This week’s city council agenda has two items on it that continue the saga.
What’s to settle?
The lawsuit against the Texas Attorney General will be discussed in executive session. Word is that the parties are in settlement discussions.
I don’t see what there is to settle. The law says the documents must be turned over. The Texas Attorney General says the documents must be turned over. The state legislature passed a new law this year furthering the requirement that the documents must be turned over.
The original request was made September 5, 2012, almost one year ago. The law requires them to turn the documents over within ten days of the request.
The Texas Local Government Records Act should be looked at here also but evidently our local prosecutor feels that he should spend his time prosecuting private citizens and leave other government officials alone. I guess that might be like honor among thieves.
Change it later
The ordinance I wrote about in Another faulty ordinance is on the agenda. They still have not fixed the language and we still have not seen the proposed budget resolution that it is based on.
Oh well, they will change it later. Illegally in my opinion. Read Cover up if you are interested in how.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
As I recall, someone posted a comment some time back alleging that one of our senior city officials said that she did not mind breaking the law as long as it was not a federal law. If that’s true, what does that tell you? If that was indeed said in the presence of other city employees, have those employees in essence been led to believe that the end justifies the means and that it is permissible for city employees to break the law? Their ongoing actions and behavior tend to suggest that this is in fact the case.
That attitude is even displayed publicly by the newly installed EPISD board of managers, which chose to invite non-board members into a recent closed-door executive session. Despite being told that it was a violation of the law and over the objections of newly elected trustee Susie Byrd, Dee Margo said they were going to do as they wished because their attorney said it was okay to do so.
No one is going to tell our illustrious leaders what they can and cannot do. By God, this is El Paso! We do things differently here. If you don’t believe us, just read the hundreds of stories covering public corruption in recent years. Mention the unsettling pervasiveness of corruption to some people and they will tell you how unhappy they are with the El Paso Times for focusing too much on corruption. “They’re not helping matters,” say the Times’ critics. Tell these folks that corruption is a real problem and they will dismiss it by telling you ” Well, look at Chicago. This stuff happens everywhere.”
This is what it has come to. Progress, as defined by a few, is more important than doing the right thing.
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