I lost a few good friends when I wrote the post, “Who’s the criminal? SCLC, Montgomery County or CareSource? [1]
It wasn’t something you publicly say when the payroll taxes of CareSource are the only thing keeping the City coffers filled then or now.
Once again, the government is pursuing the little guys instead of the big ones. Remember in the early 80’s when we had the Savings and Loan scandal [2]– that the bankers went to jail, but since 2009 not a single banker has gone to jail over the collapse of the global economy? Last time it was the FBI going after Raleigh Trammell (whom I saw at the non-candidates forum Wednesday night [3]) now, it’s the people who run Richard Allen Academy for $860k:
The Ohio auditor’s office on Thursday again issued findings for recovery involving Dayton’s Richard Allen Academy charter schools, saying their management company, Institute of Management and Resources Inc., owes taxpayers nearly $860,000.
“It doesn’t appear that much has changed at the Richard Allen schools,” Ohio Auditor Dave Yost said in a statement. “Once again, mismanagement of public dollars was found. Ohio’s taxpayers and our children deserve better.”
The new findings include $730,000 that auditors said was overpaid to IMR during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2011. Additionally, there was nearly $130,000 in school funds that either found their way into IMR accounts or were IMR expenses improperly paid by the schools, said Bob Hinkle, chief deputy auditor.
via Charter schools criticize audit that claims state is owed… | www.daytondailynews.com [4].
And I ask again, CareSource doesn’t have any business other than taking Federal funds directed to help the poor and distributing them. For that, they pay their CEO Pam Morris over $3 million a year. Her pay is set by the people that get the money that she distributes- the Hospitals. They are also “non-profits” yet pay, in the case of Premier Health Partners- a whole bunch of executives 7 figures [5], including a few who make $4 million a year.
Do you see a pattern here? It’s time the federal government and local governments, be prohibited from doing business with companies that pay their CEOs millions per year in these times where we are calling for austerity. There is zero valid reason to earn over a million a year other than to rub your money in the faces of the less fortunate- and to continue to play the stock markets like a slot machine. Too many people in this country are living at or below the poverty level- losing their homes, struggling for health care- while the Federal Government has bailed the bankers out.
Now, IMR isn’t totally off the hook. While the Richard Allen Schools are at the top of school performance charts in Dayton- which is unlike a majority of the charters, they recently told their employees that the organization wouldn’t be able to pay their health insurance premiums for the next three months and then announced that payroll would no longer be done through direct deposit, but that they would have to pick up their checks.
The US government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in this country. If Congress really wanted to cut spending, or stimulate the growth of small business which is the real driver of employment in this country, stop arguing about raising taxes on the rich- just stop doing business with them.
The Richard Allen thing illustrates a recurring problem with education. When you attach money to the back of a student, some few unethical individuals will find a way to get that money for themselves. In the case of charter schools, there have been some outright frauds–then there are the schools that can boast great student success but then are found to be doing it by spending more money (Harlem Children’s Zone)–often getting that money through creative accounting (Richard Allen Academy [allegedly], W.E.B. DuBois Academy [confirmed]). Those who claimed that public schools wasted money instead proved that more money gets results–a shame they’re not facing up to that fact, and a shame that some got the money under-handedly.
We’ve seen it again and again in higher education, where student tuition and fees now account for more of the schools’ operating budgets than direct subsidies from government. If that sort of funding worked to our advantage, I’d have no complaints, but it doesn’t. For decades now, we’ve had recurring scandals involving for-profit private colleges/trade schools that recruit students aggressively, arrange for maximum financial aid payments, and then deliver little or nothing in the way of useful education. That’s on top of the crisis of students who attend legitimate private universities like UD and rack up over $100K in student loan debt, winding up with a decent education but almost no chance of ever getting out of debt.
We could opt to eliminate all forms of student-linked financial aid–no Pell, no Stafford loans, no vouchers, no charters–and go back to direct government funding of schools like was the norm back in the halcyon 1950s. Or we could opt to base all student-attached aid on the cost of attending a public school, so that students who opted for a pricier academy would have to cover the high costs personally. Those policies would serve to reduce government spending; the first one would reduce fraud from the sleazier sliver of the for-profit sector.
