Former Dallas Independent School District (DISD) auditor Andrea Whelan of the district’s Office of Internal Audit finished drafting an investigative report on DISD’s Capital Improvement Department in late 2017.
Whelan’s investigation, prompted by a whistleblower complaint filed by a former Capital Improvement team member, concluded that the department’s director, Sylvia Peña, “repeatedly violated Purchasing Manual directives, policy, and law.”
The primary issue was that Peña was allegedly structuring construction job order contracts so that they fell under $500,000 in valuation, breaking up components of the same project so that each contract would not have to come under the scrutiny of DISD’s Board of Trustees and be subject to competitive bidding, per state law.
A previous “investigation” conducted by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) claimed that there was no deliberate wrongdoing, as reported in The Dallas Express. Still, Whelan alleged in her report that Peña had been told multiple times by DISD procurement services buyer Robbie Daniels that she could not break apart projects to evade competitive bidding.
“[Peña’s] actions, subsequent to her receipt of [Daniels’] messages, demonstrated her intent to circumvent established policies and procedures. They also revealed the untruthfulness of the statements she submitted in response to the TEA inquiry,” Whelan wrote.
Whelan further claimed that Peña had repeatedly used a local job order contractor — Phillips-May — that funneled taxpayer money for projects through a subcontractor, that only took a cut of the money and passed the actual work off to a sub-subcontractor.
“Providing no commercially useful function, the subcontractor passed the whole of the work on each project to a sub-subcontractor, keeping a portion of the contract amount” for serving as the “pass-through,” Whelan wrote.
That subcontractor was an out-of-state company called Sapa Extrusions LLC, doing business as REDD Team, which multiple district employees told Whelan had ties to the Houston area.
It is unclear whether existing business entities with similar names are subsequent iterations of the interests involved in DISD’s alleged procurement malfeasance, but The Dallas Express intends to find out.
It is also unclear whether Peña directly profited from her role in allocating taxpayer-funded construction jobs.
At a minimum, Whelan believed Peña had likely broken state purchasing and contracting codes. She could also be liable for perjury and/or falsification of government records for “submitting false written statements, for inclusion in the district response to the TEA inquiry.”
It is clear that not all of DISD’s leadership is focused on their actual end goal — providing Dallas’ youth with a good education. Regardless of whether the accusations against Peña are accurate, they speak to the adverse environment that the district has created, which hardworking teachers must endure in order to educate their students.
Still, if there is truth to the allegations, Peña’s activities would serve as yet another example of the district’s gross mismanagement.
As previously reported in The Dallas Express, Peña resigned from her job at DISD shortly after submitting to an interview with Whelan in September 2017.
Whelan submitted her draft report to her superiors at the Office of Internal Audit and recommended that her findings be forwarded to law enforcement for criminal investigation.
However, her report did not make its way to DISD’s Board of Trustees or the district’s Audit Committee, a mixed oversight body of DISD trustees and community advisors.
She also never saw any movement on her recommendation for a criminal investigation, later telling WFAA that all of her concerns “fell on deaf ears.”
However, Whelan was not just ignored following the submission of her draft report. She claimed that she was retaliated against at the Office of Internal Audit.
It would appear DISD’s internal watchdog was watching its own dogs.
The Dallas Express will continue spotlighting this saga to bring increased transparency and accountability to local institutions.
