CPS Says State Rep. Davis Owes Them Half-Million Bucks
By Prescott Carlson in News on Dec 22, 2009 10:30PM
An interesting little tidbit has come to light after the Inspector General for Chicago Public Schools James Sullivan released his 2009 report -- State Rep. Monique Davis (D-27th) apparently owes the Chicago Board of Education over $500,000. The report states that the money is due for rent, property taxes, and fines from a CPS building on the south side that Davis has used as her district office since she first was elected to her seat over 20 years ago.
A lawsuit has been filed against Davis to collect the back rent portion of $83,737.35, stating that she has not made a single rent payment since 2002. The current rent is $1,500 a month. The reason the issue came up in the inspector's report is because Sullivan says that Davis owes the board much more than that. Since Davis is leasing a publicly owned building, she, as the leaseholder, is also responsible for property taxes -- which have never been paid during her entire occupancy -- bringing the current bill to $444,000 for back taxes and penalties.
Davis, a former Board of Education administrator herself, claims that there's a simple explanation and that she's done nothing wrong, saying that she never received a new lease after it expired in 2002, and that without a lease she can't present the expenses to the state to get them paid. She also claims that she reached out to former School Board President Michael Scott in 2002 to obtain the lease, but he never took care of it. But while it may or may not be true that technically she's done nothing wrong, as an elected representative with a fiduciary responsibility to properly handle taxpayer dollars, she's egregiously wrong for not aggressively following up on the matter and getting everything in order.
And same goes for the Chicago Board of Education -- while they did try to contact Davis repeatedly about the matter (correspondence they say was not answered by Davis) no real action was taken to try and collect the money owed them until last month, and even then they didn't go after the entire amount. And as we all know, the CPS isn't exactly flush with cash right now.
Davis floated the idea that Scott's suicide played a role in the CPS now trying to get what they believe is rightfully theirs, telling the Sun-Times:
"The president of the board obviously didn't give his OK or wanted to do it in a different way,'' Davis said. "It's quite obvious they [board officials] waited until Michael died to do this.''
To be honest, we tend to agree that Scott no longer heading the CPS board has something to do with it, but probably for different reasons than Ms. Davis thinks.