The transcripts were released over the objections of numerous

Some wanted lobster. Some wanted campaign cash. At least one wanted no part of the gifts and dinners and trips that were routinely paid for by contractors doing business with South County schools.

According to thousands of pages of grand jury testimony released Tuesday, Sweetwater schools and Southwestern College operated a brazen pay-to-play contracting practice that saw millions of dollars of work go to contractors willing to pick up the tab for trustees and administrators.

“I know for a fact that, for a fact that they selected contractors that were contributing to their, to their re-election, and doing whatever they wanted them to do,” contractor Hector Romero testified at one point.

At another point, he said some of the dinners were excessive.

“They drank all my liquor,” he testified about one August 2010 gathering.

The transcripts were released over the objections of numerous defense attorneys, who argued that allowing the public to see the witness testimony could undermine their clients’ right to a fair trial.

But the judge hearing the South County corruption case rejected those arguments and ordered the release of the testimony from dozens of trustees, contractors, district employees and others involved in the case.

U-T San Diego scoured hundreds of pages that detailed much of what already has been reported in the bribery scandal that led to indictments of 15 educators and contractors.

The documents, which could only be read in person and not photocopied, portray an interlinking network of elected officials and administrators who made no secret of requesting food, travel and other amenities from people who did business with the district.

“Do you recall who paid for any food and beverages that you may have ordered?” prosecutor Leon Schorr asked contractor Rene Flores at one point.

“We always pay,” Flores responded.

Flores’ company was in charge of managing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of construction projects approved by the Sweetwater board.

Flores, who was not among the 15 people facing charges in the case, said he pursued the same business practices as most contractors seeking to work with South County school officials.

“To be honest, it’s always done that way in all the agencies,” Flores testified. “They meet outside for dinners. Not just with me, with other consultants.”

Not everyone accepted gifts or campaign donations from contractors.

Former Sweetwater Trustee Jaime Mercado testified that he ran for office in 2004 in an attempt to put a stop to what he heard was a culture of corruption at Sweetwater.

“One of the things I really, really objected to, and I told that to the superintendent at the time, was stop buying board members, stop co-opting their votes, stop getting gifts for them, contributions, donations,” he told the grand jury.

In all, about 3,000 pages of the 4,200 pages of testimony were released Tuesday. Most of the rest will be made available in a week or two, once about 18 pages of redacted materials are blacked out.

The program is offered to qualifying home

Enbridge Gas Distribution has awarded the first $100,000 incentive to an Ontario home builder participating in its Savings by Design program. The program rewards qualifying builders which construct homes 25 per cent better than the energy requirements in the 2012 Ontario Building Code.

The program is the first of its kind in Canada and was created by Enbridge with design support from Sustainable Buildings Canada and its network of building experts. The program uses the integrated design process and energy modeling to consider energy efficiency as part of the design stage. It also promotes leading-edge storm water management techniques,Home energy management  reduced water use, waste reduction and the use of materials that are non-toxic and sustainably sourced.

A post-construction audit confirms 25 per cent energy use reduction over the existing building code, and qualifying builders receive an incentive of $2,000 per house, up to a maximum of $100,000. Zancor Homes was one of the builders and developers to participate in the integrated design sessions since the program was introduced last year and is the first of those to complete a project - a development in King City, Ontario.
"We were already building energy-efficient homes, but with the knowledge we gained from Enbridge's Savings by Design program, we were able to take it to the next level," says Fabrizio Cortellucci, President of Zancor Homes. "Ultimately, this program helps us deliver long-term cost savings and environmental benefits to our customers."

The program is offered to qualifying home builders in the more than 100 Ontario communities which Enbridge serves.

"Thanks to this unique program for residential builders and developers, the people who purchase Savings by Design homes will have a head start on energy conservation," says Mike Singleton, Executive Director of Sustainable Buildings Canada which leads and facilitates the Savings by Design sessions for Enbridge. "We're proud to help deliver a program that we hope will help set the standard for future home building in Canada."

In addition to enhancing the home's resale value, homeowners will save on their annual energy costs. Natural gas already delivers great financial value - a typical Enbridge Gas Distribution customer purchasing natural gas supply from the utility is paying about $400 less today for their total annual natural gas bill than they were five years ago.

There are also environmental benefits. "We are pleased that Enbridge and builders are showing leadership by taking a holistic approach to building energy efficiency into homes from the start," says Michael Walters, General Manager, Home electricity monitorWatershed Management, Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority. "The Savings by Design program goes beyond reducing energy use and identifies solutions, making it easier to support water conservation and water management."

