Abrams defends figures that Ervin says aren't real

Continuing his assault on the Montgomery County Inspector General who documented part of the Kendale scandal, school board member Steve Abrams uses figures that another school board member says were pulled from thin air.

"The Inspector General's error was contradicted by the detailed estimates prepared by the joint working grop of school system and County Council staff," Abrams says in his June 1 essay in the Washington Post. "The group found that the most cost-effective replacement was the Kendale Road solution."

Abrams lectures the reader, "Good decision-making requires good facts. Public input should not be valued on who makes the most noise, but rather on who makes the more compelling case based on the facts."

But fellow board member Valerie Ervin strongly criticized the financial "facts" when they were presented.

"Some of these numbers are funny to me," Ervin told her colleagues in April, referring to the figures Abrams cites above, "because they're not competitively bid. They're just estimates."