Earlier this week, the California Court of Appeals for the 4th District, which sits in Orange County, issued a decision which threw out the long standing criminal charges against former Capistrano Unified School District superintendent James Fleming, whose criminal trial was pending, for using taxpayer funds to set up an “enemies list” of district residents unhappy with his policies, and to help incumbent trustees ward off a recall attempt. Justice Dave Sills, a Republican by the way, ruled that maintaining such a list, and Fleming’s help for the incumbents, was just part of the job. As a potential witness in the case who was on the list because of my Public Records Act requests and assistance to the original Capo recall team, I was very disappointed in Justice Sills opinion, not just because I was on the list, but mostly because now the lawyers who make hundreds of millions annually off of advising California’s out of control school systems will be advising incumbent trustees and superintendents all across the state that it’s OK to use our tax dollars to fulfill political agendas rather that spend it in the classroom. I note that Richard Nixon didn’t like reporter Daniel Schorr’s Freedom of Information Act requests, much like Fleming did not like mine, which landed Schorr on the President’s own infamous enemies list, according to recently released FBI files. While neither Nixon or Fleming were fully prosecuted for these violations of civil rights, they both lost their jobs, and some might say that is where the real justice is.
