School District Moves to Deregulate Themselves Ahead of Parcel Tax Election

Oversight Committee Prepares to Decouple From Regulation;

Brown Act, Conflict of Interest Rules

Tomorrow night at the Emery school bond oversight committee meeting, the School District has prepared a suite of regulatory rollbacks to vote on that, up until now, has constrained the District including: laws governing conflicts of interest, the Brown Act open meetings law, reductions of the number of auditors for parcel taxes and bonds, and other burdensome regulations from their bond oversight committee.  The audacious deregulation gambit runs afoul of California law in some cases and begs the question of timing: With the Measure K parcel tax March 3rd plebiscite looming, why would the District be seeking this high visibility power grab disempowering ordinary citizens now? 

All told, the proposed deregulation promises to make it easier for District decision-makers to profit from their decisions, for developers to profit and to keep the public in the dark.
Those proposed changes can be seen in red here: http://emeryusd.k12.ca.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Packet_2.11.2020-1.pdf

Compendium of District Proposed Deregulation
On page 15 (of the entire committee pdf packet), the District is proposing removing the existing two-year moratorium on oversight committee members profiting from Emery school bonds.  Given that there is currently one member who is a developer (Josh Simon, more on him later) and another is a contractor, the roll back would permit them to approve a project, resign from the committee, then bid on the project.
The District thinks it’s better to allow the overseers to immediately move into bidding on projects and working for the District upon vacating their positions, a classic ‘good old boy’ network the two year moratorium rule is meant to stop.

On page 12, the District excludes the committee from the Brown Act.  While the removal of the Brown Act from the bylaws does not exempt the committee from the Act, as all government committees are beholden to the Brown Act, striking it from the bylaws does not make Emery Unified look good.

The District might be trying to exempt the committee by reducing the number of members needed for a quorum as they do on page 12.  The new rules propose that two members represent a quorum.  Under the Brown Act, anytime two members of the committee discussed the bonds, it would be a violation of the Act if not done at a public meeting.  It also allows a single member to decide issues during a meeting because of the abstention voting rules.

ECCL Citizen's Oversight Committee
Member Josh Simon
Formerly of Emeryville, Mr Simon
would benefit by the deregulation
proposal.  His development company
could bid on projects without
constraint from existing
conflict of interest rules.

Other changes throughout the update make it easier for quick opaque decisions.  Things like updating the bylaws become easier by removing the two-thirds requirement putting into the hands of any two members, or a quarter of the members.  The update removes the requirement for parents or seniors to be members. It leaves in “people with knowledge of facilities,” code for developers (page 11).

It should be noted that former School Board member and regional developer Josh Simon has been the consistent member of the oversight committee since he moved out of Emeryville.   He is about to be term-limited out because of state law.  It is an interesting coincidence that Mr Simon, the same person that pushed for the ECCL single school site, campaigned for the $95 million bond measure that built it, and has been on the oversight committee that fought against an audit, is now about to be set free for his company to bid on projects or surplus land from the District.  Some might say this sort of conflict is exactly what lawmakers had in mind when the rules constraining this were written.

The Superintendent of the Schools was called to comment on this deregulation vote tomorrow night, but she didn’t return calls.