Our county judge is presiding over a commisioner’s court that has not done well by us recently.
We have:
- a county hospital that is so poorly managed that they are seeking a payday loan
- a sports park that is incomplete with no announced plan for how or when it will be finished
- a county hospital that performs outrageously invasive body searches on people just because a federal employee tells them to
- a county lake that almost runs dry with no one noticing it
- a children’s hospital that is insolvent
- a judicial system that illegally imposes sky high fees on citizens
Now she wants to hire a county administrator. Our county judge gets paid more than our mayor and her county commissioners get paid more than city representatives. Yet most of the county functions are independently run by elected officials. The items listed above however are not things that fall into those departments run by other elected officials, they are things that she should be supervising.
How much will they pay the new county administrator? Will the new administrator coincidentally turn out to be her neighbor, our former city chief financial officer?
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
The people spoke this past March and pretty much said we like what you have been doing, keep doing it ! The voting minority dictates to the non-voting majority
LikeLike
Excellent point.
LikeLike
Part of the problem is not having an informed electorate.
Your participation in this blog is helping to improve the situation.
Brutus
LikeLike
The inconvenience of having to get a majority. The Shaplite solution is to cut out the voter if they suspect disagreement.
That said, a county manager is a position the court creates, not a charter change where they cede their authority to the manager, like we did with Wilson 10 years ago. The court is still in charge as far as I know and Ms. Escobar is still the chief executive of the county, more than we have with the city.
LikeLike
Thank you for mentioning the invasive searches on the say-so of a CBP officer without a search warrant. I will do my best to avoid going to this hospital, whose management and physicians had to be told via lawsuit that their behavior was criminal. I don’t recall reading any apology from the Commissioners Court and Judge about this matter after the suit was settled.
LikeLike
Great points..and the county is the most corrupt bodies of government in El Paso. Not only did they not allow the public to vote whether they wanted a county manager, they also arrogantly boasted about getting the county manager by saying so “we can win”. The corruption started when this mostly demoncrip-ruled town continued to support the likes of Jaime Esparza, Jose Rodriguez, JoAnne Bernal, Veronica Escobar, Eliot Shapleigh, 1/2 of the city council Susie Byrd, Steve Ortega, John Cook, Sheriff Wiles, and the myriad of bureaucrats and managers, and the list goes on. These people do not care about doing what is lawful or what is right in the eyes of the public. They demand authoritarian control over the public for their controlling psychopathic behavior.
LikeLike
El Paso voters elected some of these individuals for a second term without realizing their hiden agenda. It is very obvious the City of El Paso will soon be bankrupt thanks to these elected officials.
LikeLike
I for one, appreciate the concise observations, and the tuned-in comments. Indignation aside, the burden is our children’s. When children are threatened by a gun-totin’ governor; when children in West Africa are dying of Ebola; when the children of Gaza are living in constant fear of American bombs being dropped by Israelis; when police kill a hand-cuffed man and no one is accountable; when profiteers exploit our children,denying them an authentic education; when Border Patrol can kill children and Homeland Security trumps Human Rights—sharing of NUESTRA historia, moves us from indignation to engagement. Unfortunately, when we participate in the political process, we are further disillusioned when our President condones torture.
Doesn’t mean we resign to this, rather, we speak out, we write, we attend, we criticize, we seek change through the business-friendly courts—eventually we act.
Empowering through living.
Xavier Miranda
LikeLike
But, the fools of El Paso continue to vote for these masters of self delusion and practitioners of self grandeur.
LikeLike