I have received a copy of the full, yet redacted, 661 page result of the $10,000 investigation into the supposed wrong-doing that Farmington School Board Member Timothy Burke was accused and later censured for participating in. The new board has reopened the investigation following their concerns that Mr. Burke may have been unfairly censured being that the full report was not made available to the board prior to their vote.
The 661 page document is disorganized, poorly constructed and includes interviews and attachments, many of which are duplicated and repeated after each interview portion instead of being in easily referenced appendices. In addition to the poor design and layout of the document there are the glaring errors which would be permissible in a document created by an overworked district staffer but not by an investigator originally charging over $14,000 for his work.
From the redacted document on page 282:
[REDACTED] is also concerned that e-mails that are sent to Mr. Burke may result in violations of Code of Conduct. While the Code of Conduct is subject to interpretation, often times, e-mails sent to Mr. Burke end up on the “Lazy Lightening” (sic) website (attached). [REDACTED] uestioned (sic) how one can build trust when Mr. Burke is publicly critical of the [REDACTED] does not object to providing information to Mr. Burke, but it ought to be treated respectfully and professionally. For example, Mr. Burke’s comment in the Lazy Lighting (sic) website where he responded to the investigation by stating “Game On” seems somewhat disrespectful and unprofessional.
You can view Mr. Burke’s comment which is referenced above here.
Feel free to read through the entire 661 page document and look over the previously posted Executive Summary provided by the district. Discuss your thoughts and whether or not access to the full document provided you any additional insight into the allegations against Mr. Burke.
Once you do that decide whether you feel that the district was right in paying the investigator $10,000 for the work he did when looking over the claims of Mr. Burke’s alleged misconduct. While Mr. Burke said that the decision about whether he violated the Code of Conduct is up to others, do you believe that some of the interviewees’ suggestions that he was in violation was enough to censure him? Do you believe that ISD192 purposefully withholds information from the public? Finally, do you find it absolutely hilarious that a document which was originally meant to set ISD192 back $14,394 could not even spell “Lazy Lightning” correctly/uniformly? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear what you have to say.
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January 19th, 2011 at 11:12 am
For $15 a page, I would expect good spelling and grammar, especially since it’s a report from an attorney to a school district, both of whom should be literate.
January 19th, 2011 at 12:44 pm
The whole thing was and is a joke. The attorney doing the investigation was clearly very biased. The work he did was poorly done, from beginning to end.
The whole thing was essentially proof that many of the people who work in the public sector would simply not be able to survive in the corporate world. If anything, they spent $10,000.00 to show that Burke was correct from the beginning and they are a bunch of cry babies.
January 19th, 2011 at 2:09 pm
Great. We paid $10,000 to receive a bunch of poorly documented petty allegations and recriminations with an extra helping of self-righteousness thrown in for good measure.
This reports only confirms what Mr. Burke publically acknowledged (for free) before this witch hunt began, “I may not be the most polite person ever to sit on this school board.” What we now know is that he is not alone.
January 19th, 2011 at 2:26 pm
One of the other major issues is that Mr. Burke requests too much information and this is a burden on the staff. They included (pp. 419-421) a list of questions (46 of them) Mr. Burke apparently asked the district between 1/13/2009 and 2/2/2009.
According to the interview this list is included under (of some unknown individual as the name of the interviewee has been redacted), two separate work logs had been created just to track Mr. Burke’s request history. The first was for his time prior to becoming a board member and the second was for his time on the board (which appears on pages 419 to 421).
Apparently someone at the district (name was redacted but most likely Brad Meeks) wanted to track how much time and money was spent on these requests for Mr. Burke even though the district did not normally log requests in this manner for anyone else.
—
Now, as someone who believes in transparency in government and requesting information from public entities, I am absolutely certain that I have logs of my information requests kept by Burnsville, the MVTA, and probably any number of other entities. That said, I see absolutely no problems with the requests Mr. Burke made as a school board member and, to be perfectly frank, I would expect ALL of the board members to ask similar questions in order to have even the most basic understanding of how the district operates so that they might have a proper basis from which to make decisions.
The fact that no one in the history of the school board has ever asked the basic questions that Mr. Burke did shows me that those who run for public office have absolutely no clue how public entities run and have little interest in getting up to speed properly prior to voting on the fate of millions of taxpayer’s dollars.
We were wondering how districts and other public sector entities got us into this mess? Well it starts with public entities whining that elected officials are just asking too much of them.
January 19th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
If the district was keeping track of Burke’s requests I hope they were also tracking everyone else’s. If not, they have little other than individual comments to show that he does anything excessive compared with others. As the Brits would say, this document is rubbish. The person who put it together should be ashamed of their final product.
January 19th, 2011 at 3:47 pm
Joey noted: “The person who put it together should be ashamed of their final product.”
Its fairly clear to me that they were going for quantity not quality. Its also clear that Mr Meeks has a very low opinion of the parents and voters in his school district and is more concerned with his hurt feelings than anything else.
