Tedesco at risk of foreclosure

He votes on a multi-million dollar school system budget. And he’s voted to needlessly waste money already.

The PUBLIC records of his financial acumen are certainly relevant to the position he holds.

Further, you can bet your bottom dollar credit checks are performed on school system finance administrators. Surely the ones who hold public office and get to vote on budget items deserve some scrutiny.

A foreclosure against a prominent politicians seems newsworthy.

And maybe it will make conservative pundits like Roy Cordato rethink their position that loan modification is a “moral hazard”.

Jeff & Jennifer, hats off to you. Whether you agree with John’s policies or not, this is tabloid-quality news.

He made the momentous decision to act (quit his job) with no consideration of the outcome (financial disaster). At least he’s consistent.

Clearly ideology trumped common financial sense and his fiduciary responsibility to his lender. That is absolutely relevant to the position he holds. Is this the person we want managing a billion-dollar school system?

Thanks progressive pulse for contributing to the politics of personal destruction.

It’s an unfortunate situation for John and I do feel some sympathy for him, but for those who think this is not relevant, consider this:

Very often when elected officials find themselves in financial troubles, people step up to help them out. And sometimes those people expect something in return. It doesn’t always happen. But it happens. My point is, it’s a potential weakness that could be exploited, turning a normally ethical elected official into something else.

And that’s why it needs to be made public, so that elected official will be more inclined to rise above the temptation.

Dallas Woodhouse is accusing someone of taking a cheap shot. Wow.

Yeah, those financial stories concerning the real estate of public officials are always overblown – like that one where that NC Governor bought a house down at the coast well below market rate while regulators were considering development approvals. Totally irrelevant, and I’m glad that it didn’t get reported very far or amount to much. There wasn’t any comment on it either from folks like Civitas or Americans for Prosperity, etc.

Of course, it was on the front page of the weighty “Carolina Journal”, but that doesn’t count:

http://www.johnlocke.org/acrobat/cjPrintEdition/cj-june-2006-web.pdf

There’s nothing in the article that encourages anyone to take pleasure in his misery. It might even have the opposite effect of creating sympathy — that is, unless you don’t think we should have sympathy for people in financial hard times.

Thanks everyone for your comments. As expected, this blog posting about John Tedesco’s foreclosure proceedings has generated a bit of controversy. I wanted to shed some light on why NC Policy Watch decided to publish this information as we did.

As a general rule, I believe the public deserves to be informed about the people they have voted for, or those they voted against, and who are making major decisions about public institutions. The decline of media in our state and nation is making that more difficult for voters, given that we have less reporters doing routine checks like this on our elected officials.

In Mr. Tedesco’s case, he’s a member of a school board that is looking at major budgetary concerns, employs a huge number of people in the county and is tasked with educating the more than 140,000 children who live in Wake County. The decisions he makes are enormously important, to say the least.

When his financial troubles enter into the public realm, which it did with the public filing of the foreclosure proceedings in the Wake County Courthouse, then the public is entitled to know about it and can make their own decisions about whether they think it is consequential or not.

The position he holds is one that’s attracted a lot of attention as of late, and there may be questions about whether his financial hardships could affect the decisions he makes, detract from the hours he’s put in as a school board member or even make him susceptible to bribery as has happened with other public officials.

I certainly spent time considering the effects of what I reported yesterday before I did publish the piece. But I ultimately decided to publish it because I believe it was in the public’s best interest.

On a side note, I think his predicament also shows the far reaches of this foreclosure crisis, something I’ve written about before. I did a report earlier this year about the lack of modifications coming through for homeowners (http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/cms/2010/11/25/hampered-by-hamp-as-foreclosures-rise/). Most of my time at Policy Watch is dedicated to doing investigations along those lines, and I’d encourage anyone who has story ideas to email me at sarah@ncpolicywatch.com.

Those of you that think that Tedesco’s inability to manage his personal finances is not a reflection on his ability to manage the much larger and more complex finances of Wake’s schools have your head in the sand. It matters not what his politics are……this is a question of judgement. What if he was driving drunk or not paying his taxes or being a bad parent…..opps he doesn’t have children. Maybe he should be using his time to go to work so he can pay his bills instead of reforming the school system.

If it were Mr. Obama going into foreclosure some folks would be all over the story like flies on roadkill. And loving every minute of it.

Anytime a public figure who is influential in how my tax money is spent gets in financial trouble, i sure as heck want to know about it. Lucky Mr. Tedesco is not in my school district.

It sounds from the description that he might have some emotional trouble that needs attention. I wonder why someone like this man, no doubt with all sorts of contacts, can’t find another job, makes me wonder what the rest of the story is. And what the next installment will be……………

I think he should have thought twice before quitting his job in the first place. Then maybe he could continue paying his mortgage.

The Wake GOP is claiming that Tedesco had to leave his job because “liberals” threatened to cut off funding for Big Brothers/Big Sisters over his school board antics.

If there is any truth to that, it’s despicable (and I can’t stand Tedesco).

However, as WRAL points out in their story, when he quit BB/BS in April, he said:

“Short of losing some sleep and personal time, I don’t think I’ve paid a price for the opportunity to serve the community,” he said in April of his decision. “I wanted to make a bigger commitment to our community and our kids.”

(see WRAL story at: http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/8969332/).

So his story appears to have changed. I don’t think anyone except John and his former bosses at BB/BS will ever know the truth for sure.

Vik, now you’re a mind reader? Can you hit me with next week’s winning lotto numbers?

John had great love for BB/BS and would never want to do anything to damage their standing in the community or ability to help kids. Even now, he’s asking that any donations to that well-intentioned but misguided attempt to help him be donated to BB/BS. The story about how he came to resign is true. When he left, John focused on how he could dedicate more time toward helping students because he knew if the full story came out it would damage BB/BS, ultimately hurting the kids who benefit from their programs. Regardless of the circumstances surrounding his ouster from BB/BS, I hope there isn’t a backlash against them, because it would be a backlash against kids who need our help.

I am glad he has problems too because he sure made a lot of trouble for the community

He hates poor people. I hope he ends up homeless so he can experience the challenges of being poor first hand. I hate him because he and the fearsome foursome are clearly trying to marginalize minorities and poor people. Anyone that denies that reality is psychotic. By the way, I am not a liberal….voted for both Bush I and II. It’s just that growing up poor, I know that poverty can limit you. Exposure to people who were different than me, helped me transcend poverty. If John T. has his way, a smart and capable kid in a poor community will not have that exposure.