Double Standard?

January 27, 2013

In an earlier article Efficient, hardworking city staff I wrote about the “Score Summary Form” and how city staff had produced a definitive analysis of a complex project in just one day.  The form boiled all of their hard work down to four ratings, 1, 2, 3, and 4.

I wondered about the consistency of the reviews and about several other things.

Compare that with these two pages (801TexasRanking) that are the comparable documents supporting the decision to award a contract on the 801 Texas building that the city just bought. You should be able to right click on the document to rotate it–sorry.

While the second page indicates that the city expected to conduct this analysis in one day also, the rating was not published for 8 days.    Maybe the fix was not in on the 801 Texas building.  Look at the numerical values (they are on a scale of 1-100).

Why the different rating systems?  Is it possible that in the case of 801 Texas the city was actually interested in doing a rating instead of rubber stamping a decision that had already been made?

I wonder why the firm that got the ball park contract did not bid on this one.  They did bid on the Luther building and got it.  That means that they were good enough to get two contracts but did not even bother to bid on a third?  What gives here?

What would the result have been if the 1-100 scale had been used for the ball park?

I suspect that when the true story finally comes out it will not be a pretty one.

We deserve better

Brutus

Leave a Comment » | City government, Open Government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Zero visability purchasing

January 26, 2013

Item 12B (1) on the November 13, 2012 city council agenda requests permission to issue a purchase order in the amount of $560,406 for computer equipment.

Once again these items were not competitively bid — they were purchased from a buy board.

The backup material does not tell us what quantities or models are being purchased.  We have no idea if the prices are in line or not.  You can see the backup material here.

This is a pretty common occurrence with computer items on the city council agenda.

We all know the problems with buy boards not being competitive.

The backup material asks the question “Is there an urgent need for the product/service?”  The department answered “yes” since the equipment was to be used to “refresh” (replace) existing equipment.  Urgent?  Not at all!

Items 12B(2) and 12B(3) totaling a little more than $608 thousand have the same lack of detail.  Just give me the money.  Let me spend it without oversight.

It appears that the information technology department does not want us to know what they are up to.

We deserve better.

Brutus

2 Comments | City government, Purchasing, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Put ’em in jail

January 25, 2013

I often hear local citizens express their desire to have our local functionaries put in jail for their actions.

Unless you look closely at the things they are doing you might conclude that they are all illegal.  The horrible truth is that the cabal that has seized our local governments is being careful from a legality point of view.  They seem to decide what they want to do and then examine the rules and bend them to their favor — just to the point — but not quite — of being illegal.  Some of their actions may in fact prove to be illegal, if we can get to the truth.

Getting our local prosecutors to help us is not going to be easy.  Note the absence of the district attorney’s office in the well publicized public corruption issues in El Paso.  For that matter when has this district attorney prosecuted any public official?  The word around town is that he will not do it.  The county sheriff could investigate and then press charges, but he is known to be a close friend of our city manager.

There may be other law enforcement agencies that could help but our chances right now are slim.  I suspect that those acts that may be judged to be illegal will mostly be violations of Texas laws, not those of the United States.  All of that is conjecture until hard facts surface.

When we elect or appoint these people we expect them to do what is right.  Unfortunately we have local governing bodies that ignore that and do what their cabal has designed.

It looks like our more likely remedy is at the ballot box.  Yes, even those rights have been stolen from us.  The various efforts at recall and at initiative have been systematically foiled by one form of parliamentary chicanery or another.

Remember though that a city election is coming in May.  We will have an opportunity to elect four council members plus a mayor.  Get active.

I believe that one of the mistakes that has caused our current situation is that we changed the City Charter to elect council members for four years instead of two.  With four years of office council members evidently feel that the public will not be able to touch them while they do what they want.  We have seen efforts at recall squashed through technicalities.

We need to go back to two year terms.  Unfortunately that will require a change in the City Charter.  Even more unfortunately you and I cannot change the City Charter.  Proposals to change it must come from city council — the very rascals that would benefit from leaving the terms at four years.  Even members of the United States congress must stand for election every two years.  We cannot continue to put our representation on auto-pilot for four years.  Look what has happened!

As you decide who to support in the May elections you might want to condition your support on a pledge from the candidate that they will allow the term length issue to be put before the public in a charter election.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Cato

1 Comment | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District, Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

Super workers!

January 24, 2013

I don’t know if it has hit you yet but our city staff has really performed remarkably recently.

As it turns out the city chose to issue two Requests for Proposals (RFP) to remodel two of the buildings that city council just bought and that they plan to move city departments into post haste.  The RFPs were both due on the same day.

I don’t know if you have ever had to have the city review and approve any construction related issues for your property.  They can make a snail look speedy.

In this case though the city staff was able to plow through what must have been hundreds or thousands of pages of responses from potential vendors.  These two projects are both multi-million dollar efforts and cannot be as simply as evaluating a new roof for a building that you will be tearing down soon.

Somehow they did it though.  They had five raters evaluate each project (I don’t know if that was ten different people, or five bleary-eyed ones) and publish both sets of results within 8 days.  That is remarkable.  The original published schedules showed that they would evaluate both in just one day, but we all know that you can only do that with a ball park evaluation.

Now that they are done, are we going to turn these five super workers loose on the rest of the city?  At the speed they work we should be able to lay off lots of dead wood.

We know that this is a sham.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

A new slant to an old “profession”

January 23, 2013

The job order contracts that Region 19 just issued deserve further attention.  See Competitive Bidding? — Baloney!

The masthead of their web site reads “Serving El Paso and Hudspeth Counties”.  They are more properly known as “Education Service Center — Region 19”.  Again from the front page of their web site “The purpose of Education Service Center (ESC)-Region 19 is to aid teachers and administrators in the El Paso area in their role as educators of our children.”

They are a service organization for kindergarten through high school institutions in El Paso and Hudspeth.

Why then did they just issue contracts for  National Job Order Contracting Services?

National?  Yes the firms  are allowed to  offer services under these contracts in  Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia,  Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada,  New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming.

Oh, and by the way Texas too.  For good measure two of the seventeen firms are allowed to offer their services in “all states and US territories”.

That’s pretty impressive.  Little ole El Paso based Region 19 is competent to manage construction specifics in every state of the Union as well as all of the United States territories.

We know better.

What are they doing here?  Texas law allows certain state government entities to issue job order contracts for construction.  Texas law also allows certain groups (including not for profits, and out of state groups) to piggyback on existing contracts issued by other agencies.  That way an entity like the department of something-or-other in let’s say Puerto Rico can buy off of the Region 19 contract if the laws in Puerto Rico allow it.

Why would Region 19 bother?  I have not found out yet what the amount is but Region 19 can get a percentage or fee from the contractor.  In the case of the Houston based group that the City of El Paso has been buying from the fee is 4%.  The construction company has to pay 4% of what if charges El Paso agencies  to Houston.

So Region 19 is doing it for money.  I seriously doubt that they have expertise in every state and territory of our country but that does not evidently matter.  They are allowing governments to avoid competitive bidding and charging a fee for the chicanery.

Are they so good at what they do for us locally that they have extra time to manage construction in every state?

What are you called when you make money by allowing someone to avoid doing what is right?

Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides:

Who cover faults, at last shame them derides

We deserve better

Brutus

Leave a Comment » | City government, Purchasing, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »