Open letter to Phil Rumore, President, Buffalo Teachers Federation

To:       Phil Rumore, President, Buffalo Teachers Federation

From:   Carl Paladino, Park District Candidate for the Buffalo Board of Education

Date:   March 5, 2013

Hey Phil, I called you last week but you haven’t had the courtesy to return my call.  You see Phil, I believe in transparency.

For years our complacent community has come to accept as reality the lie that the complicity of members of the Board of Education and its executive staff with you, as President of the teacher’s union, is good for the kids.

You have done wonderful things for the teachers but at the same time you have literally destroyed the lives of thousands of poor inner city youth who were relegated to a dysfunctional city school system.

You have had the almighty gall to point your figure at the parents, most of whom are victims of the same failed system their children now attend.

You foster and promote the illusion that the system will improve for the kids under the continued guidance of you and the pathetic Board of Education under your control. You have brought the City of Buffalo to the brink of financial ruin to satisfy your ego and greed. On your watch, the City lost its working and middle class who couldn’t pay taxes and also afford private school alternatives for their children. In turn, the City’s failing tax base and most of the crime on its streets can be directly attributed to your predatory manipulations.

Send me with dates, names and amounts of all of the contributions, donations, gifts, gratuities, lunches, dinners and any other extensions (hereinafter referred to as “favors”) made by you, your union officers or delegates, PACS, or other affiliated entities to Board of Education members, superintendents, executive staff, etc. over the past 10 years.

By the way, we consider such “favors” to be bribes.

Elected or appointed, school officials, like others in government, have an obligation to disclose conflicts. If you want respect in this community, disclose your “favors”.

The law allows you to donate to the election campaigns of whoever you wish but 268,000 other Buffalonians and I feel that allowing you to control, influence or otherwise impact “our” elected or appointed officials inhibits their loyalty to act in the best interests of the citizens, the parents and the children in their deliberations on the many issues that involve your union.

Have you disclosed your “favors” to your teacher membership?

Do you tell them how you have spent all their money over the years?  Oh, yes, the teachers don’t elect you so who cares what they think. You have delegates who elect you. Do you disclose to them?

Did you pay the attorney fees for Ralph Hernandez to defend fraudulent petitions submitted by him when he ran for councilman as he boasted to others?

Did you give or promise “favors” to Ralph, Ruth Kapsiak and Roz Taylor to vote for rescinding the residency rule?

How can you legitimately negotiate over the table with less than qualified officials who you have bought and paid for?

You see, Phil, you are the number one antagonist and adversary of the Board of Education and our children.

If you are paying off or otherwise intimidating our elected and appointed representatives, we have a right to know about it.

There are no records of any Board member or employee ever publicly disclosing your “favors” nor have any of them ever, to my knowledge, recused themselves from a deliberation or vote due to his or her conflict of interest.  If they failed to disclose their conflicts, are their votes legally in-operative?

In your letter of February 11, 2013 to your membership you begged teachers to send in donations because you “need to raise a substantial amount to have any chance of electing pro-education….members of the board.” We assume “pro-education” means pro-union leadership incumbents or new pro-union leadership candidates.

That says a lot Phil.  You fear the loss of incumbents will work against your twisted control of the dumbed down Board that you now own or who fear you.

You said it clearly. “Please remember that the Board of Education will be making decisions not only on teaching and learning conditions but also our contract, residency, APPR’s etc.”

Your brazen hypocrisy is amazing.  I will expose your incestuous relationship with the Board and past superintendents and how the Board  and you throw the students under the bus to satisfy your maligned desire for power and money.

Phil, have you been promising to financially support candidates in this election? You then have an obligation to disclose to the citizens all promises of favors.