Honig: Plot or Justice? : State schools chief charged with conflict of interest

To the many Californians who have known Bill Honig over the years and have often admired his energy, commitment and idealism, the indictment of the state superintendent of public instruction came as an act of great sadness. Whether it is also an act of appropriate law enforcement, or an outrageous injustice, perhaps even a political plot, is now an issue for the criminal justice system--including, possibly, a jury--to decide.

California’s high-profile state schools chief now stands accused of a criminal conflict of interest. An indictment returned by a Sacramento grand jury last week charged that Honig used public money to pay consultants employed by an enterprise that was run by Honig’s wife, Nancy. If that charge is true, Honig could be in violation of state conflict-of-interest provisions.

State law stipulates that state officials “shall not be financially interested in any contract made by them in their official capacity, or by any body or board of which they are members.” The official charge is that “Bill Honig directed public monies (to) be allocated for the hiring of a private entity . . . currently controlled by his wife, Nancy.” That organization was called the Quality Education Project, and until January of this year, when she suddenly resigned, Nancy Honig had been its president, at an annual salary of more than $100,000.

On one level the Honigs would not seem to be the sort of officials such laws are designed to deter and punish. Hard-working and highly motivated, the Honigs were effective and passionate partisans of public education, fighting every proposed education-budget cut, championing many right causes. Indeed, Honig himself charges that the indictment was a political vendetta orchestrated by Republican right-wingers in California who want to spend public money on private schools and teach creationism instead of evolution in biology courses.

That could be, but there’s no question that the indictment comes at a time when the public is deeply suspicious of public officials for indifference, if not arrogance, about the abuse of the public trust. Certainly the outrageous Congressional check-kiting scandal brought frustration to a head. One hopes, sincerely, that the Honig affair will turn out not to have been cut from that same cloth.