NEW ROCHELLE, NY — Based on documents recently obtained by Talk of the Sound, former New Rochelle Board of Education President David Lacher appears to have made another material false statement in a disclosure form required by external auditors at O’Connor Davies — and this one’s a doozy.
In 2013, Lacher was asked by auditors whether he was indebted to the School District at any time since July 1, 2012?.
Lacher responded “No” despite owing over six thousand dollars at the time.
The required audit disclosure form covers the entire fiscal year from July 1, 2012 until June 30, 2013 but Lacher signed the form on May 28, 2013 after which he failed to make additional medical insurance payments so that by July 1, 2013 his debt was in excess of $10,000.
Over the course of the 2013-14 fiscal year, that debt continued to grow as Lacher went 8 months into arrears, repeatedly ignoring demand letters and threats from the District. By February, when he was publicly confronted about his medical insurance at a school board meeting, the debt stood at $13,500 — a fact unknown to all but a handful of people but which appears to have included Assistant Superintendent for Business & Administration John Quinn, the District’s outside counsel Jeff Kehl, then-Interim Superintendent Dr. Jeffrey Korostoff, Assistant to the Superintendent of Human Resources Joe Williams and at least one staff member in the financial official who signed the dunning notices sent to Lacher.
According to a subsequent letter sent by Lacher to board members on the day the records were released, Lacher knew the jig was up when Kehl rejected Lacher’s contention that the insurance invoices sought under the Freedom of Information Law were “private” and thus exempt from the law.
Until this legal opinion was offered, the District had repeatedly stonewalled a Freedom of Information request seeking medical insurance records for Lacher first made in 2013. Talk of the Sound had sought a list of all persons who were not current employees who were getting their medical insurance through the District. Twice the list came back without Lacher’s name on it. The failure to disclose Lacher’s participation in the District insurance plan under an active Freedom of Information request is a possible violation of New York State law.
The records were finally released on April 10, 2014.
Not coincidentally, those records showed that Lacher got his account out of arrears by making a large payment on April 10th. This appeared at the time to have been an attempt by school officials to enable Lacher to claim, as he later did, that the entire matter was much ado about nothing — that he merely got a little behind for personal reasons but that he was paid in full. And thirteen days later this is what Lacher said at the next school board meeting on April 23, 2014.
With the debt now exposed to the public, Lacher proceeded to pirouette, spinning 180 degrees and checking “Yes” to the debt question on the 2013-14 disclosure form.
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In both cases, Lacher took the unusual step of adding a disclaimer which appears to be two additional material false statements. The proper response would have been to check “Yes”, if applicable, and leave it to the auditor to follow up in seeking an explanation.
In 2013, having claimed he had no debt, Lacher added a notation reading:
“Other than health insurance premiums”
As many readers know all too well, health insurance companies typically cancel policies for non-payment after 10 to 30 days but Lacher managed to get a terrific deal. He retained his insurance despite being 6 months in arrears at the end of the 2012-13 fiscal year and 8 months in arrears when he was exposed by Talk of the Sound in February 2014 all while ignoring payment demands including certified letters sent to his home.
In 2014, having claimed he did have debt during the fiscal year, a debt that had exceeded $13,500, he again added a notation, this time reading:
“ongoing monthly charge for health insurance purchased through the District”
These statements appear to be material false statements for two reasons.
First, the District invoiced Lacher’s health insurance premiums as “due upon receipt”, a requirement he repeatedly failed to meet at which point the monthly charges accumulated and became a debt, a debt that Lacher repeatedly refused to pay. To describe this five figure debt as an “ongoing monthly charge” is to imply that he was paying the health insurance premiums on a timely basis which he did only once between August 2012 and February 2014 (see Lacher Debt Chart above — it should be a flat line but it looks more like a seismographic chart during an earthquake).
Second, they appear to be an attempt to mislead the auditor into believing that Lacher is being scrupulously honest (reporting something as picayune as a monthly insurance bill as a debt) when he is being fundamentally dishonest (the issue was not that he was receiving bills monthly but that he was not paying the monthly bills, that he had rung up a large debt he could not pay and that he had not disclosed the debt to his fellow board members or the public at large).
The wording of the notation is a classic Lacher dodge.
For everyone else, the answer to “do you have a debt to the District” is either “Yes” or “No” (we will deal with Lianne Merchant’s 2012-13 disclosure form in a future article).
For Lacher, his answer to that question in 2013 is essentially “No…but yes…but not really”. In 2014, when the public knew the answer was “Yes” he acknowledged the debt by checking “Yes” but, Lacher being Lacher, appears to have felt compelled to add a qualifier — without mentioning the sizable amount he owed, that he had repeatedly refused to pay it and he had lied about it to the auditors on the same form the year before.
In fact, there is no record (yet) that shows that Lacher or the District ever did notify the auditor that he lied on his 2013 form (a FOIL request on this subject has been made).
The incriminating nature of the 2012-13 disclosure form would go a long way to explain why the District fabricated an absurd cover story this week, claiming that the District’s records of its own audits were not maintained by the District but rather by their auditing firm, O’Connor, Davies, and then tried to charge Talk of the Sound hundreds of dollars for records that the law requires be made available at no charge.
Perhaps more disturbing is the appearance that Scott Oling, an O’Connor, Davies partner, may have participated, wittingly or not, in the District’s effort (i.e., Jeff Kehl, David Lacher, et al) to block the release of the disclosure forms. When Talk of the Sound filed a request to obtain all disclosure forms on file, the District responded with an email purporting to be from Oling that the request — 54 pages in all — would cost $895 or more than $16 a page when the law limits charges for paper records to 25 cents per page (most of the records were available as PDF files which the law says must be provided at no cost at all).
Robert Freeman, Executive Director of the New York State Committee on Open Government responded to the $895 bill:
No fee can be charged for searching for documents or reviewing them to determine which portions are available under FOIL or which may be withheld. The only instance in which an hourly rate for labor can be assessed would involve the need to use two hours or more to “prepare” records. It appears that the records sought have been “prepared”.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Some readers may be surprised that a school board member obtaining health insurance through the District is legal. Under New York State law, School Board members may elect to purchase personal medical insurance under a plan offered to employees. This is a clear conflict of interest — board members vote to approve union contracts that offer these medical insurance plans. Given the conflict of interest, the potential (and in Lacher’s case actual) abuse of power inherent in such an arrangement and the existence of the Affordable Care Act there is no reasonable justification for this to continue to be allowed. Towards that end, I have contacted Assemblywoman Amy Paulin’s office to request her assistance in eliminating this “benefit” for school board members.
RECORDS OBTAINED UNDER FOIL SO FAR
CSDNR Related Party Questionnaire 2013-14
CSDNR Related Party Questionnaire 2012-13
CSDNR Related Party Questionnaire 2011-12
MISSING
CSDNR Related Party Questionnaire 2010-11
CSDNR Related Party Questionnaire 2009-10
CSDNR Related Party Questionnaire 2008-09