Modrall "wins" big APS contract

It comes as no surprise that APS will continue to funnel untold and untolled numbers of operational dollars to the Modrall law firm; they have "won", link (item 10), no small amount of business from the APS.

Operational dollars are the ones that could be spent in classrooms if they weren't being spent in litigation.

When school board enforcer and now Defendant Marty Esquivel was running for the board for the first time, he told me he knew of Modrall and their tendency to drive their fees up through inordinately long litigation ending in settlements.  Election can't have changed his evaluation of them and the way they litigate; only his complacency about, or his complicity in, allowing it to continue.

APS is largely self insuring.  For the big stuff, they have coverage from United Educators.  UE recently raised APS' premium, more operational dollars, in order to cover APS' inordinately high costs for litigation.

If you look at the record, you will find a record of cost is no object litigation in the interests of administrators and board members seeking exception to the law.

If you ask to see the record and they won't show it to you, you'll have to ask yourself, why not?

I asked once for, as few sheets of paper as possible, to determine how many tax dollars have flowed through APS to the Modrall.  APS' answer;

that will be tens of thousands of sheets of paper that we will be happy to sell you for $.50 a page - up front.

At the time of that request, the president of Modrall was married to the president of the school board Paula Maes.  For years and years and years, Modrall made a living off taxpayers and ignored monumental conflicts of interest.

The problem with Modrall, and I suppose with any other law firm the district hires, is an unlimited budget to spend not in furthering the public interests, but in excepting APS senior administrators and board members from accountability to the law.

One could argue that people are entitled the best defense money can buy.  People are, public servants are not.  The idea that vast amounts of scarce operational resources are being spent to protect politicians and public servants from honest accountability for their public incompetence and public corruption is as indefensible as it is ridiculous.




photo Mark Bralley