The father of a Shawnee Mission School District student on Monday attempted to shine a light on a questionable vote by Shawnee Mission South representative Deb Zila — but was cut off in the middle of his remarks by the board president who said he was violating a new policy on what kinds of comments are and are not permitted during open forum.
Except, it turns out, he hadn’t actually violated the policy.
Jeff Passan came to the microphone at the Board of Education meeting to ask why Zila, whose daughter works in an in-district benefits coordinator job for insurance broker CBIZ, had not felt obliged to disclose her family’s connection to the company or recuse herself from a vote Jan. 23 that renewed a $40,000 CBIZ contract for property and liability insurance services.
“Conflicts of interest are poisonous to public trust,” Passan said. “They erode confidence in those tasked with shepherding forward our best interests. They are acidic to discourse and corrupt the bodies they infiltrate to the very core. And there is a significant conflict of interest on the Shawnee Mission school board at this very moment, one about which the board has been tellingly silent.”
But when Passan asked a few moments later why no one on the board had felt the need to disclose Zila’s conflict of interest in the matter, Board President Sara Goodburn cut him off.
“You got this right? Beforehand?” Goodburn said, waving a piece of paper at him. “What we can and can’t talk about in open forum? Naming specific people is really not allowed.”
A month after an open forum in which more than 20 patrons asked pointed questions of the board, Goodburn introduced new open forum guidelines at the April meeting. Those new guidelines contain direction about what kind of content is permitted in the comments made by members of the public in open forum — a restriction notably absent from any other northeast Johnson County governing body’s open forum guidelines.
“Discussion of matters related to a specific student or employee is not allowed,” reads the new open forum instructions. “Instead, comments should be submitted in writing to the Superintendent.”
Passan responded by questioning the parameters of the policy in relation to members of the board.
“So, Mrs. Goodburn,” Passan responded, “if in the future there is a vote which I, as a person who lives in the Shawnee Mission School District disagrees with and wants to publicly ask about, am I not allowed to do that?”
“Again, here, it’s to be civil, respectful,” Goodburn said.
“And I’m being civil and respectful and asking the questions the people here [want to hear],” Passan said.
Goodburn then told Passan again that he should not mention a specific board member by name.
However, Passan had not technically violated the new policy because neither Deb nor Mallory Zila are school district employees.
Asked about the interaction the next day, Goodburn conceded that Passan had not actually run afoul of her new open forum policy with his comments.
“[T]hat was a mistake on my part, as neither Mrs. Zila or Mallory are employees of the district,” Goodburn said.
Goodburn also said that, although the board had never had a formal discussion on the matter, it was her opinion as board president that Zila had not needed to disclose her daughter’s employment with CBIZ in an in-district job before voting on the new CBIZ contract in January. She said some members of the board were aware of Mallory Zila’s employment with CBIZ on a district contract before the vote.
“At least some board members were aware at the time of the vote, however there was no perceived conflict of interest,” Goodburn said.
Zila said she felt no need to disclose the connection because she maintains that neither she nor anyone with the district played any part in getting Mallory the job, which in her estimation means she has no conflict of interest.
“I did not recuse myself from the consent agenda vote in January because I have no conflict of interest for any item that appeared on the agenda,” she said. “As I have previously shared with you, I had absolutely no influence on the hiring of my daughter at CBIZ, nor did anyone at the Shawnee Mission School District.”
Passan, however, is far from convinced.
“The board’s admitted lack of discussion on the matter only highlights the point I was trying to make,” he said. “This isn’t just an ethical deficit. It’s a dereliction of duty from a president who is willfully blind to something as fundamentally obvious as this conflict of interest. The lack of curiosity and discussion by the board is typical, and that is fine. The more they vote unanimously on matters vital to our children instead of challenging the status quo, the likelier the public will be to vote for a board that better represents the interests of the Shawnee Mission School District.’
“As for the president cutting me off in the middle of the open forum, it didn’t surprise me one bit,” Passan said. “The truth threatens those in power.”
Passan’s prepared remarks from open forum are copied below:
I’d like to start off by thanking the board for continuing to hold these open forums. Considering your recent history with regards to transparency and accountability, not to mention the amount of business done behind close doors via consent agenda, it’s vital that the public is given an opportunity to air its grievances.
Mine on this particular day concerns something from which I fear certain members of the school board suffer a severe deficiency: ethics. When the public elects an official to the board, it confers an implicit trust that he or she will act in the best interest of the children in the Shawnee Mission School District, not him or herself. I’d like to believe those of you sitting in front of me take that responsibility very seriously. The actions of the board, unfortunately, belie that.
Conflicts of interest are poisonous to public trusts. They erode confidence in those tasked with shepherding forward our best interests. They are acidic to discourse and corrupt the bodies they infiltrate to the very core. And there is a significant conflict of interest on the Shawnee Mission school board at this very moment, one about which the board has been tellingly silent.
Last year, a company called CBIZ, which provides insurance and coordinates benefits for the district, hired a woman named Mallory Zila as a benefits consultant. She is the daughter of Deb Zila, who represents Shawnee Mission South on the board.
In media reports, the board has denied any wrongdoing. And yet on Jan. 23, 2017, as part of the consent agenda, in which large amounts of district business are OK’d by the board, Ms. Zila personally made the motion to renew a $40,000 insurance contract with CBIZ. In district policy GAG, it clearly states: “Expenditures should not be authorized by a district employee who has a conflict of interest.”
The vote passed unanimously anyway. Why none of the other six members of the board thought it important to point out the blatant conflict of interest and ask Ms. Zila to remove herself from that particular vote remains a mystery to me and the others in this room who contribute portions of the hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual tax revenue that is funneled to CBIZ for services that surely could be provided by companies that do not employ blood relatives of board members.
So my question for Ms. Zila is: Why, with such an obvious conflict, did you not recuse yourself from that vote? And as a show of good faith that has been frittered away with misstep after misstep, will the board vow to release all emails, sent from both district and private addresses, to and from employees current and former, that discuss Mallory Zila’s hiring by CBIZ?
Both of these questions are a matter of public trust. That is something in exceedingly short supply these days. I hope you’ll take the proper steps to earning it back. Thank you.
