Her hand – Your wallets - (Updated)

Back in October, 2004, the D11 board majority made a very unusual board appointment. It is almost always the case that school board officers are school board members. The reason is so that the board officer will be representative of the electorate. There is no policy or law that forbids boards from appointing non-board members to board officer positions, but it has never happened in D11 until 2004.

Eric Christen was the board elected treasurer after the 2003 board elections. The board treasurer is the official treasurer of the school district. The paid Chief Financial Officer (in D11’s case, Glenn Gustafson), reports to the board treasurer. Christen made it clear that he would take time to examine the D11 budget expenditures line by line to weed out waste, fraud, and abuse. Needless to say, Gustafson and other D11 board members and administrators were not excited about the prospect of having a public airing of the expenditure of D11 funds.

In November of 2004, the board majority produced a list of “allegations” against Christen that they used as a reason to remove him from his role as D11 Treasurer. These “allegations” were not required to be proven before the board voted 4-3 to remove Christen from his role as treasurer and appointed Jan Tanner as the new treasurer. Why Tanner? We were never sure. She was (and remains) an anti-parent elitist and an apologist for the status quo in the district, so in that regard, she was a good fit for the board majority’s inner circle. She has never been a proponent of transparency or fiscal accountability in D11, so Gustafson certainly approved of her appointment. Most important, Tanner was no threat to review the D11 budget and have public discussions about the destination of tax payer dollars.

The “official” reason given for the appointment of Tanner was because she was the accountant for her husband’s Domino’s Pizza franchise. In fact, according to Colorado Secretary of State records, Tanner is a registered agent and an officer for the franchise owned by her husband Carl Tanner. The Tanners named this Domino’s franchise “Cheezer’s.” Carl’s brother, H. Mark Tanner, owns a Domino’s franchise called “Inflated Dough.” It turns out that this is a very appropriate name when considering the relationship between D11 and the Tanner family.

Against the protests of Glenn Gustafson, beginning with the 2008-2009 school year, D11 began to place copies of its check register online through the D11 homepage. Much to Gustafson’s regret, some D11 tax payers have actually begun to look at these expenditures.

There is a new blog called “Spydrasweb.” It can be found here: http://www.spydrasweb.blogspot.com/. Spydra is one of those people who has taken the time to look through the details of some of these D11 expenditures, and she blogs about some of her findings with regards to Cheezer’s and Inflated Dough. Her research sheds some light on why Tanner was so interested in becoming the D11 treasurer.

Any board officer is required, by law, to inform the board and public if there is a financial conflict of interest between his or her official duties and his or her business. While Tanner has been asked about the fact that her franchise has supplied D11 with pizza, she has maintained that her husband has only donated pizza to the district. OK, no conflict there. Spydra points out that with this regular donation of pizza, the bookkeeper for the franchise (Jan) certainly must write off this “donation” from the franchise taxes. Unfortunately for Tanner, the D11 check register does not support her claim that she was only donating anything to D11. Look here to see for yourself: http://www.d11.org/transparency/AP%20Payments%20FY08-09.xls.

During the 2008-2009 school year alone, Jan and her family have been paid over $160,000 from D11 for pizza. In most financial circles, that is not considered a “donation.” Spydra raises other questions about this undeclared conflict by Tanner. Is she writing off these pizza sales as donations? Is taking payments from the district and then taking money from the point of sale to students in the schools? How long has Tanner been on the D11 payroll? If she has been taking funds from D11 since she was first appointed as treasurer, she has made over ½ million dollars without ever declaring her conflict.

Who besides Tanner has been aware of this money-making venture by the Tanner clan? D11 CFO certainly knew since he is giving Tanner weekly checks from the district. As Spydra also points out, John Elliott, the ex-D11 procurement guru, also knew of these healthy tax payer payments to a board member. What about the board members who appointed Tanner to the treasurer position? Did they know of her financial dealings with D11? It is hard to imagine that they did not know. Keep in mind that Karen Teja, who tried to sue me for exposing the fact that she was receiving a $5,000 annual voucher for her own child while preventing other parents from receiving academic help for their children, counted Tanner as one of her close allies. Just as the other status quo board members turned a blind eye to Teja’s corruption, they certainly would not be too concerned about learning that Tanner has her hand deep into the tax payers’ pockets as well.

Kudos to Spydra for unearthing Jan Tanner’s special relationship with the district that she serves for “free.” $160,000 per year is not bad for a volunteer position. Don’t think for a minute that this is the only case of a “favored” person making a decent living off of D11 under the cloak of secrecy. No doubt there will be more to come.

Update: The El Paso County District Attorney and the Colorado Attorney General have become involved in this issue.