More from the Philadelphia Inquirer ~
DePasquale denied that he is anti-charter. "As auditor general, my job is to call balls and strikes," he told reporters. "We're calling them like we see them." He said his office concluded that Chester Community was not entitled to receive the more than $1.2 million it had obtained through the state's charter lease-reimbursement program between June 30, 2008, and June 30, 2011, because it had participated in a "circular lease arrangement among related parties."
The audit said the buildings were previously owned by one of the charter school's founders, who sold them for $50.7 million financed through municipal bonds to a related nonprofit organization "established for the sole purpose of supporting" the charter school. The audit report also noted that the same individual who was once the charter's landlord created a for-profit management company, Charter School Management Inc., that runs the school. Although not named in the report, that individual is Vahan H. Gureghian, a lawyer and a Republican fund-raiser who served on Gov. Corbett's transition team. In its response to the audit, Chester Community said the rent reimbursements it received from the state were proper and noted that the charter school and the management company that runs it are "separate legal entities" under state law.
........DePasquale has previously said that the Auditor General's Office added lease reimbursements to the auditing protocols for charter schools after Philadelphia City Controller Alan Butkovitz found many questionable lease reimbursements during a review of Philadelphia charter schools in 2010. The sharp language in Chester Community's response to the auditor general's report is in keeping with the school's history. In 2011, the charter, which draws the majority of its students from the Chester Upland School District, sued that district and the state Department of Education over money owed to the school. The school wrangled with state officials during the Rendell administration over special-education funding and sued previous owners of The Inquirer.
(DelCoTimes) AP's Peter Jackson reports ~ Pa. auditor general slams Chester Community Charter School for improper $1.3M lease dealSpeaking to reporters on a teleconference, DePasquale said Chester Community Charter School should not have been reimbursed because the property was owned for most of the three years in question by Vahan Gureghian, a wealthy Gladwyne lawyer who heads the company that manages the school. A nonprofit took it over in 2010.
• Read the full auditor general's report here.
.........A Washington consultant retained by Gureghian's company, CSMI, LLC, participated in the teleconference and suggested afterward that DePasquale, a Democrat, is motivated by an anti-charter agenda. "The auditor general just doesn't like" the situation, said consultant Richard Ades. "Therefore he's going to manipulate the auditing process to make it look like there's something untoward going on here and there is not." Gureghian is an important political supporter of Gov. Tom Corbett, contributing more than $325,000 to the Republican's victorious 2010 campaign.
DePasquale noted that separate audits this year showed six smaller charter schools received more than $550,000 in lease reimbursements over several years that he said were similarly improper because the buildings were owned by entities with direct ties to the schools..........DePasquale was critical of the Department of Education, which oversees the charter reimbursements, and said it needs to do a better job of enforcing its own regulations. The department relies solely on the signatures of officials applying for charter reimbursements to verify the accuracy of the information. It does not require proof that the rental amounts are accurate or that the payments were actually made, the audit report says. "Read the deed," DePasquale said. "It's not rocket science."
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