Grossmont-Cuyamaca College District Given 'B' Grade in Open-Records Audit

Grossmont College has a reputation for excellence in local education, serving 20,000 students in East County. But a nonprofit group that monitors taxpayer-supported agencies has given the community college’s parent district a “B” grade for freedom of information.

Californians Aware conducted a “compliance audit” in December, testing the responses of nearly 200 school districts, all campuses of the California State University and the University of California systems, and half of the state’s 72 community college districts.

A perfect score of 100 points was achieved by 12 community college districts, and the San Diego Community College District got a 90. But the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District was given an 80 by CalAware, as the watchdog group also is known.

Grossmont-Cuyamaca lost points for what CalAware calls a failure to meet provisions of the California Public Records Act—two sections of the state’s Government Code.

The district was docked 10 points for failing to respond to CalAware’s request for specific information within 10 days, and another 10 were taken off for charging a duplication fee greater than 10 cents a page for a conflict-of-interest form for Chancellor Cindy Miles, a La Mesa resident.

“We were surprised that we got anything less than an A because we responded promptly to the public records request and did not charge an excessive fee for copying,” said Jennifer Danks, office supervisor for Miles and the district governing board.

Danks said the district is “extremely diligent” in responding to all CPRA requests within the time limits prescribed by the act.  

In the case of CalAware’s requests, Danks said, “This particular request arrived after business hours on Nov. 29, 2010. A response was provided by Chancellor Miles on Saturday, December 11, and by me on Monday, December 13.  GCCCD charged a reasonable and legal duplication charge of $6.25 for 25 copies, most of which consisted of two-sided copies, or 12.5 cents/per page, plus postage of $3.08, for a total charge of $9.33.”

Danks said records requests are routed to the Chancellor’s Office, and “the chancellor assigns them to the appropriate administrator for response and gathering of documents, which are returned to the Chancellor’s Office for distribution to the requestor in a timely manner.”

Does the records act pose a burden to the district?

“Not at all,” said Danks, who has been Miles' executive assistant since March 1, 2009.

The records sought by CalAware (see attached documents) provide a window into the district’s finances but turned up no major issues—as such audits have revealed elsewhere in the state.

“Quite apart from compliance with public records laws, the audits showed why closer and more consistent monitoring of even relatively routine executive expenditures may be in order—if nothing else for the sake of student and faculty morale and public confidence,” said Emily Francke, executive director of CalAware, based in the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael.

“In the cases of San Diego CCD, Long Beach CCD and Los Rios CCD, for example, the reported travel expenses raise the questions of whether a trip was necessary or even if so whether more timely or less costly travel or lodging reservations—or both—might have been arranged.”

So what did the Grossmont-Cuyamaca audit turn up?

Highlights include:

• Chancellor Miles has a contract through June 2012 that pays her $245,000 a year, plus $850 a month for use of a personal automobile in conducting district business and $200 a month for use of a personal cellular phone.
• Miles’ Form 700 “statement of economic interests”—filed exactly one year ago—indicated that she has “no reportable interests.” The form is meant to disclose potential conflicts of interest.
• Between August 2010 and October 2010, Miles used a district-issued credit card to pay for $8,169 in various expenses, including travel to Washington, D.C., for a meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges. (She also sought reimbursement for $183.95 on that trip.) Among other things, she charged the district $68.02 for a classified senate lunch at Anthony’s of La Mesa.

By contrast, Chancellor Constance Carroll of the three-campus (and six Continuing Education centers) San Diego Community College District disclosed that her salary is $267,962, and she owns stocks, bonds and mutual funds through Morgan Stanley Smith Barney totaling between $100,000 and $1 million. 

Carroll’s reimbursement requests came in the form of dozens of documents totaling thousands of dollars.

However, Grossmont looks angelic compared with other community college districts audited by CalAware.

“The audit's downside was that one-sixth of the districts failed miserably,” CalAware said on its website.

“Three community college districts—San Jose-Evergreen, Shasta-Tehama-Trinity and San Joaquin Delta—never bothered to respond again after initially acknowledging the request had been received.”  They received an F grade.

CalAware said three districts “didn't seem to care about answering the request as the CPRA requires”:

• West Hills CCD waited eight days to claim that the requests for an agenda, minutes and the superintendent's credit card statements were “vague and ambiguous” then didn't respond again within the 30-day audit.
• State Center CCD waited 22 days to respond to three e-mailed requests, but produced no records within the audit’s one-month time period.
• Los Angeles CCD initially supplied a few records, then wasn’t heard from again in the following month.

CalAware said it would take steps to “encourage and/or enforce greater compliance with public records law” by going to court seeking an order to bring the worst copying fee overcharges encountered in the audit  into conformity with the law.

“We expect a favorable result from either a court order or a settlement,” CalAware said, “either of which will be brought to the attention of other clearly overcharging public agencies.”