City government | elpasospeak

Some Times

December 31, 2013

The Times complained the other day in an editorial about how our local council of judges “unilaterally” (even though it is their job) raised the rate that court appointed attorneys get paid by the county. The new rate gives the attorneys $90 per hour while they are in court — less than some plumbers and IT firms charge.

I thought I would look into how the Times has been doing at the public trough.

Various laws require the city to publish notices in local newspapers. The contract currently being used was bid in 2010. The one previous to that was bid in 2007.

According to the two documents below the Times circulation dropped between 2007 and 2010.

The 2007 city council agenda item gave the city staff permission to spend an estimated $100,000 dollars annually with either of two newspapers, the El Paso Times or El Paso, Inc.

Let’s leave it to your imagination to figure out how city staff decided which newspaper to use.

Incredible

The 2010 contract raised the annual amount to $225,000. That’s a lot more noticing activity. I wonder why but doubt that the cause was a doubling of material that had to be published.

Could it be that the extra money bought editorial space?

Why was the editorial written?

Was the editorial another effort to pay someone back?

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | City government, El Paso Inc., El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Amateurs

December 31, 2013

The city has a new agenda presentation facility on their web site.

Someone should do their job

Ok, this is new software for the city after all. However someone should have tested it and taken the bugs out of it before making it live.

What’s wrong?

The top of the page has a new agenda search capability. It’s a pity that none of the past agendas are available. Do they plan to load the old agendas? They should. In the meantime some simple text explaining what is available would help.
The site is slow, but I guess Will Rogers was right when he said “Be thankful we’re not getting all the government that we’re paying for”.
When you finally do get to the document you want to read you will probably find that you cannot expand the text if you are on an iPad, making the documents very hard to read for some of us.

Simple

These are simple problems and will be fixed, I hope. The solution is to expect more from management at the city.

We deserve better

Brutus

Leave a Comment » | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Constitutional attack

December 30, 2013

This editorial in the El Paso Times should be of concern to all of us.

The Times is upset that our local council of judges had the audacity to demand that fees paid to court assigned attorneys be raised by $15 dollars an hour. That means that a court appointed attorney would receive $90 per hour while in court defending someone. Try to find a $90 per hour attorney.

The real issue

The times wrote “…is a classic example of the dysfunctional system set up by the Texas Constitution”. Yes, like every other law and ordinance in the state is set up by our constitution. Actually the council of judges was created for every Texas county by our supreme court. You can read their rule here.

Over the years since our country was established there has been a lot of discussion about the proper role of the constitutions, both national and state. Some say that the proper way to change them is through the methods written into the documents (Article 17 in the case of Texas and Article V at the national level).

Later some of those who wanted change but did not want to cross the high bar required enjoyed watching our supreme courts overrule the legislatures. John Marshall did that to us in Marbury v. Madison. The fact that the case was about Marshall’s failure to perform his duties and that he was somehow both secretary of state and chief justice at the time evidently did not cause him to recuse himself.

Now one of the new techniques being used is to simply ignore the constitutions. The theory is that someone will have to spend a lot of money in court to stop you so do what you want and count on the legal system to protect you.

Hard to believe

In this editorial the Times complains that the council of judges acted without input from others. Actually the council requested a smaller increase last year at county budget time and our commissioners court rejected them.

Some of the lines in the editorial piece:

The judges can order the additional expenditure and essentially mandate that county Commissioners Court foot the bill — taxpayers be damned.

That sort of rule by fiat is an abuse of taxpayers.

But unilateral action is not an answer.

Where were they?

Where was the Times when city council voted unilaterally to tear down city hall and build a ball park? Where were they when commissioners court imposed $150 million in bond expenses for the county hospital — by fiat?

Taxpayers be dammed indeed.

Eternal vigilance is the cost of liberty.

Cato

6 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Times, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

Working overtime

December 27, 2013

Our current county judge was quoted recently in the Times:

“…we can’t afford to go backward now, as there’s still too much work to do.”

Work means money

The county judge is entertaining tearing down our 1980’s jail building, building a new county administration building, and expanding the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority as a few of her projects that will require “work”.

Remember that this year the commissioner’s court voted to spend $160 million to remodel our county hospital (which the hospital’s chief executive officer claims is profitable) and to build health clinics that will compete with private physicians.

I believe it was the city manager that claimed that the county judge was part of our local “dynamic trio”.

Three of a kind

The trio is evidently our new congressman (who has already had a brush with the House Ethics Committee), our tax and spend county judge, and a former city representative who lost the election for mayor by 74%.

I like the congressman and think that we should give him a chance. He has hopefully learned that elected officials are not above the law, at least at the national level. He’s not in El Paso anymore.

Our former city representative hopefully learned that giving the voters a say in what goes on might help you get elected.

Since we should be enjoying baseball in the spring remember that three strikes make an out.

We deserve better

Brutus

9 Comments | Ball park, City government, County Government, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Help support other governments during the holiday season

December 26, 2013

The December 16, 2013 Times editorial urged the approval of a transportation plan. Again the Times advocates higher local taxes instead of more effective representation at the state and feral levels.

El Pasoans are being taxed to pay for facilities that should be paid for by the state and the Times recognizes the situation. From the Times editorial:

No one likes to pay additional taxes or fees. And in this case, it can be justifiably argued that El Paso County vehicle owners are getting stuck with a tab that should be picked up by other governments.

But El Paso has serious traffic congestion issues that are getting worse by the day. That leaves local leadership with two choices — complaining about the failure of others, or taking control of our own destiny.

Whining is not much of a strategy. The results of the bold but controversial choice made by Commissioners Court will become evident today, as the 16 mobility projects are outlined at the Commissioners Court meeting.

Border administration

This year El Paso’s city council voted to create a fund with our local money to pay overtime for U. S. government employees in an effort to improve bridge crossing times. Many parts of our country suffer from river flooding and hurricanes regularly and get extraordinary assistance from the feds, yet somehow immigration has become a feral issue but needs to be paid for by local citizens.

Even university systems

The separately funded Texas Tech system leased our train station for one dollar a year from the benevolent citizens of El Paso. That was in addition to the Albert Fall mansion that we rebuilt with city funds and then gave to the university for another dollar a year.

Go local

If we have to raise taxes, can’t we at least spend the money on something that we are clearly responsible for — like local roads?

We deserve better

Brutus

8 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Times, Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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