"Savings by Design is part of a long history of energy efficiency programs that Enbridge has delivered to business and residential customers," says Shannon Bertuzzi, Enbridge Gas Distribution's Manager of Residential Sales. "We are thrilled by the enthusiasm and leadership shown in the home builder and developer community, and look forward to helping more companies build more energy-efficient homes."

My first trip into the rural areas south of Palomas

It's mid-morning on Thursday,as I head south from Palomas, Mexico, with Esperanza Lozoya, the founder of the humanitarian program, La Luz de la Esperanza, her granddaughter and her assistant, Maria Dolores Campos.

Our goal is to take beans, medicine and shoes to two rural towns, Colonia Modelo and Guadalupe Victoria. The beans were purchased by Esperanza from Diaz Farms in Deming, N.M. The shoes were donated by Nina Houle, the very supportive owner of a shoe store named On Your Feet in Santa Fe.

This is my first trip into the rural areas south of Palomas and my first meeting with Esperanza. On June 21, however, I observed her summer lunch program in Palomas.

In the space of about an hour, her daughter Sofia and an assistant distributed 600 lunch boxes to needy children there, an extraordinary feat that they continued every weekday all summer.

They also run a midday meal program for the elderly in a building that used to be a rehab center.

Esperanza is originally from Chicago, but she and her family have a long history of community leadership in both Palomas and Columbus, N.M., a few miles to the north. The recreation center in Columbus is named after her father, Andrew Sanchez, for all his contributions.

Her sister, Lupita Otero, manages several food banks in Columbus and was given a “Community Health Leader” award by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2003.

They typify the many heroic people who hold these impoverished communities together in the absence of government services.

We drive about a half hour straight south, then turn off at Modelo, which is just a collection of houses by the road. For safety reasons and as a woman who travels extensively in rural Chihuahua, Esperanza doesn’t announce where she is going in advance so there is no one waiting for us.

We then continue on a few miles to El Entronque, a community built where the Palomas road intersects the highway from Juárez to Chihuahua. There at the Tortería 3 Caminos, we find El Commandante, the officer in charge of that area.

A cheerful man in dark glasses, a white shirt and suspenders, he poses for photos with Esperanza, his unsmiling assistant and his wife. Then he calls on his cell phone and tells another officer to meet us by the town plaza in Modelo.

He also mentions two recent murders. I had assumed that this area was much safer. Esperanza smiles and says that I’m seeing, “The calm before the storm.”

She knows about violence; one of her strongest supporters, the former mayor of Palomas, Tanys Garcia, was murdered in 2009.

A crowd, mostly women, gathers. We open white sacks of beans and Esperanza ladles out five big cups into each woman’s plastic bag. The men are working in the fields, although with the extremely dry weather, there is much less work than usual.

Esperanza has been doing this for nine years. Over the past two and a half, she has distributed some 160,000 pounds of food in the Palomas area. This is in addition to shoes, medicine, basic first aid kits and school supplies. Her job is, if anything, more difficult now, because the Mexican government is limiting the quantity of beans that can be brought across the border. Why, no one knows.

Our second stop is in a farm town named Guadalupe Victoria located some 12 kilometers to the west of the Palomas-El Entronque road. Esperanza and Maria Dolores are both trained as promotoras and can handle basic medical problems.

Their goal here is to provide medicine for the children of migrant farm worker families who have parasites. A longer-term goal is to train local women as promotoras, so that they can deal with basic medical issues like checking blood pressure. The two biggest health problems are high blood pressure and diabetes.

We find the migrant camp, which consists of a long, low, three-sided cinder block building partitioned into a series of living quarters. Outside each doorway is a large metal pan for cooking, a row of chilis, some farm tools, old shoes or clothing and maybe a broom.

Clothing is hung up to dry in a crisscross of wire clotheslines. In the center is a pile of firewood, and the ground is muddy with foul-looking pools of water. It’s a scene from hell, especially when compared to the semi-mansions of the farm owners only a few blocks away.

The women and children we meet are Mixteca Indians from the state of Guerrero way to the south. Many don’t appear to speak Spanish. They line up for the medicine and for what beans remain and are fitted for the shoes I brought from Santa Fe.

I ask several to pose with photos with their new shoes and they agree, but it’s a cheerless place. It’s hard to imagine why government officials haven’t made the farm owners provide cleaner water or better housing, or why these ragged kids aren’t in school. The families have been coming here to work for years; this isn’t a new problem.

We then stop at the local health clinic, are given more medicine by a curt young woman who is the local “doctor,” administers it and return to Palomas.

“I love what I do,” she says as we say goodbye. When I ask about her safety, she adds, “ I have my angel with me.”