Merced Union High School District elections (2016)
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Two of the five seats on the Merced Union High School District board of trustees were up for by-district general election on November 8, 2016. In his bid for re-election to the Area 3 seat, incumbent Phillip Schiber was defeated by challenger Julio Valadez. Area 4 incumbent Dora Lee Crane did not file to run for re-election, leaving the seat open for a newcomer. Candidates John Medearis and Marjorie Webster ran for the seat, and Medearis won.[1][2]
The district was guaranteed to add one new board member after the 2016 election due to the open Area 4 seat. Though new members were elected to the board in 2012 and 2014, those new members had to defeat incumbents in order to win the seats. Click here to see how else this race compared to past elections in both the district and the state.
Merced Union High board of trustees member Greg Opinski was arrested on bribery charges on August 29, 2016. In reaction to the arrest as well as to questions of whether Opinski still lived in the district's Area 1 as he was required to do by state law, some members of the board joined community members in asking for his resignation. Opinski did not step down. The board also voted to censure him in September 2016 over an unrelated incident involving the district's chief business officer.
- See also: Issues in the district
Elections
Voter and candidate information
The Merced Union board of trustees consists of five members elected to four-year terms. Elections are held by district on a staggered basis every November of even-numbered years. Three seats were up for election on November 4, 2014, and two seats were up for election on November 8, 2016. There was no primary election.[3]
To get on the ballot, school board candidates had to register with the county elections office by August 12, 2016. If incumbents did not file by that deadline, the filing deadline was extended for non-incumbent candidates until August 17, 2016. In order to qualify as candidates, they had to be at least 18 years old, citizens of California, residents of the school district, registered voters, and "not legally disqualified from holding civil office," according to the bylaws of the Merced Union board of trustees. Once they took office, school board members could not be employed by the school district.[4][5]
To vote in this election, residents of the school district had to register by October 24, 2016.[6] Photo identification was not required to vote in this election.[7]
Candidates and results
Area 3
Results
| Merced Union High School District, Area 3 General Election, 4-year term, 2016 |
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| Candidate | Vote % | Votes |
 Julio Valadez |
51.55% | 3,284 |
| Phillip Schiber Incumbent | 48.34% | 3,080 |
| Write-in votes | 0.11% | 7 |
| Total Votes | 6,371 | |
| Source: Merced County, "November 8, 2016 General Election Results," accessed December 12, 2016 | ||
Candidates
| Phillip Schiber | Julio Valadez 
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Area 4
Results
| Merced Union High School District, Area 4 General Election, 4-year term, 2016 |
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| Candidate | Vote % | Votes |
| John Medearis |
50.39% | 4,986 |
| Marjorie Webster | 49.28% | 4,876 |
| Write-in votes | 0.32% | 32 |
| Total Votes | 9,894 | |
| Source: Merced County, "November 8, 2016 General Election Results," accessed December 12, 2016 | ||
Candidates
| John Medearis
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Marjorie Webster | ||
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Additional elections on the ballot
- See also: California elections, 2016
The district's school board election shared the ballot with a number of statewide ballot measures as well as elections for the following offices:[8]
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Key deadlines
The following dates were key deadlines for California school board elections in 2016:[9][10]
| Deadline | Event |
|---|---|
| August 1, 2016 | Semi-annual campaign finance report due |
| August 10, 2016 - November 8, 2016 | 24-hour campaign contribution reporting period |
| August 12, 2016 | Candidate filing deadline |
| August 17, 2016 | Extended filing deadline for non-incumbent candidates for open seats |
| September 29, 2016 | First pre-election campaign finance report due |
| October 24, 2016 | Voter registration deadline |
| October 27, 2016 | Second pre-election campaign finance report due |
| November 8, 2016 | Election Day |
| January 31, 2017 | Semi-annual campaign finance report due |
Endorsements
Do you know of an official or organization that endorsed a candidate in this race? Let Ballotpedia know by email at editor@ballotpedia.org.
