About C. J. Huff, David Humphreys, and the Turner Report

The state audit is here and already the spin is beginning.

It is not what C. J. Huff and his administrative team have done with the taxpayers' money, it is what David Humphreys is trying to buy with his.

Excuses are already being planted by those few who still support C. J. Huff. Since David Humphreys contributed $111,111 I believe the number was, to State Auditor Thomas Schweich that naturally brings into question any results from the auditing team's report..

And while they are it, we have already had two comments from people, perhaps just one person, who claim that David Humphreys is bankrolling the Turner Report.

That idea, I have heard, has been mentioned by C. J.  Huff since obviously it helps his ego to think that no one could have done this much damage to someone who only a year ago was being touted as the hero of the Joplin Tornado unless I had millions of dollars backing me.

So let me make a few statements.

1. David Humphreys is not bankrolling the Turner Report. Last fall, he contributed $1,000 which I mentioned at the time and which was instrumental in helping me get this project off the ground. It was part of an Indie-go-go crowdsourcing campaign. He was the biggest contributor to that campaign. The second biggest contributor was my older sister, Vicki Dolezilek. To this day, neither one has made any effort to influence anything I have written.

2. The damage to C. J. Huff has not been done by the Turner Report. The only one who has damaged C. J. Huff is C. J. Huff. It has been my experience over the past 37 years that people who rule by fear and who surround themselves with people who either do their dirty work or kiss their backsides (or both) are not real leaders. Real leaders surround themselves with people who challenge them. Every time I have seen a leader build a climate of fear it invariably turns out the person was not a leader at all.

3., The tactics that have been used by C. J. Huff and his administrative team are reminiscent of playground bullies. I have seen people like this brought down and the question that always follows is "How in the world did these punks fool people for so long?'

There is no guarantee that the state audit is going to uncover crime, though I would be surprised if it did not. I have come across so many things in just 12 months..

What the state audit will uncover, and I have no doubt about this, is money that has been misspent, poor decisions that have been made by administration and rubber-stamped by a school board that did not ask anywhere near enough questions.

When CFO Paul Barr tells the board that it needs to hire a financial consultant to seek a long-term loan because the Huff Administration decided to spend $8 million on "might-as-well" items and no one even acts like it is anything out of the ordinary when  he explains that it was for artificial turf  for all football fields, lighting for all fields, a track for the high school so the students don't have to go to Junge Stadium, and doubling the number of tennis courts, then it is time for the auditors to come in.

I would be shocked if the auditors do not severely chastise the district for the incredible amount of travel that has been done, whether it be C. J. Huff's infamous (and self-serving) thank-you tour or the expensive conventions and seminars that the district kept sending dozens of people to attend even though the district reserves were dwindling to single digits.

The auditors are not going to look kindly on the lavish spending on 21st Century frills at a time when our balance looked more like 1929.

From everything I am hearing around the community, people are not buying the C. J. Huff spin any more.

When it comes right down to it, the wide majority of people in the Joplin R-8 School District are nowhere near as interested in what David Humphreys does with his money than what C. J. Huff is doing with ours.