The city never got around to doing a full background check on a former senior Department of Education official who was busted Sunday for allegedly trying to arrange sex with a minor boy, officials said.
The Department of Investigation said Tuesday that fired DOE Deputy Chief of Staff David Hay was part of a massive backlog of background check cases that has plagued the office for years.
Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza’s Deputy Chief of Staff was arrested at a Milwaukee airport Sunday morning for allegedly using a computer to arrange for sex with a child.
“Mr. Hay was part of the inherited set of approximately 6,000 backlogged background files,” said DOI Commissioner Margaret Garnett in a statement.
It is not clear whether a full background investigation would have tripped any alarms, Garnett said.
The DOE conducted two standard background checks of Hay in 2016 and 2018 that included fingerprinting and criminal database probes. Those checks did not turn up any adverse information, spokeswoman Miranda Barbot said.
But Garnett stressed that senior city officials are ostensibly subject to more thorough background checks that vet “issues like tax compliance, previous arrests, and the truthfulness of a candidate’s claimed work history and educational background.”