January 19th, 2011 at 5:32 pm
I have deleted an inappropriate comment.
January 19th, 2011 at 7:14 pm
Bill, once again, thanks for keeping the Tim Burke topic alive on Lazylightning. Being a Burnsville resident and involved, not only in local city government but keeping tabs on the Burnsville school board I find Tim Burke’s actions enlightening. He is an example of what I consider a true representative of the resident taxpayer. What concerns me as a Burnsville taxpayer regarding the Burnsville School District is the addition of Dee Dee Currier to the School Board. Prior to her retirement, she was the Principle of Sioux Trail Elementary School in Burnsville. She voted for bonding to raise our taxes to pay for retired teachers medical, dental and life insurance. Should she have recused herself from this vote? YES, because it affected her directly!!!
January 19th, 2011 at 7:49 pm
All that this shows is that the Farmington School District intends to use every method possible to ensure that open communication is not possible. Mr Burke and school board members appear to be completely unable to act like adults and I simply don’t trust them to use the money I give them.
p.s. I heard a rumor that they will soon start an investigation into allegations that Mr Burke has violated the district mission statement.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:15 pm
More from Thisweek: http://www.thisweeklive.com/2011/01/19/farmington-school-district-conflicts-revealed-in-burke-investigative-report/
January 20th, 2011 at 7:44 am
As a writer, I will never understand why people with law degrees are often given more respect as writers (especially in a corporate setting) than those of us who have actually been trained to write. Being a lawyer does not mean that you’re skilled at EVERYTHING.
If he was being paid that much money for this work, he should have been able to have someone properly put together the document for him; or at least edit it! But, then again, I don’t know why I’m surprised. It’s a pervasive trend these days for the top professionals in our society to be careless with written language.
Also, public officials should be as transparent as possible. They work for us! That is all.
January 20th, 2011 at 10:04 am
Alissa, I, too am a writer, and an editor. It’s my line of work. I wouldn’t knock the author of the report for not having “training,” though I would criticize the work.
I did not get any specific training, if by that you mean classes or workshops in journalism, creative writing, or writing in general. I had one very demanding English teacher in high school, who probably helped me out a lot. Being a graduate student in the social sciences gave me plenty of opportunities to practice. My skills developed to the point that people pay me to write and edit documents for them. It’s my full-time job.
I’ve never been to law school, but lawyers have plenty of opportunities to write. Some do a fine job of it. Others, obviously, do not.
January 20th, 2011 at 10:43 am
I am a writer by profession, but if you read my comments on this board, I am hardly a honed grammar machine.
I am, however quite perfect when I write for my job. I have two editors that each review my work for accuracy so not as to soil my reputation professionally prior to release of my work. A dip-ass lawyer that cannot spell “lightning” correctly and spells it wrong two different ways should be banned from being paid for their work.
Regarding my reputation on this blog and the fact that I do not employ editors on my comments, it is because I give nary a shit about my reputation here.
January 20th, 2011 at 10:56 am
That occasionally happens with people who don’t post with their real names. Thankfully, most people who post under alter egos here (MSPD, for example) at least act like they’re sitting across the table having a conversation with you. Things tend to stay a bit more civil that way.
January 20th, 2011 at 11:49 am
Joey,
You are wrong for the 449th straight time and counting.
I am equally as civil in my personal life with real people as I am when I write here. I piss people off regularly and I don’t hide my thoughts because I am worried about hurting someone’s feelings, either to their face or using my keyboard. One exception is that I don’t swear around children, except I suppose for the kids that go to that waste of money performance school that read this blog.
Show me a post that I would not be comfortable saying to someone’s face and I will reject it. Then bring me the guy that told me to drive off a bridge overpass and see if he would do the same.
January 20th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
A note, I meant that Brad Meeks is acting like a child. I don’t doubt that Mr. Burke may be a bit childish in how he handles things but that isn’t an issue for me. He was elected by a constituency that wanted him there, and there he is. Mr. Meeks was hired by the School Board and in a position where he is expected to act as an adult and uphold the responsibilities of the position.
The saddest part of this all is that by creating such a stir around Brad Meeks and almost certainly assured he will be here longer rather than shorter. What school board would hire him after all this stuff has gone on? Certainly no one locally.
July 5th, 2011 at 10:27 pm
From: http://www.startribune.com/local/south/125053164.html
July 6th, 2011 at 2:34 pm
how much does it cost for an hour of a lawyers time? With Burke claiming 5,000 – 6,000 dollars that ends up being around a 40hours at $150 an hour. did this investigation really require that much lawyer contact since no chargers were actually fired? What a waste of both personal and public time and dollars. Meeks, glad to see you go.
July 6th, 2011 at 2:37 pm
The actual document sent by the Farmington Attorney noted that they weren’t filing against Burke who was a “ISD #193″ school board member. I had to chuckle.
You’d think that after that disgusting display reiterated in the post content above that the Farmington Attorney would have the decency to not make a stupid typo like that.