The newly formed Broward Office of Inspector General can investigate corruption, waste, and mismanagement at the county and every city in Broward -- but not the Broward County School Board, which probably needs it most.
When state Rep. Evan Jenne proposed a bill to bring the school district under the IG's umbrella, the school board came out strongly against it.
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The new superintendent, Robert Runcie, came out against it, saying he believed that the "process" that was in place today was sufficient. That despite the relatively recent arrests of two school board members, a scathing grand jury report, and the waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars.
Most of the new school board members, who are supposedly all about reforming the district, were against any new oversight as well.
But Jenne's bill never even made it to Tallahassee. Jenne said he needed a majority of the local delegation to bring the bill forward. Last night at a delegation meeting he had a majority of House members, but there were only two senators in attendance, Eleanor Sobel and Nan Rich.
Sobel was in favor of the oversight. Rich opposed it and that, in effect, killed the bill, said Jenne.
The kicker: Rich is the mother of School Board Member Laurie Rich Levinson, who was also against the measure. Rich told me today that she was opposed to the bill because the state Department of Education already has an IG's office to investigate school corruption and she was concerned about the cost (estimates are that the board would have to pay between $400,000 and $750,000 to fund the Broward office).
"It had nothing to do with my daughter," she told me.
Whatever the case, the school board will be free of the IG's office -- which coincidentally just hired one of the board's auditors, David Rhodes, as a special agent -- for at least a year. Jenne promised to bring the bill back in 2012.