CITYWIDE All eyes were on Winston Braham on Tuesday night in a silent City Council Chambers, as the school district’s former chief financial officer took to the podium in a public arena for the first time since leaving the district amid controversy last year.
Accusations of fiscal mismanagement and secretive practices have been lobbed at Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District administrators since Braham’s abrupt resignation in November 2006, intensifying in the months that followed as news surfaced of his $189,000 settlement agreement and an accompanying gag order precluding him from speaking about the district.
On a night when the City Council agreed to allocate a $530,000 contribution to the district — contingent on the board imposing a moratorium on confidentiality agreements — Braham looked to finally set the record straight.
First, he contradicted reports that the $189,000 paid to him was hush money and that he didn’t support teachers. Braham recalled the moment he saw the confidentiality clause with “eyes wide open,” signing to “choose a path whose exist is most rapid and comfortable.” The former assistant superintendent of business services didn’t think the clause was appropriate, but signed it anyway, since he had no intentions at the time of speaking about the district’s issues in public.
“I think it is constitutionally OK for a member of the public of this community and any community to speak on a public issue,” Braham said. “The same way any person can walk in with a chit... as long as it is done in a respectable manner.”
In May, Superintendent Dianne Talarico lifted the confidentiality clause preventing Braham from speaking in public, but another stipulation preventing him from making disparaging remarks —
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 14, 2007. Read the original PDF.