Iowa school group still owes money

DES MOINES (AP) — An audit of a troubled school board group obtained by the Associated Press on Wednesday shows that thousands of dollars misspent on trips, restaurants and salaries hasn’t been repaid.

Results of the independent audit will be presented Thursday to an interim legislative committee that has been investigating spending by the Iowa Association of School Boards.

Members of the Government Oversight Committee had hoped to finish the inquiry Thursday and send recommendations to the full Legislature for tightening regulations and improving accountability by groups such as the school board organization, which are privately run but financed mainly with tax dollars.

State Sen. Tom Courtney, a member of the oversight committee, said new details about spending on a much-publicized trip to Bora Bora and big salary increases would probably force the panel to continue looking into the matter.

“I thought that outrageous wages and the excess of going to Bora Bora was the end of it,” said Courtney, D-Burlington.

“Now it looks like there may be more. We need to get to the bottom of this. It just looks to me like there’s more stuff here.”

The audit by Des Moines accounting firm Brooks Lodden found that a credit card issued to the Iowa Association of School Boards had been used not just for former Chief Financial Officer Kevin Schick’s vacation in Bora Bora but also for meals, Internet purchases and video rentals. More than $1,200 charged to that card hasn’t been repaid, the audit found.

Nearly $90,000 in increased salaries that were improperly paid to top executives also hasn’t been repaid.

Rep. Vicki Lensing, D-Iowa City, one of the heads of the oversight committee, said some of the audit’s conclusions raised questions about testimony given to the panel.

“Some of the answers we got were not in line with this,” said Lensing.

The audit found that Schick, during his trip to Bora Bora, also used the association’s credit card for travel in Tahiti and nearly $3,000 in hotel charges.

The audit included a two-page list of credit card charges that included restaurant bills and purchases from online retailers.

Schick said he intended to repay the charges, but the audit found that $1,217 of a total $10,950 hadn’t been repaid.

The audit noted that state law prohibits such use of a credit card.

“By charging personal expenses on the organization’s credit card, Mr. Schick may have violated this statute,” the audit report said.

Schick no longer works for the school board association, and he couldn’t be reached to comment on the audit.

The legislative panel also has focused on the association’s fired executive director, Maxine Kilcrease. She increased her salary to an annual rate of $367,000, apparently without approval from the association’s board, and was among several top officials who were paid excessive salaries that later were reduced.

Not all of that money has been returned, the audit noted, including $52,514 that Kilcrease still owes. Another $36,146 is owed by two other former officials who resigned.

Kilcrease doesn’t have a phone listing in the Des Moines area and couldn’t be reached to comment.

The audit also noted that former association officials established a complex series of entities that offered various services to schools, and that tax money was shuffled between them in ways not always legal. One $500,000 transfer hasn’t been fully repaid.

Lensing said the panel may call back witnesses who have testified in the past to explain discrepancies between what they told the panel and what the independent audit found.

“It looks like there’s money owed to the School Board Association because of the way money was moved,” said Lensing. “It does raise a lot of questions, and it may lead to more questions. It wasn’t just salaries. It was benefits, and there were a lot of people who went along with it and didn’t really question it.”

Courtney said he expects the oversight committee to continue its inquiry.

“I just don’t know that we can do this in one day,” said Courtney. “I’m very disappointed. That’s very close to fraud.”

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