School district paid $9,788 for teacher Inzunza's cell phone use
By Leslie Wolf Branscomb
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 2, 2005

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While Sweetwater Union High School District's blurb magazine struggled financially, its editor spent nearly $10,000 in district money on cell phone calls during the magazine's three-year life span, documents obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune show.

The records, obtained through the California Public Records Act, show Michael Inzunza spent more than almost all of the other 200 to 300 district employees who had cell phones in the past four years. The school district paid all his bills, even though some topped $500 a month and included numerous calls made after midnight.

In May, when asked about Inzunza's cell phone expenditures, then-Superintendent Edward Brand said, "He'll be held accountable for that and he'll have to reimburse us."

However, Inzunza has apparently not reimbursed the district and no mention of his phone usage was made in any of his performance evaluations, which were obtained by The Union-Tribune with Inzunza's consent.

Inzunza was given a district cell phone when he was hired in October 2001. His phone plan allowed 1,300 monthly minutes of talk time. However, he often used the phone more than 2,500 minutes a month.

From October 2001 through the end of last month the district paid $9,788.79 for Inzunza's cell phone bills.

District policy requires employees to use land-based lines whenever possible. Inzunza signed a contract agreeing to use the phone for official district business only and to reimburse the district for any personal calls within 10 days of the invoice.

Asked in May whether Inzunza reimbursed the district for any calls, district spokeswoman Lillian Leopold said, "not to my knowledge." No documents were given to The Union-Tribune following a request for evidence of reimbursement.

Leopold said when Inzunza was recently asked by the district's lawyers whether any personal calls were made on the cell phone, he answered that there were none.

However, the bills show hundreds of calls made to Inzunza's family and friends during the period for which detailed records were made available, from July 2002 to August 2004. Bills prior to July 2002 didn't indicate the numbers called, and the district switched to a flat reimbursement rate last fall.

Inzunza made the most calls, more than 500, to family friend and political consultant Marco Polo Cortes. His brothers, National City Mayor Nick Inzunza and San Diego City Councilman Ralph Inzunza Jr., were also frequently called, as was his father, former National City Councilman Ralph Inzunza Sr.

In those two years Inzunza made and received more than 1,600 calls between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. – nearly one-third of them after midnight.

There were calls to Tijuana, Mexicali, Miami, New York, Las Vegas and Wisconsin, and numerous calls to home and cell phone numbers in the Los Angeles area. Dozens of calls were made on holidays including Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving, and numerous calls on weekends and after working hours to businesses that were not school-related or blurb advertisers, including movie theaters, restaurants, video rental stores, auto repair shops, music stores, hotels and nightclubs.

Calls the district paid for include 108 calls made and received the night Inzunza's brother Nick was elected mayor of National City, 40 of them between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m., including calls to campaign workers and the county Registrar of Voters.

On Halloween 2002 there were 21 calls between 9:30 p.m. and 3:30 a.m.; New Year's Eve 2002 shows eight calls made between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Last July and August, Inzunza made a dozen calls to the new phone line he'd established for his business, a monthly newspaper called South Bay Review. The school district paid for those calls too.

Asked in May whether any of the calls he made on his district-paid phone were personal, Inzunza, who declined to be interviewed in person, responded via e-mail: "I can't remember who I called last month yet alone who I spoke to in the last five years, but I can tell you that my family and friends are who I relied on most in helping me bring in advertising and grants to the district."

The documents given to The Union-Tribune indicate only one occasion on which the amount of the phone bills was questioned. A handwritten note attached to the January 2002 cell phone bill said: "Please check out the plan on this phone – bills are high."

The bill was for $1,127.37, of which $771.26 was unpaid past charges. A later note said: "OK to pay." Leopold said the notation was made by an employee in the district's purchasing department, and that the bill was high because it included the purchase price of the phone.

The following month Inzunza's phone bill was $1,549.75, which was paid by the district without any further written notations.

When asked whether anyone questioned Inzunza's phone use, district officials didn't indicate that it was ever considered a problem.

"It's not unusual," Leopold said of Inzunza's expenditure of more than $3,000 on phone calls each year.

"I can't tell you I've taken a close look at his bills," said district Chief Financial Officer Barry Dragon. "I'm going to assume those were legitimate calls."

"We do try to look at the larger bills," he added. "But I can tell you we didn't look at every bill."

A review by The Union-Tribune of all Sweetwater district cell phone records for the past five years show Inzunza's bills stood out. Few other employees spent as much.

The documents provided by the school district do not show the names of the other cell phone users, but Leopold said the list does not include the superintendent and other cabinet-level administrators whose contracts include individual expense accounts.

The records show that in the 2001-02 fiscal year, 218 of the district's 5,000 employees had cell phones, including Inzunza. Two people had bills over $3,000 for the year. Inzunza, who started using a district phone in October 2001, was third with bills totaling $2,423 for his first nine months of employment.

In 2002-03 seven of the 295 employees with cell phones spent in excess of $3,000, including Inzunza. Three spent more than he did that year.

In 2003-04 Inzunza spent more than anyone else – the same year the school board voted to slash cell phone bill expenditures. His $3,639.49 tab accounted for 2.5 percent of the district's total cell phone expenditures that fiscal year, though he was one of 293 cell phone users.

In September 2004 the district instituted a new policy giving employees, including Inzunza, a flat $40 monthly reimbursement for cell phone usage.

Though the number of cell phone users actually increased in the most recent fiscal year, the policy change drastically reduced the district's annual cell phone expenditures to $76,600, down from the nearly $200,000 the district spent just three years ago.

The change was made to simplify bookkeeping, not because employees were making excessive calls, Dragon said.

"We were spending a lot of staff time, clerical time, tracking phone bills," Dragon said. "Frankly, it's a lot simpler, administratively, in the final analysis."

Blurb magazine's budget was eliminated by the school board in April, so Inzunza is no longer its editor. He is still a district employee, however. As a teacher on special assignment, he earned tenure after two years at the magazine.

He will be reassigned to a teaching position in the Adult Education program in the fall, said Brand, who has left Sweetwater to become superintendent of the San Marcos Unified School District.

In early April, while facing the likelihood that blurb would be discontinued, Inzunza told The Union-Tribune of his plans. "I'm going to continue doing blurb privately," he said. "We want to take the idea of blurb and go countywide."

Brand said May 12 that Inzunza would not be allowed to do so, since the school district owns the magazine and the concept. "If Mike is packaging it for sale for personal use, he can't do it. He doesn't have the authority to do that," Brand said.

Inzunza subsequently denied saying he planned to take blurb private.

In response to a request for an interview, Inzunza declined to answer questions in person. But in a May 27 e-mail, he wrote: "I would love to create a new privately funded magazine that would continue covering teen adolescent issues written by our students."

"Although I came up with the idea and name of blurb magazine, I have never submitted an inquiry or have never offered to purchase the name or licensing agreement from the district," he wrote.

As for his future with the district, Inzunza wrote in the same e-mail: "I am seriously considering taking a leave (of) absence to pursue job offers, but my passion has always been working with students, making it a tough decision to leave."

Leslie Branscomb: (619) 498-6630; leslie.branscomb@uniontrib.com