EPISD’S Chief Financial Officer Discusses Shortcomings In 2006 Purchasing Process

The El Paso Independent School District’s chief financial officer commented on the alleged behind-the-scenes corruption within the district.

Ken Parker said he was disappointed and shaken when news of the alleged corruption came out.

Federal investigators say EPISD’s superintendent Dr. Lorenzo Garcia rigged a district contract for a friend’s company, cheating the district out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Garcia, who is currently on unpaid administrative leave, denies the allegations.

The EPISD school board voted to approve the contract in question in July of 2006. It was presented by a vendor named “Infinity Resources…& Associates.” Prosecutors said Garcia went out of his way to make the vendor seem like a sole-source provider and allegedly lied about the value of the contract by making it seem about $400,000 more than its actual worth.

So how did a potentially phony contract get by without raising red flags? Parker said the purchasing process was different in 2006 than it is now.

“It’s a process that can be easily abused if you don’t have the right controls in place,” said Parker. “(In 2006) we did not have the checks and balances that we have in place now.”

Parker said sole-source vendors could circumvent the purchasing department back then, but now face tighter scrutiny if they want to be considered before the board. “There’s a number of steps we’ve put in place now to find out if a vendor is legitimate,” said Parker. “Really, we’ve put so many steps that very few people want to go through them at all.”

Now, employees with the purchasing department exercise “due diligence” in vetting vendors. Parker said they check into vendors’ backgrounds, call other school districts to compare notes on specific vendors and work more closely with EPISD department heads to find out exactly what their needs are.

Some feel these safeguards should have been in place all along. Parker said change takes time. “We say it takes time to turn a big ship, and El Paso Independent School District is a big ship.”

Still, Parker said the changes in purchasing protocol have been around for a while. He said they started implementing them around March of 2007 after the FBI started investigating two then-trustees at EPISD on a separate corruption case. That unrelated case also involved vendor contracts and the EPISD school board. Former trustees Carlos Cordova and Sal Mena pleaded guilty to their corruption charges and are waiting to be sentenced. Coincidentally, both Cordova and Mena were on the board when the Infinity Resources…& Associates contract was approved.