For more than a month, the San Benito High School District refused to reveal whether a food service worker who testified about involvement in a murder plot still has received a paycheck while on leave and under investigation.
District officials finally gave in earlier this month after continual prodding by Free Lance reporter Curtis Cartier - using the California Public Records Act - convinced them their actions stood contradictory to a Supreme Court ruling that makes the obvious legally transparent: Taxpayers have every right to know, if they so choose, where their money is spent.
It is, after all, their money.
School officials for weeks declined to answer the simple question - and showed a vast misunderstanding of a necessary law - of whether Nancy Polizzi has continued getting paid since the district placed her on leave after her late March testimony in the Francisco Vega murder trial.
2. Driven by fears for legal action
They indicated a fear Polizzi would sue if the district released her pay information, despite the California Supreme Court ruling from earlier this year stating that all public employees' salaries should remain open to the public.
Polizzi was called to testify in the March trial because her step-son, Joshua Joseph, commissioned Vega to help him murder San Jose resident David Owens in 2004. Joseph did so after finding out Polizzi, with whom he had been having a relationship, had slept with Owens as well.
Polizzi testified she had supplied money to buy the gun but that she hadn't known they'd use it to kill Owens. She also admitted to supplying Joseph and a friend $1,000 to start a marijuana business.
Her testimony all around signifies a person who does not belong in a school environment - if not for what she called an unknowing involvement in Owens' murder, then certainly for admitting to funding a drug operation while employed at the school.
3. Willingness to hide information
Although school officials might still do the right thing in the end, they have shown a willingness through this one case to handle every bit of the taxpayers' business in secret as they can.
This should have been a simple communication, a "yes" or "no" and one number, Polizzi's pay.
Unfortunately, San Benito High School District officials proved why the open records law, despite a clarity in logic, is so necessary.
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