The post from Brutus yesterday (January 31, 2013) got me to thinking about what the situation is over at the El Paso Times.
The same day as his post the Times wrote an editorial that supported the negative tone of the earlier article Brutus wrote about.
An elected city representative was chastised for bringing a proposal out into the open for the public and city council to consider!
An idea that might be good for the public somehow came to him. He explored it at a preliminary level to see if it might make sense and be possible. He then brought it to city council for their consideration.
The Times says that was the wrong thing to do. They wrote “The rub? Noe apparently went off on his own in negotiating a possible deal with a land developer. Some on City Council said Noe went behind their backs.”
I thought that is part of what he is supposed to do. Consider an idea. Bring it out into the open and let council consider it. Tell council it is just an idea — one way of doing something — that he is open to other ideas.
Could the Times be saying that the way things have been happening at city council is the way he should have handled this?
Does that mean he should have:
- Gone serially, one by one to avoid the open meeting laws, to each representative and wired together a deal
- Secretly finalized the details
- Waited until there would be no time to consider other options
- Then sprung the deal so that council would have no choice other than to approve it?
Or does it mean he should have kept his mouth shut and let city staff cut a deal with the cabal and then do exactly the same four things?
That is what has been happening in this city. The Times has chosen not to expose it. Now the Times criticizes the open, transparent method that a new city representative attempted.
“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
Cato
elpasospeak 
A slightly different way of thinking about this is that perhaps the council members want to screen out certain ideas and offers (even for free land) before the public hears about them. They want to make certain that we do not learn of ideas that they ( and the people pulling their strings) do no approve of.
How many good ideas have been killed in that manner?
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