The Squeaky Ideologue gets the Cash

From July 1st, 2005 through the end of January, 2006, the administration of Sharon Thomas spent over $3 million in temporary employee (or Purple Packet) hires. Under Thomas, there were absolutely no controls at all on who could be hired by an administrator. No purple packet tracking was done to see if there was even a need for these employees. District administrators had free reign when it came to handing out public funds to these temporary employees. No one evaluated the work of these temporaries, and no one performed background checks.

After I broke this story of waste and abuse to the Gazette, I received numerous phone calls from D11 employees who thanked me for finally exposing what they knew to be a system where administrators could pass out public funds to friends without having to account for how that money was being spent. The biggest beneficiaries, of course, were friends of the administrators at the top.

Tracy Cooper was a D11 PR person under Ken Burnley. As a liberal activist, she was very close to Sharon Thomas. Thomas hired her as a temporary employee and gave her the job of making Thomas "look good" to the public. Cooper's specific role was to help Thomas draft responses to anything that I or Eric Christen said during Board meetings. Most of Thomas's belligerent remarks during Board meetings were drafted by Cooper. Cooper was paid thousands of D11 tax dollars to be a personal aid for Thomas, even though D11 already has a full time PR person. Cooper also wrote scripts for John Gudvangen and Tami Hasling. Hasling had (and has) the embarrassing habit of reading from her scripts even when the topic has already changed. There was only so much that Cooper could do.

Cooper has been very active in the current recall effort. She has carried petitions and gathered signatures for the recall. Cooper is very angry that she has been cut off from the public dole, and she wants revenge. She also wants to have Thomas reinstated as the superintendent so that she can begin to make money off of D11 once again.

Bob Moore was once the Chief Financial Officer for D11. He worked under Burnley as well. As soon as Thomas was hired as superintendent, she brought Moore back to D11 from Michigan and she put him on the payroll as a temporary employee. D11 employees note that Thomas and Moore were very close when they both worked for D11 under Burnley, so Thomas created a job for Moore. He was supposedly assigned to work with the local military community to foster a smooth transition with the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) issue. The qualification that Thomas actually gave for bringing her long time close friend back to Colorado was that he had 2 years of Coast Guard experience and could therefore relate to the military. Many people wonder if 2 years of Coast Guard experience from 30 years ago could match up against the wealth of Army and Air Force experience that could be found right here in Colorado Springs, an Army and Air Force town. The Board never received any feedback from the efforts of Moore, who was paid nearly $10,000 for less than one month's work.

Shortly after the community discovered that Thomas had brought back a friend from Detroit to work a local issue, the Board members received a letter from a District employee about Moore. The letter informed us that the real reason for Thomas hiring Moore had nothing to do with BRAC. The reason, according to the employee, was that Moore needed more time on a public payroll to meet requirements of the Public Employee Retirement system (PERA). According to the employee, Thomas invented a slot for her friend but did not actually require any work. The job and the pay were simply to push Moore into a higher retirement bracket.

John Kerr was yet another Burnley underling who was invited back by Thomas to work for D11. Kerr was brought back to work with the Boundary Committee. Being an ideologue like Thomas, Kerr signed recall petitions against Sandy Shakes and Eric Christen. Staff members say that Kerr is very bitter over the removal of Thomas since she brought him back and placed him on the public payroll.

While the public was informed by the Gazette that Christen used some of his Board allocated funds to have lunch with other Board members and constituents over the past year, the Gazette failed to inform the public that Thomas used public funds and resources to cater lunches for her small group of handlers. It was common for Thomas to order District meals to be delivered to the home of Tracy Cooper as Cooper and her liberal colleagues held strategy sessions on how to disrupt D11 Board meetings. Cooper did not pay for these meals, of course, as they were paid for by the taxpayers.

As ex Board member Karen Teja will tell you, it really pays to be a liberal in D11 with your hand deep in the public's pocket.