David Lacher, Mr. Quinn and CORRUPTION

Written By: Talk of the Sound News

According to a friend at Cornell Law School, Public corruption involves a breach of public trust and/or abuse of position by federal, state, or local officials and their private sector accomplices and/or even colleagues within their organization. By broad definition, a government official, whether elected, appointed or hired, may violate the law when he/she asks, demands, solicits, accepts, or agrees to receive anything of value in return for being influenced in the performance of their official duties.

So, what about David Lacher? School Board Members have a key role to play in prevention, detection, investigation and the resolution of fraud and corruption. The final responsibility and accountability for fraud and corruption can never be delegated, but Board Members, in particular, the President of the School Board with almost a quarter century of experience, can make use of expert advice and help from others such as internal auditors and legal advisers and even other School Board Members, who have been there as long or longer. School Board Members and the senior School Administration are also the role models for ethical behavior and have to deal firmly with unethical behaviors among their staff.

School Board Members must:

• Establish and maintain an ethical culture in their group and those they must provide guidance to:
• Assess the risk of fraud and corruption in their area of work
• Put in place policies, strategies, processes and procedures to prevent possible fraud and corruption
• Put the necessary controls in place to ensure compliance with these policies, strategies, processes and procedures

So it begs the questions: What do we do with these rogue operatives? David Lacher, John Quinn, the legal staff that presumably provides legal or illegal advice? What civic or ethical lesson is being taught to our children, our teachers our community? Is what occurred theft of services? Could a similar person get away with benefiting off the system for so long without paying their timely bill? I deal with COBRA all the time and if you are late, you are cutoff. So what gives? What is the reaction of Mrs. Polow? Mrs. Merchant? Ms. Orellana? Silence? Silence is collusion! Should Mr. Lacher resign? Yes. Should Mr. Quinn be terminated? Yes! What other funny business at the expense of New Rochelle residents is Mr. Quinn doing? As they say in ESPN – Come On Man!!!!!

2 thoughts on “David Lacher, Mr. Quinn and CORRUPTION”

  1. No flaw in your logic
    Martin,

    It is hard to argue with ANY of the conclusions you have drawn here.

    I suspect anyone with even passing familiarity with Mr. Lacher would struggle to imagine him choosing to resign of his own volition.

    So you rightly ask about the position of the Board of Education members on this matter.

    If he will not go on his own, I believe the board should hold what amounts to a Confidence Vote so the public can know where board members stand on this issue.

    There are two board members up for election this year: Deidre Polow and Jeffrey Hastie. One might hope that these two board members could make a motion to hold such a vote so that we might at least know where they stand.

    Any board member unwilling to support such a motion to even discuss the matter would effectively be supporting Mr. Lacher and so voters will be able to draw conclusions from a vote on a motion even if no Confidence Vote is held.

    Just so folks know, the board cannot remove another board member; that has to come from the NYSED Commissioner.

    However, the board could act by sending a letter signed by a majority of the board asking that Lacher be removed by the Commissioner.

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