State officials can no longer sit idly while private consultants, like Johnson Controls Inc., make millions off of taxpayers for school projects that are ill-conceived and oversold.

We’ve seen too many examples already where school boards and taxpayers have been taken for a ride. In Duluth, the controversial Red Plan, developed by JCI, has divided that city and will ultimately cost taxpayers more than $300 million. In the St. Louis County School District, Johnson Controls exaggerated savings stemming from their proposed school district restructuring plan, in order to sell a $78.8 million bond measure from which JCI stands to reap nearly $12 million. And in the community of Paynesville, in central Minnesota, what began as a $100,000 steam boiler replacement morphed into a $16 million capital project, one that has now embroiled that school district in a growing controversy of its own, thanks again to JCI.

At the heart of each example is a company that has made millions leading unsuspecting and inexperienced school boards and administrators down a primrose path— and that has gotten away with it far too many times.

The real question is, who is minding the store?

It’s no secret that most school boards and administrators don’t have expertise when it comes to major capital improvement projects. They are educators, not engineers or attorneys. In most cases, they wouldn’t know a good contract that serves their school district’s interests from one that’s riddled with conflicts of interest and overcharges for a wide range of services. Most of these contracts are not even subject to a competitive process, one that might otherwise weed out such abuses.

The state of Minnesota is supposed to have a role in these matters. Indeed, the Legislature has tasked the state Department of Education with reviewing and rating major capital projects by school districts. A positive review by the MDE should be a seal of approval that school board members and voters can rely upon, but as voters in the St. Louis County School District and elsewhere have learned, MDE approval is little more than a rubber stamp, issued without a critical examination.

Despite the fact that JCI’s financial claims in regards to the St. Louis County School District were easily exposed as inflated, no one at the MDE ever examined them. That wasn’t an oversight. As top MDE administrators told the Timberjay, the Legislature hasn’t authorized them to examine the financial claims of districts. Instead, they rely on school districts to make sure that the data presented to them is accurate.

Yet, as is often the case, it is consultants, not school officials, who present the material and school officials, in many cases, don’t have enough expertise to know whether the information submitted in their name is even remotely accurate.

And in the case of JCI, which not only develops such plans but is typically hired to implement them as well, the company has a huge financial interest in seeing their plans approved. It’s a big conflict of interest that encourages everything from rosy scenarios to outright fraud.

While school boards rightfully covet their local control, there is clearly a role here for effective state oversight, if only because the state ultimately is on the hook if school districts can’t retire the massive public debt that JCI and other consultants routinely leave in their wake. If the new Republican majority in the Legislature is sincere in its stated goal of keeping taxes in check, how can it ignore such a major driver of local property tax increases?

The Legislature needs to act, by revisiting Minnesota Statute 123B.71, which outlines the MDE’s review and comment obligations. The department clearly needs to hire professional staff that can truly review these proposals in detail. That review should include a hard and critical look at financial data as well as contractual arrangements that are contrary to the public interest. And more needs to be done to prohibit the hiring of consultants without a competitive process.

The status quo is unacceptable. School districts are being sold plans and projects they don’t need or that won’t solve their real problems— and private companies like JCI, are profiting to the tune of tens of millions of dollars at the taxpayers’ expense. School boards, by themselves, can’t fix the problem. They need fair and independent expertise, the kind that is best provided by state officials with experience and knowledge in capital project development and public contracting.

Without such changes, taxpayers had best buckle up— because the ride is likely to get bumpy.