For nearly two decades I have been paying an assessment on my tax bill for the Rancho Santiago Community College District’s (RSCCD) $337 million Measure E bond passed in 2002. It will be many more years before this financial obligation ends.
I admire the additions and renovations my annual payment has provided to the college district’s two colleges, Santa Ana and Santiago Canyon.
However, I don’t feel there has been full transparency to the taxpayers who fund school bonds.
I recently found out where my Measure E tax dollars went and who handled the funding.
A tiny footnote in the RSCCD’s Human Resources and Educational Services annual report caught my eye and raised suspicions:
“…the District has elected to cover exposures related to Measure E construction projects through ASCIP’s captive insurance company CIPA (Captive Insurance for Public Agencies).”
ASCIP, or the Alliance of Schools for Cooperative Insurance Programs is a non-profit public agency known as a Joint Powers Authority. ASCIP provides insurance coverage to public K-12 school and community college districts throughout the state. I previously wrote about ASCIP in my editorial, “Rancho Santiago Community College District Must Make Changes”.
CIPA is a licensed insurance company based in Hawaii. It is a subsidiary of ASCIP handling bond construction insurance which covers the exposures mentioned in the footnote.
Premiums to cover bond construction insurance cost at a minimum 2.8% of a bond’s value.
On the surface this did not seem out of the ordinary until I dug a little deeper. Two of the corporate directors of CIPA during Measure E bond construction were RSCCD senior administrators – John Didion, Vice Chancellor of Human Resources and Educational Services and Peter Hardash, Vice Chancellor Business Operations and Fiscal Services. Public records show Didion had also served as CIPA’s treasurer.
Through a public records request I found $7.8 million of RSCCD funds was paid out for bond construction insurance between 2008-2021. (Records prior to 2008 were unavailable). Over half of the $7.8 million was paid while Didion and Hardash were employed by the college district.
An 18-month investigation into CIPA and its directors by The Daily Pilot/Times OC reporter, Sara Cardine uncovered invoices for bond construction insurance payments with Didion and Hardash’s signatures.
The footnote statement is clear that the District “elected” CIPA to handle Measure E construction exposures, yet there were never votes recorded or minutes of any kind memorializing that CIPA was involved with Measure E bond construction insurance.
Didion and Hardash are no longer employed by the RSCCD. Didion left in 2016 and six months later began working as a paid consultant for CIPA and now serves as its board president. Hardash left the RSCCD in 2020 and remains a director of CIPA.
In a few days I will receive my property tax bill which will include my annual Measure E assessment.
Dr. Barry Resnick retired in 2022 after 42 years as a professor of counseling with the Rancho Santiago CCD. He has resided with his family in Orange for 37 years.
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