Bush Dept. of Education Covers for GOP House Candidate by Confusing the Issue

Kudos to the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune for digging into the story of Mike Lair's improper expenditure of federal grant funds --a story first reported here.

I encourage you to read the whole thing, but most interesting is the fact that a U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman takes up for Lair with a strategy clearly aimed at misdirection.  

From the piece:

The website claims that Lair violated the terms of these standards (EDGAR) when he awarded a contract to his wife.

Jane Glickman, a spokesperson with the U.S. Department of Education,
stated that those particular education standards apply only to
procurements.

“Therefore, these regulations would apply only if someone was hired as
a contractor (rather than as an employee of the district),” she said.
“The regulations in EDGAR cited in the [website] article do not apply
at all if that person was hired as an employee of the LEA [local
education agency].”
R-2 Superintendent Smith said it is not uncommon for the district to hire related personnel.

Of course, Jeanne Lair was hired as a contractor.  She was hired to provide contract services, a need for which was created via the administration by her husband of a federal grant.  Glickman distracts from the real issue by introducing the extraneous and irrelevant consideration of employment by the school district.­

­

No one is disputing that Jeanne Lair's job with the Chillicothe schools --which she held before the federal grant was ever awarded-- is proper.  It is her hiring for the other role, the contract role of "promotional assistant," which is in question.

Glickman's argument, if we care to follow the logic, would require that there can be no regulations or rules prohibiting conflict of interest between contract administrators and contract awardees so long as the awardee is also employed by the entity administering the contract.  This obviously encourages all kinds of perverse and unwelcome outcomes.

Sadly, the school district and the Bush Dept. of Education has chosen to stand behind the indefensible premise that it is okay for husbands who administer federal grants to hire their wives as employees contracted to do work through those grants.  Notwithstanding tortured interpretations of the federal regulations like the one offered by Ms. Glickman, anyone with a sense of right and wrong would know that the bargain entered into between Mr. and Mrs. Lair with our tax money simply should never have happened.