FortBendNow.com

Fort Bend County District Attorney John Healey has asked the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office to launch an “inquiry” into possible violations of the Texas Public Information Act and the Texas Open Meetings Act by the Fort Bend Independent School District.

The request was made after Healey met with a group of Fort Bend County residents, led by New Territory resident Nancy Hentschel who says the school district has “stalled” in providing information about the proposed Global Science and Technology Center.

An opponent of the district’s proposed $26.4 million science center, Hentschel said the information she is seeking could have been essential to the public before the FBISD Board of Trustees gave its approval for the project to proceed in a limited fashion.

“A group of citizens came and spoke with me in reference to some concerns that they had,” said Healey. “This office generally doesn’t confirm the existence of any investigation, but I will say at this stage of the proceedings it would be better characterized as an inquiry.”

Healey said he was asked three years ago to look into possible Open Meetings Act violations by the district, and said there was “substantial evidence” that violations occurred. Healey said at that time he contacted an attorney with the district, informed him of the violations, and was assured that the district would conduct training sessions regarding the Open Meetings Act.

Healey said this is the first he has heard of suspected violations by the district since that incident.

The FBISD communications office has referred questions to the Legal Services Department, and no one from that department has contacted FortBendNow.com.

Events leading up to the current showdown between Hentschel and the district began this spring, when she made a formal request under the Texas Public Information Act for a variety of information related to the science center. Among records she requested were:

All documents under review by a committee the district set up to study the proposal’s feasibility;

All comments made about the project publicly on an FBISD website;

A list of “current committed companies and the amounts they have already donated to this project;”

All communication between members of the feasibility committee, PBK architects, FBISD Superintendent Timothy Jenney, and former Sugar Land mayor and developer David Wallace, who headed the feasibility committee;

Any available financial disclosure statements since 2007 for Jenney.

After a records-release deadline expired under TPIA regulations, Hentschel said in a May 19 complaint to the Attorney General’s Office, FBISD outside counsel David Feldman provided her with a “PowerPoint sales pitch” that “had nothing to do with any request that I had made…”

Sometime later, Hentschel said, the school district complied with a portion of her TPIA request and provided the public comments about the science center proposal, made on the FBISD website.

Nothing else was provided, according to Henschel.

Meanwhile, Feldman wrote the attorney general’s office on the district’s behalf, seeking to withhold certain e-mail addresses from disclosure to Hentschel under a provision of the TPIA.

In a July 20 letter to Feldman, Assistant Attorney General Bob Davis agreed that “the district must withhold” the email addresses in question “except to the extent that any such address is the address of a person or agent of a person who has or is seeking a contractual relationship with the district.”

And, Davis added, “The remaining information must be released.”

District representatives in August said the information was released after the ruling.

 “The AG ruled that the district could not withhold this information and the district has complied with the AG’s ruling,” said FBISD Chief Communications Officer Mary Ann Simpson. “Mr. Feldman has provided the information to Ms. Henschel… The district has provided her with all existing information we had that she requested.”

Hentschel said it isn’t true.

“They have not contacted me. They have not breathed,” she said in August. “Not a word, not a breath, not a phone call, not an email. Nothing.”

“Anyone who wants to complain about any activity that they think is improper they are welcome to come talk to me, my door is open to every citizen,” said Healey. “Sometimes it pans out they have a viable claim to be investigated and sometimes it doesn’t. What I do is I hear them out and I give them direction.”