By: Dan Walters | California Political Review
Stockton has long had a reputation for crime, poverty and civic malfeasance and suffered another blow last week when a searing audit of the city’s school district was unveiled.
Auditors portrayed a system consumed with internal discord that ignored basic rules of financial management and squandered millions of dollars on questionable no-bid contracts – money that should have been used to improve the education of 34,000 overwhelmingly poor students.
The audit was conducted by the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), an agency that monitors the financial health of California’s public school systems and helps stabilize those in trouble. It found dozens of instances in which money was paid to outside contractors without competitive bidding and/or in violation of the district’s own policies.
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