Lockyer: School bond election deals appear illegal
State Treasurer Bill Lockyer asked the California attorney general Monday to investigate whether school officials were breaking the law by hiring banks and their political strategists to promote bond measures before voters.
Lockyer did not name the schools or banks involved in these deals. But some of the examples he describes in a letter to Attorney General Kamala Harris are the same as the Register found in place at Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified in a recent investigation.
Borrowing through capital appreciation bonds is helping to pay for a 600-seat Performing Arts Center at El Dorado High in Placentia. The expensive bonds, which delay payments for decades, were sold by Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified officials after voters approved Measure A in 2008.
JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
His letter focuses on agreements where school districts give banks exclusive contracts to sell bonds approved by voters in return for the firms providing pre-election campaign services.
Placentia-Yorba Linda hired a bank named George K. Baum & Co. before a bond election in 2008. Voters agreed in the election that the district could issue $200 million in bonds to continue an ambitious building spree. School officials denied they had hired the bank for political work on the bond campaign, but public documents and interviews showed that the firm's strategists were extensively involved in getting the measure passed.
Under state law, it is illegal for school officials to