District breaking new ground as it seeks vendor accountability

“There’s no best practice out there”

Stephanie Juneau, school district business manager, found out she’s forging into new territory in her quest to keep tabs on all the district’s vendors.

Juneau was active in investigating the alleged embezzlement of more than $500,000 from the school district by several phony vendors since 2006. Beyond being registered businesses with the Secretary of State, those vendors didn’t have any credentials and were a front for one of the school district’s own employees—IT director Cannon Leatherwood, according to investigators.
But in calling around to other school districts and governments around the state, Juneau said Leatherwood’s scam could have caught anyone, given the safeguards currently in place.
“I really thought I would call a bunch of different people to find out what they’re doing to make sure their vendors are in fact legitimate vendors and find a best practice or a set of best practices that we could implement here,” Juneau said. “That wasn’t the case at all.”
Instead Juneau talked to a lot of people who thought what she was doing was a good idea, but didn’t have much more to offer than encouragement. Other conversations yielded some suggestions that Juneau blended into a policy for the school board to consider for the district.
Juneau’s suggestions would require all vendors conducting more than $15,000 of business annually with the district to provide a certificate of insurance and a certificate of good standing from the state where the business is based. Nationally known vendors such as Dell and Cisco Systems are the only vendors getting by on their laurels under the new policy.
“Seeing a vendor’s certificate of insurance would signal their legitimacy as a company,” Juneau said. “We need to know who we’re doing business with.”