Yesterday, the front page of Newsday had a relatively unattractive photo of Lawrence Reich, the lawyer with full-time jobs in 5 different school districts, plus his law firm gig.  As inevitably as form follows function, today’s headline is that the FBI has subpoenaed records from the school districts for a federal grand jury.  You gotta give those Fibbers credit, at least they read the headlines.

And while the alleged miscreant is left to bear the burden of taxpayer outrage, a lone voice rings out in the wilderness, “Who was supposed to be watching the public fisc?”  That would be my voice, alone at least for the moment.  No, I’m not saying anyone should ignore Mr. Reich.  But I must inquire how Long Island school districts, yet again, find themselves in another scandal.

This is actually a straw man question, since I fully intend to answer my own question.  School districts, like water districts, like sewer districts, like villages, all suffer from the same inherent fault.  They are run by people who lack the skillset to manage and the comprehension to appreciate their lack of the necessary skills.  Most are well intended.  Some are malevolent.  Some are just plain nuts and stupid. 

But they all have one thing in common.  They have shown sufficient desire to be important people to run for office, while the rest of the taxpayers are satisfied with generic complaining but lack sufficient will to learn the issues, understand what’s right or wrong, and do something about it.  In short, the elected folks generally aren’t qualified, and we the People are happy enough to let them have their way provided it doesn’t get too bad or affect us personally.

It is a truism that we get the government we deserve.  Fail to be knowledgeable and you forfeit the ability to know when things are bad.  Love your importance too much and become blinded to problems that are obvious to everyone else.  There is no real training for these positions, and otherwise ordinary people step into positions that are so far outside the realm of their normal experience that it akin to asking a bunch of kindergartners to invent nuclear fusion.  But since they don’t know that they don’t know, they think they’re doing a bang up job.

There are always a few who can see that the Emperor is wearing no clothes, but they’re denigrated as malcontents and ignored.  The good people would rather keep their distance and enjoy the fact that they don’t have to exert any effort because there are others doing it for them.  Unless something bad happens to them personally, which be definition is unique and a travesty, then they are quite content letting things slide and sitting it out.

Eventually, these 5 school boards will be put under the microscope to find out whether they knew that their trusted lawyer was doing them dirty.  And there will be explanations galore, all directed toward putting measures in place to prevent this from ever happening again.  Until next time.  Someone will invariably announce that we need to stop looking for blame, put the past behind us and move forward.  That usually comes from the mouth of a very close friend of the guilty party.

All of these mini-fiefdoms suffer from the same malady.  They may not be completely incompetent, just not very good at paying close attention.  They aren’t exactly corrupt, but skirt the law with nepotism, favoritism, and the occasional “fix” for a friend or ally.  Along the lines of good old Plunkett of Tammany Hall, under the heading of “honest graft.” 

When our expectations of competence and comprehension are so low to begin with, why are we surprised that corruption exists, funds are wasted or stolen, laws become weapons to hurt the very people they were elected to serve?  If we only wake up to reality when something truly venal happens, then we have enabled the incompetent and malevolent. 

We’re all in this together, though rarely from the same perspective.  If you can’t be bothered to pay attention, and then do something when you find that things are going very wrong, then ultimately 5 school boards will believe that they acted quite properly by keeping one lawyer on the books as a full time employee for 5 separate districts.  A few years ago, I bought my wife a T-shirt on the street in Manhattan that read “Stop Your Bitching, Start a Revolution.”  Complaining afterward is just a waste of time. 

This wasn’t an accident or an oversight in the case of Lawrence Reich.  And it isn’t in your local governments either.  You just don’t know about it yet.  If things like this displease you, then get off that chair and do something about it.