Should L.A.'s Billion Dollar Schools be Investigated?: Full Disclosure Network® Report

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Recent news reports shed light on the world's most expensive high schools located in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Cost estimates range from a billion to two billion dollars for just two high schools. The Belmont Learning Center cost reached a billion in construction and financing and the Robert F. Kennedy High School over half a billion without financing.  The reports set off alarm bells reaching across the nation as School Districts in California were notified this week the State is deferring some $5 billion in subsidies to schools and counties, to assure payments to bondholders will be met.  

SCHOOL OFFICIALS TOUT BILLION DOLLAR SCHOOL

The 2008 opening of Belmont High School is presented in a Full Disclosure Network seven minute video preview of an on-going cable TV series.  Critics describe the billion dollar project built atop an oil field where new and never occupied buildings were demolished and rebuilt but partially complete.  The school is now, named Edward R. Roybal High School, to avoid association with the Belmont construction.

BELMONT FRAUD INVESTIGATED BUT NOT PROSECUTED

District Attorney Steve Cooley, the Republican candidate for California Attorney General spent more than a million dollars investigating what was described as "fraud, waste and abuse" of taxpayer dollars at Belmont and in 2003 declined prosecution and issued a report entitled "Lessons Learned" that investigators involved in the process said was a "whitewash."  Watch this Full Disclosure video (7 min) featuring clips of D A investigators describing the fiasco that is part of an series of eleven interviews with those involved.

Critics have suggested that Steve Cooley declines to prosecute big dollar crimes and investigates only the easiest corruption cases such as the tiny City of Bell where the L A Times did all the investigation and exposed the players that Cooley is only now "investigating."  And observers are wondering if elected as California Attorney General if Cooley will take a more aggressive stance in prosecuting corruption, waste, fraud and abuse than he has in the past?

RELATED LINKS ON L A SCHOOLS:

Bloomberg News: State Delays School Subsidies (Tuesday)August 23, 2010

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-23/california-delays-2-9-billion-school-county-payments-amid-budget-impasse.html

LAUSD Belmont:  Toxic School Site?

http://www.fulldisclosure.net/Program_Details/416-417_Toxic-Site-Belmont.htm

The Black Hole of School Construction: Belmont      (video 3 min)

http://www.fulldisclosure.net/flash/444-5_belmontblackhole_preview.php

What is The Full Disclosure Network®?

http://fulldisclosure.net/Documents/OnePagerForReleases7-19-10.pdf

Contact: Leslie Dutton  310-822-4449  www.fulldisclosure.net

SOURCE Full Disclosure Network