Widen Belmont Probe

During his investigation of all that has gone wrong at the disastrous, unfinished Belmont Learning Complex, the Los Angeles school district’s tenacious chief auditor, Don Mullinax, could not even get a simple answer to the question of how much has been spent so far on the project. When the final numbers are tallied, whether the school board ultimately votes to abandon the high school or finish the campus, the answer will certainly be “too much.”

Whatever the exact total, which is fast approaching $200 million, the school district did not get what it paid for from its high-priced outside lawyers and expert accountants. The examination of the district’s budget and accounting practices also turned up evidence of substantial overbilling by some vendors and subcontractors even while Mullinax and his team were scrutinizing billing practices. This report should prompt a wide-ranging criminal investigation, including, if necessary, a county grand jury to look into every aspect of the Belmont deal.

The internal audit, part two of a scathing examination of the Belmont fiasco, also found lax supervision, a breakdown in financial controls and an accounting system that depended in part on paper and pencil and on who was doing the counting. The lack of reliable financial information is a long-term problem in the district, hobbling board members and their new leadership.

The failure stems in part from a culture that encourages cronyism, turf wars and an avoidance of accountability. There is plenty of blame to go around in a school system where people are often promoted based on whom they know rather than on any specific expertise; even so, the report singles out Dominic Shambra, the district’s former director of planning and development, as the person most responsible for the Belmont mess. Because he is retired, Shambra is out of the reach of the new team at the top--though he ought to tell all he knows to investigators. Nine other managers have been fired or disciplined in the wake of Mullinax’s first report, issued in September. More heads should roll until everyone gets the message: No more Belmonts.

Reform is promised by Howard Miller, the district’s new chief operating officer, who is expected to bring private-sector accountability, expertise and checks and balances to the Los Angeles Unified School District. His changes must be swift and sweeping. Reform is also promised by the frustrated majority of the school board, which seeks to give financial management a higher priority. As they make good on their promises, they must also aggressively try to recover the millions misspent on Belmont.