The Max Powers blog published an article the other day titled “Hawaiian Hardball”.
The article contained a link to an email from the former city manager instructing the city staff to play “hardball” with an open records request relating to a potential water park.
It looks as though the city was negotiating with a organization and received an offer from the firm. Then someone (probably a competitor) filed an open records request asking for access to the offer. You can read the email below:
Power hungry
In the email we learn that the city manager wanted “to play hardball” with the proprietary portion of the offer. She did not want to release that material so she decided to use her power and “play hardball”.
If she cared just a little bit about the law she would have known that the city did not have to nor should it have released the proprietary material, so she did not need to play hardball. She just wanted to.
The Texas Public Information Act gives specific instructions to governments requiring them to notify the owner of the proprietary material and giving the owner an opportunity to object to the release before releasing documents like these. If an objection was raised the city would then have to take the issue to the attorney general of Texas for a determination.
The general principal is that while negotiations are still being conducted no party should have access to information that would give them a competitive advantage. How the city might have proceeded with the offer is another issue.
Mean spirited
The city did not have to play hardball. They simply could have obeyed the law. I wonder if she knew that.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
A story you won’t see reported anywhere, at any time, on any station.
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It is reprehensible that the local “news” refuses to report on issues like this that detail deliberate breaking of the law by city officials. Somebody should carry around a camera and start asking the local “reporters” their thoughts on stories they refuse to report on, posting in a public YouTube area so their prospective future employers can see how they practice “journalism”.
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Openness is not a city hall virtue, which is one reason voters do not trust their local government. It did not begin with Wilson, but she set the bar at a new high.
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Yes, I think this is where Wet ‘N Wild was thinking of expanding, then they learned that the City (in the person of that odious woman) was in talks with someone else who wanted to build a new water park, and who might well receive a ton of those infamous “incentives” our city fathers (and mothers) like to toss around. Wet ‘N Wild backed off on their plans before they lost even more. At least these are my recollections.
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Why wouldn’t Wet ‘n Wild be a potential developer of a water park in NE? They have a known brand in the area. The city is soliciting competitive concept proposals for a downtown hotel. It would seem that a similar process could be followed for a water park…unless Hunt and/or Foster have their fingers in Hawaiian Falls somehow.
Then it becomes one of those just-for-us deals.
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Could it be a bias that the former city manager might have had against local businesses?
Brutus
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Wet ‘n Wild is all over, not just Anthony.
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