Campaign finance
Candidates in this race were required to file two pre-election reports. The first was due on September 29, 2016, and the second was due on October 27, 2016. If candidates received more than $1,000 from a single source between August 10, 2016, and November 8, 2016, they had to file a campaign finance report within 24 hours of receiving the contribution.[10]
Candidates who did not raise or spend more than $2,000 on their campaigns had to file an exemption form by September 29, 2016. They did not have to file additional campaign finance reports.[10]
Candidates who had a remaining balance from previous campaigns or who had raised or spent money on their campaigns prior to the candidate filing deadline had to file a semi-annual campaign finance report by August 1, 2016. The next semi-annual campaign finance report was due January 31, 2017.[10]
Reports
Candidates received a total of $0.00 and spent a total of $1,136.28 in the election, according to the Merced County Elections Office.[11]
Area 3
| Candidate | Contributions | Expenditures | Cash on hand |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phillip Schiber | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Julio Valadez | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
Area 4
| Candidate | Contributions | Expenditures | Cash on hand |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Medearis | $0.00 | $1,136.28 | ($1,136.28) |
| Marjorie Webster | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
Past elections
Information about earlier elections can be found by clicking [show] at the right. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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2014Trustee Area 1
Trustee Area 2This election was canceled due to lack of opposition. David Honey from Trustee Area 2 won re-election by default.[12] Trustee Area 5
2012Trustee Area 3This election was canceled due to lack of opposition. Incumbent Sam Spangler was re-elected by default.[13] Trustee Area 4
Trustee Area 5
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What was at stake?
2016
Election trends
- See also: School board elections, 2014
The Merced Union High School District's 2016 school board election was guaranteed to add one new member to the board due to an open seat. The district had not had an open seat on the ballot in the most recent past two election cycles.
All three incumbents ran to retain their seats in both 2012 and 2014. In 2012, two out of the three incumbents were re-elected, and one new member joined the board. In 2014, the only incumbent to win re-election ran unopposed. Newcomers defeated the other incumbents to take two seats on the board.
| School board election trends | |||||
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| Year | Candidates per seat | Unopposed seats | Incumbent success rate | Seats won by newcomers | |
| Merced Union High School District | |||||
| 2016 | 2.00 | 0.00% | 100.00% | 50.00% | |
| 2014 | 2.00 | 33.33% | 33.33% | 66.67% | |
| 2012 | 1.67 | 33.33% | 66.67% | 33.33% | |
| California | |||||
| 2014 | 1.91 | 25.18% | 79.00% | 38.14% | |
| United States | |||||
| 2014 | 1.89 | 32.57% | 81.31% | 38.24% | |
Issues in the district
School board votes to censure trustee
The Merced Union High board of trustees voted 4-1 to censure board member Greg Opinski on September 14, 2016. Opinski cast the lone dissenting vote.[14]
Though Opinski had come under fire after getting arrested on bribery charges on August 29, 2016, the board's censure vote was not in response to his arrest. The censure was first suggested by Board Vice President Dora Crane after Opinski met with the district's chief business officer John Olson on August 25, 2016. At his meeting with Olson, Opinski requested access to the district's email server. When Olson denied his request, Opinski began yelling and cursing at him, according to the board's censure resolution.[14]
Merced Union High Superintendent Alan Peterson said Opinski was denied access to the district's email server due to attorney-client privilege. Opinski filed two lawsuits against the school district regarding projects his contracting company was hired to work on. One case went to arbitration that led the district to offer Opinski a settlement, which was ongoing at the time Opinski met with Olson. The other case was still in progress.[15]
The censure resolution limited Opinski's interractions with district staff, requiring him to speak only with Superintendent Peterson.[14] “Censure is the only real tool that boards or any other legislative body has to work with in regards to a member’s behavior toward others,” said Peterson. “There’s no legal repercussion if he (Opinski) doesn’t follow the rules. There’s nothing expressly written in the law that gives a board authority to tell another member what to do.”[14]
Opinski called the vote to censure him "shocking," according to the Merced Sun-Star. He said he had been trying to access public records at his meeting with Olson and had gotten carried away. He said he had set up the meeting two weeks in advance. Opinski said he should have been contacted prior to the meeting if Olson knew he would be denying the request. “As far as emotions, I got carried away, and I apologized,” Opinski said.[14]
Crane and Board President Richard Lopez said Opinski should not have expected to be able to access the district's email server. “It baffles me that a trustee can try to use their power to access vital information on the circumstances of our district litigation that we’re going through,” said Lopez.[14]
Opinski's lawyer Douglas Tucker, however, said his request for access to the email server was not for personal gain. Tucker said Opinski's interest in the email server was to find background information on how much the district was spending on legal services "as opposed to the students of the district.” Tucker said, “The attribution of self-dealing motives on the part of Mr. Opinski could not be further from the truth.”[15]
After the censure vote was taken, Tucker said he believed the district had violated the California Public Records Act when board members included mention of settlement information between the district and Opinski in the censure resolution. Peterson disagreed. He said details of the settlement were not under a gag order. “Under the circumstances with Mr. Opinski being a sitting board member, we felt it was in the public’s best interest to be aware of the negotiations,” said Peterson.[15]
Board member called to resign
The editorial board of the Modesto Bee called for board member Greg Opinski's immediate resignation on September 3, 2016, days after Opinski was arrested on bribery charges. "Greg Opinski has far too many problems right now to be worried about remaining a thoughtful, contributing member of the Merced Union High School District Board of Trustees," the editorial board wrote in an opinion piece.[16]
