Full Disclosure Network

According to Dominic Shambra, former Director of Planning and Development for the Los Angeles Unified School District, there was no competitive bidding for the Belmont Learning Center contract. “It was a request for proposal and it wasn’t one that asked for a bid.” In this Part 1 of a 2 part interview, Shambra told FULL DISCLOSURE host Leslie Dutton about his role. “I was one of five on the committee that recommended (the developer/contractor) to the Board of Education.” “My responsibility was to coordinate for the District those activities which were done by lawyers, the business people.” And, in response to his battles with the oversight committee members, Shambra said he wore a railroad engineer’s cap to one meeting “because they said I was railroading this whole project. We were very strong and we were very aggressive and we stood up for what we believed.”

Critical reports on the Belmont Learning Center were labeled as “Propaganda” by Dominic Shambra, former Director of Planning & Development for the LAUSD. On Part 2 of the FULL DISCLOSURE interview, Shambra singled out the Internal Revenue Service” taxability letter”, David Koff of the Hotel & Restaurant workers union and Scott Wildman, Chair of the California Joint Legislative Audit Committee as having used “the same type of propaganda.” As for the allegations of conflict of interest by LAUSD outside legal counsel David Cartwright and his law firm O’Melveny & Myers, Shambra said: “I trusted them completely…” “We were fully aware. In fact, I can actually say that Dave was probably the toughest of the negotiators on Kajima,” (the developer who was also a client of O’Melveny & Myers). With regard to the earthquake fault over which the Belmont school project was built, Shambra said, “we actually knew that there was an earthquake fault.” “The law says if it’s an active fault, recognized fault, you cannot build the building on top of that fault. That’s an inactive fault. So they don’t have to tear down those buildings.”