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Marietta Daily Journal
October 7, 2005
SPECIAL GRAND JURY TO PROBE REDDEN'S $100M LAPTOP PLAN
MARIETTA, GA - Cobb District Attorney Pat Head was granted an order Thursday to empanel a special grand jury to investigate whether a Cobb School District bidding process for a massive laptop computer contract was manipulated in favor of Apple Computer.
Head completed his two-and-a-half month preliminary investigation earlier this week and asked Cobb's nine Superior Court judges Tuesday to empanel a special grand jury. The judges voted 8-0 Thursday morning, with Judge Dorothy Robinson absent, to call a special grand jury and Chief Judge James Bodiford signed the order for the criminal investigation into the alleged improprieties with the Apple contract that will begin Nov. 4 with 16 to 23 jurors.
Head was requested by the Cobb School Board on July 14 to conduct a criminal investigation into allegations that the bidding process for former Superintendent Joe Redden's now-defunct $100.8 million Power to Learn laptop initiative was slanted toward Apple. The school board subsequently hired the New York-based forensic auditing firm of Kessler International to conduct a civil investigation into the bidding process.
Head did not cite any names in his findings, saying it included everyone involved in the procurement process, and did not ask for any indictments in seeking the special grand jury investigation. But, it is believed the special grand jury investigation will focus on Redden, Chief Deputy Superintendent Dr. Don Beers and possibly other members of Redden's executive cabinet. If the investigation finds laws were broken during the procurement process, the special grand jury could ask for indictments and a subsequent criminal trial.
Several laws cited by Head in his preliminary investigation carry a maximum prison sentence of up to five years.
The names of Redden and Beers were cited often in the Kessler report that was released Aug. 14 and said Redden "deceived the school board and the public" by manipulating the laptop contract in favor of Apple.
Head, who does not have subpoena powers, said he, an assistant D.A. and two law enforcement officers interrogated more than a dozen witness in their preliminary probe, but Head said not all of them agreed to be questioned. He also refused to identify them. However, the soon-to-be empaneled special grand jury does have subpoena power and those summoned will have to testify unless they invoke the Fifth Amendment, Head said.
The timing of the special grand jury investigation could not be worse for Redden, who resigned Aug. 24, 10 days after the heavily damaging Kessler report.
Redden was expected to be named superintendent of the 75,000-student Virginia Beach school system, 50th largest in the nation, as early as Tuesday night. But the system's school board delayed its decision until its Oct. 18 meeting after disparaging reports about Redden's departure from the 106,000-student Cobb School District began to circulate throughout the Virginia Beach area and the local newspaper, the Virginian-Pilot, criticized him heavily in a Wednesday morning editorial.
Dan Edwards, chairman of the 11-member Virginia Beach school board, had seemed almost unbothered during two interviews with the MDJ when queried about the controversy that led to Redden's resignation in Cobb. But when contacted late Thursday night with news of the special grand jury investigation, he was agitated and abrupt with his answers.
"Not within the next 10 days. We don't reconvene until the 18th of October. We'll meet with the search firm on the 18th and consider where we're headed," he said when asked if the grand jury investigation will affect Redden as the board's "preferred candidate," as Edwards has called him.
Redden told the Virginian-Pilot in an interview Wednesday that Head's investigation was "politically motivated." However, Redden refused to be interviewed Thursday by the Marietta Daily Journal, and his wife, Shirley, became hostile after answering a call to his west Cobb home.
"He knows," said Mrs. Redden when told the reporter was seeking comments about the special grand jury. Asked if she would call Redden to the phone, she said, "He doesn't want to speak with you. Has he ever had anything to say to you?"
Asked if the reporter could come by their house to speak with him, she said, "If you do, I may shoot you."
When she was reminded that, previously, Redden would answer questions when approached at board meetings, she said, "That's because he was being polite. He's not feeling very polite right now."
When informed that Redden had told the Virginian-Pilot that his investigation was "politically motivated," Head bristled and flatly denied it.
"I don't have any political agenda at all," Head said. "Gen. Redden was appointed by a Republican school district and it wouldn't matter if it was a Democratic school district. The same school district asked me to look at this, so I don't see how anybody could say what we're doing - the District Attorney's office is doing - is political at all."
Told that Virginia Beach school board chairman Edwards said his opinion will not be impacted by Head's investigation since district attorney's "have their own agendas," Head said, "He's wrong about this one. I don't have an agenda. There's nothing motivating me other than a request from seven members of the Cobb County School District that asked me to do this. I didn't volunteer to jump in there. I did not just jump in and start running with this, so I don't see how anybody could ever say there's an agenda or that I'm motivated by politics. I don't see how politics has been involved in any of this. Is Gen. Redden elected? Where's the political flavor that would be something to generate any action on anybody's part?"
Cobb school board members were not surprised to learn Thursday of the special grand jury investigation.
"I am not surprised at all," said Vice Chair Dr. Teresa Plenge. "I recognized the significance of the Kessler report and I am totally baffled by all the people who have read this report and didn't see the same thing. How can they be so blind? We were deceived by Joe Redden and Don Beers. I was deceived up to a point, but when I got the Kessler report it was there in black and white."
Board member Lindsey Tippins said he is confident a grand jury will "get to the bottom of the issue."
"I've had questions about the propriety of the procurement process the entire time, and I'm so glad to see it's going to be investigated by a grand jury," Tippins said. "I think a grand jury has subpoena power to conclude and investigate and I think a grand jury will get to the bottom of it. In my mind, if no wrong doing has occurred then that needs to be set straight in the public's mind but if it has, that needs to be dealt with. I think a grand jury investigation will get answers to the previously unanswered questions in this entire scenario."
According to the order signed Thursday, Head's preliminary investigation also included 15 separate purchase orders signed by Deputy Superintendent Don Beers without the knowledge of the school board for 495 desktop computers for 15 middle schools for over $500,000. Members of Redden's executive cabinet claimed a computer problem prevented issuing one purchase order for the 15 schools.
The Cobb school board requested a criminal investigation by Head on July 14 after testimony during a hearing before Cobb Superior Court Judge S. Lark Ingram revealed Apple Computer went from a distant third to first in a slanted final bidding process before a committee led by Redden and four of his top-ranking central office staff members. On the same day, the school board also hired the New York forensic auditing firm of Kessler International to investigate the bidding process.
Based on evidence from the July 8 hearing, Judge Ingram ruled July 29 in favor of a lawsuit brought by former Cobb Commissioner Butch Thompson against Redden and five school board members who voted for his controversial $100.8 million Power to Learn laptop initiative, claiming the school district was using 2003 SPLOST money approved by Cobb taxpayers for other projects to fund the laptop program. Judge Ingram's ruling halted Redden's PTL initiative, three months after the school board had voted to implement the first of three phases, which provided laptops to all 7,100 district teachers and 8,500 to high school students at a cost of $25 million, and ultimately would have provided more than 63,000 computers to all middle and high school students.
On Aug. 14, at an unusual special called Sunday meeting at Atlanta Country Club, the Kessler report and its shocking findings were released to the school board. The report concluded that Redden and key members of his executive cabinet had deceived the school board and the public by steering the laptop contract to Apple.
Redden delivered two voluminous files to school board members after the reports release denying its findings.
Redden, who vowed the day after the Kessler report's release that he would not resign, announced his resignation 10 days later.
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