wejo wrote:
I'm also just as curious as to why so many people strongly believe she shouldn't be CEO. I just got off the phone with someone who knows a lot about running but not USATF and menionted Hightower and their response was, "She doesn't seem very well received."
Maybe it's the fact she's as crooked as a dog's hind leg?
http://freepress.org/columns/display/3/2003/313"Hightower cover-up
Buried at the bottom of Bush’s article is the following statement: "Moss accused Hightower of disbanding his committee to keep the investigation from the public." Hightower insisted that since technology is part of district-wide operations it should be subsumed under the Finance and Operations Committee. Moss was out of town when Hightower eliminated his committee.
As Technology Committee Chair, Moss provided documentation to the Columbus Alive last year, including emails between Stephanie Hightower and WOSU Radio executives regarding private negotiations to hand over the school system’s nonprofit radio station WCBE to The Ohio State University. "
Further...
"CPS’s Bonnie and Clyde?
"We know what track Ms. Hightower and Mr. Cabot took. It’s called cover-up. If people knew their history, they would understand why I banged my shoe," Moss insists.
The media coverage tended to overlook or offer counterfactual assertions concerning Cabot’s and Hightower’s past public ethical dilemmas. There was no mention of Hightower’s secret attempts to give WCBE, valued at up to $17 million to WOSU. Nor was their any mention of her highly-publicized problems in the early 1990’s when she was a Communications Officer at the Ohio Department of Mental Health. Then-Ohio Inspector General David Sturtz issued a report accusing Hightower of making 134 hours of personal long-distance phone calls while on the job. Hightower left the agency and agreed to reimburse for the phone calls. State Auditor Thomas E. Ferguson concluded that Hightower owed the state $419.44 for phone calls and $3,291.32 for 134 hours of missed work while on the phone.
Hightower, a Democrat, took a job with Mayor Greg Lashutka’s Republican administration. In 1999, Hightower suddenly decided to run as a Democrat for the Columbus Board of Education. Between June and the November election, she raised more than $133,000 from the city’s elite to run for a job which pays a maximum of $2,880 a year. Her nearest competitors, the well-connected Karen Schwarzwalder and Bob Teater, raised $20,610 and $20,551, respectively. "
And then there's the matter of the USATF house counsel under Hightower, Larry James
"Larry James, a powerful corporate attorney and the city’s former Public Safety Director, served as her treasurer. James was appointed co-chair of the School’s Accountability Panel for a planned $1.6 billion school renovation and construction plan. Voters approved the first $400 million last November. A November 17, 2002 Dispatch editorial entitled "Here we go again" pointed out that James planned to "tweak" a draft of the ethics policy, particularly the part that forbid Accountability panel members or members of their families from being parties or beneficiaries of any contracts paid for with the construction bond money.
The Dispatch wrote: "In fact, a skeptic might say that his [James’] principle ‘qualification’ to lead the Accountability Panel is that he served as campaign treasurer for Stephanie Hightower, the School Board President. The notion of cutting corners on an ethics policy is ludicrous on its face." Cabot managed to get another lifelong friend, Paul Goggin, appointed as the other chair. "