Dora Crane, vice president of the Merced Union High board of trustees, also said she was ready to call for Opinski's resignation in early September 2016. Board President Richard Lopez said he was uneasy with Opinski's situation. “Currently, we find ourselves in a place where no board wants to be,” Lopez said. “A board like ours, which continues to head in the direction that’s best for all, does not want this issue lingering over it.”[17]
Lopez also said, “[A]ny time that you have speculation of an elected public official participating behind the scenes with other public officials, and there is a tiny bit of inkling that there is an exchange of public funds for favors ... we have a problem, a problem that I believe none of us wants to be a part of.”[17]
At a board meeting on September 14, 2016, district parent Tsia Xiong also asked Opinski to resign. “Being a good leader is being able to recognize your own mistakes and correct it,” said Xiong. “The greatest thing would be if you accepted your fault and resign.”[14]
In addition to Opinski's arrest, the calls for his resignation mentioned the controversy over Opinski's residence. Though he was elected from Area 1, he twice told the board he had to temporarily move out of his representative area. The last time he told the board he was moving was in February 2016, but when he was arrested on August 29, 2016, he was found at what law enforcement officials described as his "home" in the district's Area 4.[17][14]
Both state law and the bylaws of the Merced Union High School District require board members to live in the areas they represent. The local district attorney has the authority to enforce residency requirements, but must prove that the board member does not intend to remain in the district, according to Troy Flint, a public information officer for the California School Boards Association. Flint said the question of intent is difficult to prove, but if board members are determined to have left the area they were elected to represent, they must resign.[17]
“I think that’s grounds to take action,” Crane said of Opinksi's alleged move outside of his representative area. “I have to live in my district. I’m a middle-class person. I can’t play around with where I live.”[17]
Douglas Tucker, Opinski's lawyer, said Opinski was living outside of Area 1 due to a remodel of his home, which was taking longer than expected. “Everybody can rest assured that Mr. Opinski will resume living at his residence when the work is complete,” said Tucker in a letter to the Merced Sun-Star.[14]
Opinski was elected to the board on November 4, 2014, after defeating incumbent Ida Johnson by 33 votes. His term was up for election in November 2018.[18]
Board member arrested on bribery charges
Board member Greg Opinski was arrested on August 29, 2016, on two counts of bribery, two counts of attempted bribery, and one count of aiding and abetting a conflict of interest with a public official. He was released on bond later that same day. His arrest was the culmination of a 10-month investigation of contract negotiations between Opinski's contracting company and the Los Banos Unified School District Board of Education. Tommy Jones, a Los Banos Unified school board member, was also arrested as a result of the investigation. He was charged with attempting to bribe a public official.[19][20]
According to prosecutors, Jones and Opinski paid Los Banos Unified trustee Dominic Falasco to vote in favor of awarding Opinski's company a $541,000 construction contract to build 15 elementary school classrooms needed to accommodate rapid student enrollment growth in the Los Banos Unified School District. Falasco, however, had been working with investigators since October 2015 and had been secretly recording the conversations he had with Jones and Opinski. He turned in “more than 10” recorded conversations to the authorities. Falasco had also voted to award the construction project to Opinski's company as part of his cooperation with the district attorney’s office. If convicted, Opinski could face up to seven years in prison, and Jones could face up to five years.[19]
The arraignment for Jones and Opinski was originally scheduled for October 7, 2016, but it was postponed numerous times when attorneys for both Jones and Opinski asked to move the hearing outside of Merced County and to have different judges preside due to conflict of interest concerns. Once the arraignment was held, both Jones and Opinski pleaded not guilty to the corruption charges. No trial was held prior to the 2016 election.[21][22][23][24][25]
The Los Banos Unified Board of Education first appointed Opinski to manage a district construction project in May 2016, a decision that overruled a recommendation from the board facilities committee. On July 26, 2016, they voted 4-3 to award his company the construction project. Falasco voted in coordination with the district attorney's office, causing a majority of the board to be in favor of awarding the contract to Opinski. A number of community members and former school board members who attended the board meeting cautioned against hiring Opinski due to the fact that he sued Los Banos Unified in 2008 over a former construction project.[19][26] On August 31, 2016, the Los Banos Unified Board of Education voted 5-0 to end the construction contract with Opinski's company.[27]
Opinski filed to run as a Republican candidate in the District 21 race for the California State Assembly on November 8, 2016. Though he dropped out of the race in May 2016, his name still appeared on the ballot.[20]
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About the district
The Merced Union High School District is located in Merced County in central California. The county seat is Merced. Merced County was home to 268,455 residents in 2015, according to the United States Census Bureau.[28] The district was the 166th-largest school district in the state in the 2013–2014 school year and served 9,964 students.[29]
Demographics
Merced County underperformed compared to California as a whole in terms of higher education achievement from 2010 to 2014. The United States Census Bureau found that 13 percent of county residents aged 25 years and older had attained a bachelor's degree, compared to 31 percent of state residents. The median household income for Merced County was $43,066, compared to $61,489 for the entire state. The percentage of people in poverty in the county was 24.8 percent, compared to 16.4 percent statewide.[28]
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Note: Percentages for race and ethnicity may add up to more than 100 percent because respondents may report more than one race and the Hispanic/Latino ethnicity may be selected in conjunction with any race. Read more about race and ethnicity in the census here.
