Official's pranks included mail-order bride, HISD says Antics no laughing matter, HISD says

Procurement manager apologizes for pranks but denies harassment

The Houston Independent School District's procurement manager was soliciting a mail-order bride for a co-worker and committing another office prank while old inventory was piling up under his watch, according to HISD documents.

Two internal HISD investigations concluded that Stephen Pottinger harassed two of his employees, and one of the reports questioned why obsolete supplies that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars lingered in the district's warehouse.

Pottinger, who apologized for the pranks, denied on Thursday that he harassed his staff and said he tried to sell old vehicle parts back to suppliers. He added that he was appealing the most recent harassment finding, issued in May.

HISD released its reports to the Houston Chronicle this week in response to a public-information request. The events that triggered the investigations occurred during the past two school years.

"One of my objectives was to turn inventories consistently," Pottinger said Thursday. "One of the suggestions (from a colleague) was, 'Let's just throw them away.'

"That's not being a good steward of taxpayer dollars," Pottinger said. "We have to do everything in our power to recoup the money."

HISD had vehicle parts worth more than $113,000 that hadn't been used since 2008, according to documents in the investigation.

Cases of sanitizer, bought at the outset of the swine flu scare in 2009, also were unused and about to expire, the report alleged. The district's new warehouse manager, who took over that duty from Pottinger about eight months ago during Superintendent Terry Grier's reorganization of the central office, estimated the value of the sanitizer at $800,000, the report said.

Pottinger still oversees 36 employees in procurement.

Written reprimand

One of Pottinger's employees accused him in the report of trying to blame the excess inventory on his staff. Pottinger denied the allegation.

"It's not their fault, and I never said it was," Pottinger said. "There's various reasons why materials would just suddenly stop moving. In some cases, the equipment we had repair parts for is no longer in use at the district, or the buses are no longer used."

Pottinger received a written reprimand in August related to the first complaint, filed in June 2010, about Pottinger playing two jokes on one of his employees.

"While I do not think either of these incidents represents a pattern of harassment, they do represent that your behavior as a supervisor in this district has been unacceptable," Melinda Garrett, the district's chief financial officer, wrote to Pottinger, ordering him to take a management course.

Pottinger confirmed he signed up the employee on an Internet dating site for Russian women without the employee's consent. Emails in the HISD report show that Pottinger forwarded responses from women during normal business hours.

'Joke that ... went too far'

Pottinger, who used a personal email address, said he didn't remember the times he sent the messages. He said he had a friendship with the employee outside of work.

"He had mentioned that he wanted to get back into dating," Pottinger said of the employee. "We have a long-standing joke that when he starts talking, a lot of people start falling asleep. So I said, 'Maybe you should start dating someone who doesn't speak any English. They can just nod and smile.'

"It was a joke that kind of went too far," Pottinger continued, "and I deeply and sincerely regret it."

Pottinger confirmed he also had a supervisor bring an empty box to the same employee's office, suggesting he was being fired.

"I can't stress enough — it was not meant in a malicious way," Pottinger said. "I was trying to lighten the spirit a little bit and just build some camaraderie, and it wasn't well-received. Therefore, that was a case I realized I made a mistake and I apologized."

Pottinger, hired by HISD in 2000, resigned in 2007 but returned after a few months. He said he had been recruited to another company but didn't like it. He is one of the district's highest paid employees, with a base salary of $155,358 last year, district records show.

ericka.mellon@chron.com