Keep up the great work David, of letting the world know how people that play the system, get to keep the money, and not go to jail. Every day it is something bigger than the day before, and nothing happens to correct the situations. I am so sick of the way the U.S. of A. has turned out, I am looking forward to the worm farm so I don’t have read and hear about people like Pam Morris, Raleigh Trammell, not to mention the crooks from D.P. & L., or the phony Iraq War, Congress with the list going on and on. Good luck on the election, we need more people like you to tell it like it is…”Wake up Amerika, we got nothing to lose but our chains.”
Policies will change when the bubble bursts.
Wall Street Journal March 1,2013
“On Thurday the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that a staggering 35% of student-loan borowers under thirty were at least 90 days late on their payments at the end of 2012, up from 26% in 2008 and 21% in 2004. These figures exclude kids who aren’t yet required to make payments ,often because they are in school.”
Word, Bobby. I work in higher ed. and I’m dismayed and embarrassed that we don’t try to advise students honestly about the costs and benefits. I was advising a student last week who wants to go into broadcasting (either production or ad sales–happily, both are profitable careers). Her intent was to transfer either to Morgan State U. in Baltimore (out of state tuition over $7K) or Wilberforce (tuition and fees over $6K and a campus in turmoil). I explained that there are more respected programs at a public Ohio universities like Kent or OU and tuition there would be less (under $5K).
When I advise students, I try hard to give them a realistic projection of job demand and income potential. Many of my colleagues do not; instead they try to get as many students enrolled in their programs and classes as possible, regardless of future finances. Ohio has had some fine ideas for higher ed. under Strickland/Fingerhut (getting Ohio colleges to work with rather than against each other) and also under Kasich/Petro (improving preparation and increasing completion rates); now if we could only get a good system to counsel potential students so they can make good decisions.
I’d favor requiring all Ohio residents who want any sort of public assistance or who seek more education to go through a testing and counseling process from professionals not associated with any school or program.
What truddick describes could be easily accomplished through a comprehensive financial literacy class for all high school students, something Ohio currently lacks. At least the comprehensive part. We allow students to take sports management and art history, but are failing them by not requiring something like what truddick suggests. Every student should, through such a class, learn how much money can be made in their fields of interest, how much various educational options costs, how student loans work, and how long it would take them to pay it back. You might have a few less people going to UD racking up $100k in student loan debt for degrees with no real prospects that would allow them to pay it back.
[…] asked it again in “Who’s the criminal part 2: IMR or Caresource” in […]
Truddick is right on the money. I went from academia to the private sector as an IT Director for 20+ years, then found myself back in academia when I moved to Japan. I taught C language programming at first, which quickly evolved by demand into C/C++/java programming and data structure courses 3 semesters/year from 2002 to 2009 at an American liberal arts university branch in Japan. The first semester, in my first lecture, I told my students I wanted them to learn the things I would want them to know and would hire them for when I was hiring in IT, even if it was far from their major. I went through hiring during the IT bubble years in the US when I could even find graduates with adequate skills because their curriculums, even with IT titles, hadn’t prepared them for the marketplace. Then, at the end of the semester of my first class, I went through all of what truddick mentions except the issues presented in the first paragraph (because, of course, they weren’t relevant due to location. I provided the many different views of majors vs average income, starting income, demand, etc., etc, from sources like Payscale.com and other employment statistical reporting sites, to my students in files and graphs, for markets in both Japan and the US, along with comparisons between the two, since I had students in Study Abroad programs. My class(es) also had freshmen to seniors. I encouraged my students to pursue their goals, but wanted them to understand the employment layout and competition they would be facing. And I wanted to show them how to use what they learned I my course to their advantage when going into the job market. I wanted them to know how to separate themselves from everyone else in the employment line by showing their potential bosses how they also had a functional understanding of how to use technology to set themselves apart from the rest in an interview. The results from that second to last lecture in that first course were: 1. By far,… Read more »