Recent news
The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms 'Merced Union High School District' 'California'. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.
See also
| Merced Union High School District | California | School Boards |
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External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Merced County Registrar of Voters, "2016 Presidential General- November 8: Qualified School District Candidates," accessed August 18, 2016
- ↑ Merced County, "November 8, 2016 General Election Results," accessed December 12, 2016
- ↑ Merced Union High School District, "Our Board," accessed July 26, 2016
- ↑ Merced Union High School District, "9000 Board Bylaws: Board of Trustee Elections," accessed July 26, 2016
- ↑ California Elections Code, “Part 5, Section 10600-10604: School District And Community College District Governing Board Elections,” accessed June 15, 2016
- ↑ California Secretary of State, "Voter Registration," accessed June 13, 2016
- ↑ California Secretary of State, "California Online Voter Registration," accessed June 13, 2016
- ↑ [0=75 Merced County Registrar of Voters, "Information on Current Elections," accessed September 23, 2016]
- ↑ California Secretary of State, "November 8, 2016, General Election Calendar," accessed July 27, 2016
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 California Fair Political Practices Commission, "Filing Schedule for Candidates and Controlled Committees for Local Office Being Voted on November 8, 2016," accessed July 27, 2016
- ↑ Merced County Elections Office, "Campaign Docs Retrieval: Search By Election," accessed March 7, 2017
- ↑ California Election Code, "Section 10229," accessed October 13, 2014
- ↑ Merced Sun-Star, "Contested school board races in Merced down to one," October 25, 2012
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 14.6 14.7 14.8 Merced Sun-Star, "Merced Union High school board censures Opinski," September 14, 2016
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Merced Sun-Star, "Attorney takes issue with how district responded to Opinski," September 18, 2016
- ↑ The Modesto Bee, "Opinski, Jones must quit board positions without delay," September 3, 2016
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 Los Banos Enterprise, "Vice president of MUHSD boardsays trustee Opinski should resign," September 7, 2016
- ↑ Merced County, "November 4, 2014 Election Results," accessed October 10, 2016
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Merced Sun-Star, "Ex-Los Banos Mayor Tommy Jones arrested on bribery charges," August 31, 2016
- ↑ 20.0 20.1 Merced Sun-Star, "Bribery probe targets Los Banos school board member, Merced contractor," August 29, 2016
- ↑ Merced Sun-Star, "Arraignment for Los Banos trustee charged with corruption continued," October 7, 2016
- ↑ Merced Sun-Star, "Jones, Opinski corruption arraignment continued to Nov. 21," October 19, 2016
- ↑ Merced Sun-Star, "Jones, Opinski act to move corruption case out of Merced," November 21, 2016
- ↑ Los Banos Enterprise, "Los Banos bribery arraignment continued as defense files challenge," February 3, 2017
- ↑ Los Banos Enterprise, "Merced contractor, ex-Los Banos school board member plead not guilty in public corruption probe," February 8, 2017
- ↑ Los Banos Enterprise, "Los Banos school board members argue over hiring of contractor," July 28, 2016
- ↑ Los Banos Enterprise, "Los Banos school board terminates contract at the center of criminal probe," August 31, 2016
- ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 United States Census Bureau, "Merced County, California," accessed July 25, 2016
- ↑ National Center for Education Statistics, "ELSI Table Generator," accessed November 16, 2015
- ↑ Merced County Registrar of Voters, "November 6, 2012 Election Results," accessed July 24, 2014
- ↑ Merced County Registrar of Voters, "November 8, 2008," accessed July 24, 2014
| 2016 Merced Union High School District Elections | |
| Merced County, California | |
| Election date: | November 8, 2016 |
| Candidates: | Area 3: • Incumbent, Phillip Schiber • Julio Valadez Area 4: • John Medearis • Marjorie Webster |
| Important information: | What was at stake? • Additional elections on the ballot • Key deadlines |
