As Orange County taxpayers, we expect public-school administrators to manage our funds with integrity and transparency.
A recent article from the Daily Pilot/Times OC revealed that the Rancho Santiago Community College District (RSCCD) discovered over $8 million in an account that the elected trustees of the college district were unaware of.
The money represented years of insurance premium rebates that the Alliance of Schools for Cooperative Insurance Programs (ASCIP) was holding on behalf of the RSCCD. Public records show that even two months after the $8 million was returned to the RSCCD in June, ASCIP was still holding over $13 million for other school districts throughout Southern California.
Elected Trustee Phillip Yarbrough, Chair of the college district’s Fiscal/Audit Committee, was the first to question the existence of these funds and subsequently called for a forensic audit.
In a troubling turn of events, Yarbrough—an RSCCD trustee since 1996—was removed from the Fiscal/Audit Committee for his commitment to accountability. (See Trustee Yarbrough’s comments from 1:55:14 to 1:57:26 from the October 14 RSCCD board meeting in this link )
At the same meeting, RSCCD Chancellor Marvin Martinez made the claim the funds had been audited “year after year after year,” implying that Yarbrough should have known about their existence while deflecting his own responsibility on to the board and taxpayers.
(See Martinez’s comments from 2:06:50 to 2:09:00 in this link)
Martinez’s assertion about the audits was misleading. The funds were under ASCIP’s control prior to the return of the $8 million and would not have been subject to audit by the college district’s auditors.
At the October 14 meeting Martinez further stated ASCIP began holding funds for the RSCCD in 2012, but public records show a balance of $553,886.53 was held by ASCIP dating back to 2009. These funds eventually grew to the $8 million in June.
While Yarbrough and his board colleagues may have been unaware of the funds held by ASCIP, it was clear to me that Martinez was well-informed of the fund’s existence outside the college district’s control.
In my first meeting with Martinez in September 2019, two months after his hiring, he discussed the insurance premium rebates. At the time ASCIP was holding three quarters of a million dollars of funds designated for the college district.
Given these developments, Orange County taxpayers must demand greater transparency and accountability from all public schools and colleges. Trust in these institutions rely on responsible management of public funds, and leaders like Chancellor Marvin Martinez must uphold this critical responsibility to their governing boards and most importantly to the taxpayers.
Dr. Barry Resnick retired in 2022 after 42 years as a professor of counseling with the Rancho Santiago CCD. He has resided with his family in Orange for 37 years
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