Turner on payroll of tax funded charter school
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“A state representative should be helping the school children of Texas as part of his job, not getting paid to represent the schools before government officials,” says Wayne Dolcefino, President of Dolcefino Consulting. “What we have discovered speaks volumes.”
Houston State Representative Sylvester Turner has played a key role in deciding the budget for the Texas Education Agency.
We now know he also intervened with the Texas Education Agency on behalf of charter schools who paid his law firm handsomely.
Personal financial disclosures and e-mails just released by the Texas Education Agency raise new ethical questions about the state lawmaker who has made quite a living off of government contracts and firms doing business with the State of Texas.
According to his Personal Financial Statements, Turner’s law firm, Barnes & Turner, was paid a legal retainer every year beginning in 2007, by Ollie Hilliard and the Jamie’s House Charter School he founded. As of June 2015, that amounts to at least $225,000 in retainers alone.
Back in 2010, Jamie’s House became news in a bad way after a science teacher was caught on camera, kicking, slapping and dragging a 13 year old student. The Houston Chronicle reported the founder had run at least one other facility for children, that the state shut down for failing to meet minimum standards. Top officials of the TEA twice signed off on renewing the Jamie’s House contract, long after another state agency told Hilliard another facility he ran posed a health and safety risk to children.
Education Commissioner Michael Williams moved to revoke the charter of Jamie’s House Charter School in December of 2013. That led to the expansion of Zoe’s Academy, another client of Sylvester Turner’s law firm. Zoe’s hired Turner’s firm in 2013 and has paid at least $75,000 just in retainers since.
Did Turner’s clients get preferential treatment? Who knows? But the Texas Education Agency treated Sylvester Turner as more than just a lawyer.
E-mails show Turner was involved in getting Zoe’s Academy a waiver to the campus. It appears the Commissioner of Education had agreed to approve the waiver even before the documents were submitted. When Turner raised questions about the waiver process, a TEA official Julie Kopycinski wrote “I need to talk to someone about this ASAP b/c I have to call the rep back.”
Kopycinski is not a charter school official. She is the head of Government Relations with the Texas Education Agency that deals with legislators.
This latest revelation about Turner’s potential conflicts comes a night after KTRK Channel 13 questioned how American Title, a company linked to Turner, was paid $144,000 as part of a real estate deal made possible by the 2012 HISD Bond Election. Turner was against the bond, but within a month had changed his mind, and 2 years later, profited from it.
Turner’s law firm also received more than $800,000 in affirmative action contracts from a controversial government tax collection firm.
Both Turner’s law firm Barnes and Turner and American Title Company, have also received millions of dollars in payments from the City of Houston Housing Department.
Another Turner client, 3D Visions Planning Consultants, boasts of its relationship with the Harris County Housing Authority and State of Texas.
It is time for Mr. Turner to tell voters the WHOLE story.
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