Cover up

July 2, 2013

It’s hard for me to believe that city staff would do what they have done.

I’ve been writing about a proposed ordinance that would change some city council procedures.  When the item was posted on the agenda the posting indicated that passing the ordinance would repeal a prior ordinance.  Unfortunately city staff listed the wrong ordinance number to be repealed.

I watched the video of the city council meeting and missed the part where council approved the ordinance introduction.  I waited for the next agenda to be posted and saw that included in the agenda was an item to approve the minutes of the meeting in question.  That new agenda did not have the required backup material (the minutes to be passed) attached even though it should have.

This morning I see that someone has finally attached the minutes to today’s agenda.  Reading the minutes I see that the ordinance number to be repealed was changed to the right one.  How did that happen?  It is against the law in the state of Texas to tamper with a government record.

I went back to re-watch the video of the original introduction.  I saw that he item was passed without reading and without correcting the number.  Normally the city clerk reads the introduction.  Curious.

What happened?

If the agenda was changed after posting but  before the council meeting, the Texas Open Meetings Act has been violated.

If the agenda was not changed until after the council meeting, then the newly posted agenda has been tampered with — a violation of Texas law.  The minutes would then also be false.  Falsifying a public document is also against the law in Texas.

We still have the fact that the backup material posted on June 27, 2013 for the public comment session still refers to the wrong ordinance to be repealed.  So even today they have a fatally flawed ordinance in spite of their efforts to falsify the public record.

This is serious business.

We have the right to be informed in advance about what council is considering.  We have the right to have accurate records about what they have done.  We are not talking about simple clerical errors here.

I guess now that the cover up will not only continue but will probably get more involved.

The records will show who did what and when.  More than one person must have been involved.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | City government, Open Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Disregard for the facts

July 2, 2013

The El Paso Times reported on June 29, 2013 that city council will be asked to rob $4.5 million from the Montana Avenue bus project and use it to remodel two more floors on the old Luther Building.  The issue is not on the city council agenda yet.  I suspect that this is a trial balloon designed to see if the voting public is paying attention.

The report told us that other parts of the building were currently being remodeled for $8.9 million with a city spokesman saying that the total cost of the renovations would be $13.4 million.

The same Times reporter wrote on January 23, 2013 that city council had voted to issue a contract for $11.5 million to remodel the same building.

Please explain

I would think that the reporter would feel obligated to set the record straight.  My guess is that what is really happening is that city staff wants to spend another $2.4 million above the $11.5 million that they have already received approval for.  The $4.5 million just happens to be sitting over in a corner because the sequestration situation at the national government is going to delay or cut the federal portion of the bus project.

It seems that city staff thinks that feathering their own nests is more important than the transportation system.

Another problem

In another example where Times employees seem to spend more time writing then they do researching facts, the Sunday June 30, 2013 Times has a column written by their editorial page writer.  He suggests that the new mayor may put the question of city manager vs. strong mayor on the ballot in November.

The city charter can only be amended once every two years.  We did that in May of 2013 and cannot do it again until May of 2015.

Muckraker

1 Comment | City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Muckraker

Is Scrivener really the city attorney?

July 1, 2013

I was interested to see what happened with item 1C on last week’s city council agenda.  I watched the video but never could find where they even mentioned it.

The minutes of the city council meeting should be able to tell me what happened so I have been waiting to look at them.  Item one on this week’s (July 2, 2013) agenda seeks the approval of those June 25, 2013 minutes.  The problem is that the minutes themselves are not posted as backup material.

That means that according to ordinance 17616 city council must either table the vote or take a special vote declaring that failure to take action would be detrimental to the interests of the city.  Failure to do so is an ethics violation.

Item 1C would have changed that.  I wrote about the proposed new ordinance in Testing the newbies.  It would remove the requirement for a special vote to proceed with the item and change the direction completely by just allowing  council to either table the item or proceed as though nothing went wrong.  The failure of city staff to provide the proper backup material would no longer force council to take a special vote in order to proceed.  Given events of recent years, this has already proven to be a very bad idea.

From what I can tell item 1C was removed from the agenda because it was sloppily done.  The title of the proposed ordinance indicated that the new ordinance would replace ordinance 17016.  Ordinance 17016 created the capital improvements advisory committee.

Evidently someone caught the error.  The item is now back on the agenda indicating that ordinance 17616 would be repealed, which is the old ordinance that dealt with putting items on the agenda.

The item this week is an introduction of the ordinance.  Next there will have to be a public hearing.  Then council can vote to approve the new ordinance.

The problem is that the backup material that was filed with the municipal clerk on June 27, 2013 still proposes to repeal 17016, not 17616.  They will need to start over again even if council is inclined to vote for the new ordinance.

They might claim as they have in the past  that the mistake is a scrivener’s error, which according to Wikipedia is “a phrase which can also be used as an excuse to deflect blame away from specific individuals, such as high powered executives, and instead redirect it to the more anonymous clerical staff.”

In my book we should expect the city attorney to produce accurate, fair work.  The city parliamentarian could catch this for us, but — you guessed it — the city parliamentarian is the city attorney.

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | City government, Open Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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