Panel OKs Bill on Schools Watchdog

State lawmakers scaled back legislation to expand the powers of L.A. Unified Inspector General Don Mullinax Wednesday night after passionate opposition from school Supt. Roy Romer, but agreed to ensure that the watchdog post continues to exist well into the future.

The Assembly Education Committee ultimately approved the bill by Assemblyman Keith Richman (R-Northridge) on an 11-0 vote. But first, it watered down the enhanced authority Richman originally had called for and essentially turned it into a measure guaranteeing that the inspector general job will continue until 2015. The position’s state-granted subpoena powers are set to expire in 2005.

L.A. Unified’s inspector general rose to public prominence in the imbroglio over the Belmont Learning Center, a massive high school complex west of downtown that has been stalled for years because of environmental concerns.

But to critics, that controversy only highlighted the post’s limited authority. Supporters of Richman’s bill, which include United Teachers-Los Angeles, believe the inspector general needs to be better funded--and more independent of the school district--to better do the job.

Richman had argued that given L.A. Unified’s checkered history on construction projects, the mammoth school district and its $9-billion budget should be more closely scrutinized. His measure would have encoded the inspector general position directly into state law, taking it out of the control of local school officials, and would have required the school board to provide whatever money the inspector general needed to perform his duties.

But Republican and Democratic lawmakers expressed concerns after testimony by Romer that the measure would create an inspector general so powerful that he would “not be accountable to anybody.” L.A. Unified, Romer argued, would have a hard time finding anyone to be a superintendent if the bill became law.

L.A. Unified projects that it will have to build 85 schools this decade, a massive undertaking that will require the district to hire scores of construction companies and environmental consultants. But Mullinax has a budget of only $6.2 million--less, Richman noted, than the budget of the inspector general at another massive Los Angeles bureaucracy, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is a fraction of the size of L.A. Unified. But lawmakers questioned the need to add broader powers after Mullinax noted that he “can do everything” he needs to fight waste “without the legislation,” and is not seeking to enhance his budget. Rather, he said, he was mainly concerned with ensuring that future school boards could not eliminate his position.

Lawmakers went only that far. “I don’t have a problem saying, we need it,” said Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles), a former L.A. Unified board member. “In a district this size, we will forever need it.”