Assistant Superintendent Patrick Pizzo says former superintendent Leon Campo cost district aid

The East Meadow school district’s administration building once again has a new name after education board members voted to strip a former superintendent’s name from the front of the building changing it to what it was once known as —Salisbury School. The decision was made after a current administrator accused him of “gross incompetence” that may have cost district taxpayers millions.

Patrick Pizzo, East Meadow’s business and finance assistant superintendent, told board members May 24 that during his time as superintendent, Leon Campo mismanaged several projects that he ultimately had to try and fix after the fact.

When he started with the district in 2008, Pizzo told the Herald he found “boxes piled up” and business employees searching for scraps of paper and “desperately scrambling trying to put pieces together” because paperwork had been filed incorrectly.

“There were computers lined up along the wall,” Pizzo said, “and it really looked like an arcade-type office setup.”

Campo, however, denied Pizzo’s allegations that multi-million dollar building projects were improperly “closed out” — a phrased used to describe the process of ending a project and applying for state aid.

“We went after every nickel we could because that’s the way it was,” Campo said. “To my knowledge, we didn’t lose any aid.”

Campo started with the district in the 1970s, becoming superintendent in 2006. He officially retired in 2008, but the education board asked him to return to his old job for the 2008-09 academic year. Campo was brought back again as interim superintendent between 2015 and 2017.

Pizzo told board members last month he discovered on his first day as the facilities and operations director in 2008 there were “terminal errors” in closing out projects from the early 2000s. During that time, the building aid ratio for East Meadow was 52 percent, according to Pizzo, meaning that the district was eligible for more than half of the project to be paid for by the state.

For more than $55 million of projects, Pizzo alleged, deadlines to receive that aid had passed, resulting in a $29 million revenue loss. His findings were the product of five years of research and review by financial experts, which were then verified by two third-party experts in the field of capital close-outs and financial best practices.

“What he did was gross incompetence,” Pizzo told the Herald. “Lee Campo knows (this information) as well as I know it.”

The projects range from energy efficiency projects to construction. Pizzo says Campo was told of the findings in 2008, prompting Campo to then allegedly direct Pizzo to salvage as much money as he could, but to not share this information with the public.

Pizzo was able to recover nearly $23 million of the lost aid, he said. For close to $27 million of projects, he hired a new architect to come in to inspect projects that were never officially closed. That allowed the 18-month clock districts have to file the closure of a project to restart, ultimately saving more than $14 million in aid.

Another $8 million was added to those savings, Pizzo said, when the state announced an amnesty period in 2012

That left roughly $6 million lost by what Pizzo described as the “negligence of the era prior to my arrival.”

“I started on May 18, 2008,” Pizzo told the board, “and these projects were dead in the water long before then.”

If anything was actually wrong about how Campo managed the school district, it would’ve been found in the large number of audits school districts go through that are mandated by the state, Campo told the Herald.

“I have been subject to many, many audits, and they don’t sing your praises,” Campo said. “They look at your deficiencies and make recommendations. Anytime somebody’s trying to now, at this point in time, disparage the work, I can say that it’s pure baloney because while the intent is to discredit me, they’re really discrediting very many boards of education, prior superintendents, assistant superintendents, other business officials — no one person runs a school district.”

State audits review expenditures, not revenue, Pizzo said. So, expecting such an audit to discover these issues would be misplaced.

“A lot of our revenue comes from the state,” Pizzo said. “The state’s not going to say, ‘Hey, you didn’t get all the money that you’re entitled to from us. Why didn’t you ask for it?’ Would they do that? There’s just absolutely no reason for them to go and look to help us on that.”

The state always partnered with the school district if projects were in jeopardy, Campo said. He also called the decision to come out with this information now, “carefully orchestrated,” while Pizzo maintains the education board has known about these issues for years, only deciding now to come public with it because “it was a matter of having the truth come out.”

Depositions are pending for a race and age lawsuit between a former East Meadow school district administrator and the current administration — which includes Pizzo — along with current and former members of the education board. Campo says he’s a witness in the case for the plaintiff, and believes Pizzo has made these claims against him as a way to keep him quiet.

“I don’t run the litigation, I didn’t bring the litigation,” Campo said. “I’m just testifying the truth, and they don’t want that. They know it hurts them individually.”

The board decided to table the rest of the discussion over the claims at the meeting, but an emergency motion was made to change the name of the Leon J. Campo Salisbury Center back to its original Salisbury School. Campo’s moniker was added to the building in 2008 as a way to honor him.

“It was a recognition that I never asked for. Ultimately, it was an honor,” Campo said. “They decided they want to take away that honor, and they’ve got a reason to do it because they can’t get me to yield and give up the truth.”