original air filter replacement contract, and that the school district allowed the firm to change its proposal once bids were opened. The inspector general’s office ruled these allegations unfounded.

Four firms, including Jimmison’s clients Glennlock, had been doing air filter work for the school district starting in 2009, the auditors wrote.

Lazar told the auditors that, while he had not been involved in the bidding process for the previous air filter work, “Glennlock was not originally selected as a vendor because their costs were substantially higher than other bids submitted. (Lazar) said Glennlock was added after the fact and someone was ‘told’ to select them.”

The auditors wrote, “Mr. Lazar said his understanding is that Glennlock was later added by the direction of an HISD board Member. Mr. Lazar did not have knowledge of any additional details or the identity of the Board Member.”

In a follow-up interview, he told the auditors that the official who had handled the matter initially “was frustrated with the initial contract selection.”

He said “Mr. Jimmison’s cilent, Glennlock, was not originally selected because their pricing was too high. Mr. Lazar said about a month or two after the intial vendors were selected, (the official) was instructed to add Glennlock. Mr. Lazar said he did not know who told (the official) to add Glennlock.”

HISD documents included as exhibits with the inspector general’s report appear to show Glennlock proposed a cost that was fourth-highest of five firms that sought the air filter work — a yearly service cost for its 47 assigned schools of $336,524.04, which was more than twice the lowest proposal from, Strategic Filtration. Pricing was supposed to count for slightly more than half of the overall ranking each firm received.

Elsewhere, the auditors wrote, “The documents show that as of May 1, 2009 the Glennlock and” American Mechanical Systems “pricing was substantially close to double submitted by each of the other three vendors, at $270,279.20 and $390,751.00, respectively.”

But in June 2009, school district officials allowed Glennlock to change its bid to a flat $175,000, records show. Glennlock was ranked second in the running for the firms to be chosen for the contract.

The change caught the attention of one of the auditors probing Jimmison’s alleged threat: If the school board voted in February 2009 to approve the contract, “why was there negotiations taking place in May and June 2009?” they asked of Travis Stanford, an HISD senior project manager. “

The school board had merely voted on proposals for labor and the costs of materials, Stanford told the auditor. After that, the vendors visited each campus to count how many filters were needed of each type, and they were then allowed to negotiate their prices with the school district via e-mail.

“He stated the reason for completing the process in this matter was because in the past vendors were assigned a scope of work and when the vendors visited the campuses, they would routinely submit change orders indicating there were more filters on the campus than expected,” an auditor wrote.

Based on that, the auditors said the hiring of Glennlock was kosher: “This vendor was awarded the bid because it was among the vendors providing the best value to the district.”

INFORMATION LEAKS

But there was one other issue: Jimmison really wasn’t supposed to even know that HISD was planning to replace its own air filters, the auditors wrote.

Jimmison and officials with Johnson Controls “knew of the planned change” before the vendors were supposed to be formally notified — and they knew about even before the school board knew about it, the auditors wrote. Johnson Controls, a major national firm, called HISD to offer to sell air filters for the new in-house program, Lazar said.

Lazar told the auditors he thought Jimmison and Johnson Controls’ reps found out about the change through “word of mouth.”

The school district last year began imposing a silent period around contracts being issued, during which school officials aren’t supposed to communicate with the people and companies trying to get those contracts. But recent news reports said Harris travelled to Italy earlier this year during such a silent period with a close friend who is also an HISD vendor.

Technically, however, because the change in how HISD replaces air filters didn’t involve a new contract being issued, the “code of silence” period would not have applied to the air filter situation, the auditors wrote.

Still, they recommended that Dadoush’s department “ensure administrative procedures are in place regarding confidentiality of information.”

***
Contact Mike Cronin at mike@texaswatchdog.org or 713-228-2850. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelccronin or @texaswatchdog. Contact Jennifer Peebles at 281-656-1681 or jennifer@texaswatchdog.org. Follow her on Twitter at @jpeebles or @texaswatchdog.

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Photo: A MERV-8 filter for a heating and air conditioning unit. Some of the filters to be replaced at HISD schools are MERV-8s.

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