Man-made disaster

June 11, 2014

One sign that the economy in the United States is doing better than the economies of some of our neighboring countries is the number of people that emigrate to our country.

Evidently the numbers of these people are overwhelming our facilities.

The response

Our feral government has chosen to ship hundreds of them to El Paso.  By ship I mean fly them to El Paso and  abandon them on our streets with no money or place to stay.

According to the Times none of our local officials were notified before hand.  We now have hundreds of destitute people arriving.  Common decency requires our citizens and our local agencies to help feed and shelter these people.

At what cost?

The feds have not told us.  They simply have injected this man-made disaster into our community.

When bridge crossing times (for those who want to enter the country through a legal port of entry) became too long the feds told us that we would have to pick up the bill for more feral workers.

Now they have decided to drop another one of their problems in our lap.

Immigration

One local wag frequently points out that immigration is a state issue according to our constitution.  Naturalization, according to him, is the federal issue.

Yet the feds have chosen to claim control of our international borders.  A fine mess of it they have made.  When states try to take measures to control immigration, they get sued by the feds.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

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

Another pesky law

June 9, 2014

It will be interesting to see how the Upper Rio Grande Workforce Commission handles the situation when they hire our ex city manager as their temporary director.

From what I can tell the commission was created under subchapter F of chapter 2308 of the Texas government code.  The commission’s geographic area is the western most counties of Texas including El Paso county.  The city of El Paso and it’s mayor are also members.

Separate staff

The controlling state law requires that any staff that works at the workforce commission must be separate from the staff that works at the counties and the city:

Sec. 2308.267. STAFF. (a) A board may employ professional, technical, and support staff to carry out its planning, oversight, and evaluation functions.

(b) A board’s staff shall be separate from and independent of any organization providing workforce education or workforce training and services in the workforce development area. A board’s staff may not direct or control the staffing of any entity providing one-stop workforce services.

Workforce training

Section 2308 defines workforce training  as:

“Workforce training and services” means training and services programs that are not workforce education.

The city of El Paso provides personnel training through several departments, including police, fire, and environmental services.  The city’s website confirms this.

So the staffs must be separate if the city provides training, which it does.

Employee

The city’s contract with the ex city manager declares her to be an employee, not an independent contractor.

Our city council may elect to change their contract with the ex city manager to allow her to work at the commission while she is still onboard at the city.  The problem is that the workforce commission cannot hire her if she is still an employee of the city.

Will they?  Probably.  We have local governments that rely upon their attorneys  to declare illegal actions legal.

You might argue that it is only a technicality as to whether she is an employee or a contractor.  That would be ignoring the fact that the state legislature thought it was important enough to make it the law.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

 

 

 

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

Good money after bad

May 29, 2014

Our county hospital (UMC) and it’s tenant the children’s hospital are having a fight over who owes whom how much money.

The county hospital’s CEO says that the children’s hospital is making it lose money.

The chairman of the children’s hospital board says that the county hospital is overcharging.

No difference

It doesn’t make a difference.  The contract between the two makes the county hospital write off monies that it does not receive from the children’s hospital if the children’s hospital does not meet it’s revenue goals.   That means that the taxpayers foot the bill.

This is one giant power play and a game of finger pointing.

Reality

Anyone with experience in the area knew that the children’s hospital would lose money,  contrary to what the county hospital CEO told us.

He went to our county commissioners last year and got permission to sell $150 million of bonds for expansion and remodeling.  Now even before the first brick is in place he is telling us that he needs to “repurpose” the money.

Repurpose

That’s a great idea in my opinion.  Repurpose the money by taking it away from him before it goes down another drain.

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | County Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Texas waking up to problems with buy boards

May 15, 2014

Our local governments (particularly the city) have unfortunately been buying from buy boards instead of using competitive bidding.

Many of the buy board evaluations are little more than “beauty contests”.  Competitive pricing is frequently a minor component in the evaluation criterion if at all.  Some contracts are awarded because a seller offers X% discount off a manufacturer’s list price.  The fact that another manufacturer may have a lower list price is not part of the consideration.

While buying through a buy board allows an institution to “pick their favorite vendor”, the purchase seldom produces the best economic result.

Market conditions change and issuing a real bid for a product or a request for proposals for a service often can provide better economic and performance results than buying from a buy board.

The problem with bidding is that local governments have to do their jobs and that is too often an inconvenience to them.

Here in El Paso much of the remodeling of the various city hall buildings was done through buy board purchases and was not bid.  Schools in Houston benefited to the tune of 4% of the money that we spent since that was the fee that the buy board charged the vendor for the privilege of being listed on the board.  This happened because the city did not want to take the time to develop specifications and take the projects out to bid.  They were in a hurry to get out of the old city hall.

Turning around?

Now it seems that the Texas legislature is becoming aware of some of the problems with buy boards.  This  article talks about some of them, including the fact that vendors were allowed to write their own bid specifications.

For those readers that are new to this blog you can enter “buy board” in the search window on the right side of this page to see some of the articles that have been written about in the past.

They tell a story of waste, mismanagement, favoritism, and just plain unfairness.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

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

New tax rate comparison

May 11, 2014

If having high property taxes are our goal then maybe we should hire a city manager from one of the 6 large cities in the US that have higher property taxes than us. That’s right, according to the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence we had the 7th highest property taxes of the 50 largest cities in the US in 2013.

No income tax

Some would say that we rank so high because we have no income tax in Texas.  The numbers show that our effective tax rate on a $150,000 home was 2.446%.  Houston is in Texas and had a 1.896% rate.  Seattle has no state income tax and had a 0.941% rate. The average rate of the 50 largest cities was 1.507%.  That puts our tax rate at 162% of the 50 city average.

No income

U. S. News and World Report ranked metropolitan areas with the highest poverty rate in 2011.  El Paso ranked 6th highest with 24.3 percent of our population living below the poverty line.

Temporary improvement

The 2009 Minnesota report put us in 6th place.  The 2011 report showed us at 5th place and the 2012 numbers had us at 4th place.  We went down to number 7 this year because we paid off some debt, not because we had lower taxes for maintenance and operations. Without voter approval our representatives  in local governments have seen to it that the debt numbers will increase soon.  Several of the recent tax and spend initiatives have not hit our tax bills yet.  The county has approved $150 million for new medical clinics that the hospital chief executive  thinks we need to “repurpose”, in other words spend some other way than what he sold the county on originally.  We have the city hall destruction and the remodeling of the buildings they moved into.  Street reconstruction bonds are being issued. The voters themselves approved over $500 million in quality of life bonds that have not been issued yet and thus are not part of our tax bills yet.

Operating income declining

EPISD is forecasting a $17 million dollar shortfall next year.  It looks like they will go to the voters to get permission to have a tax increase. The various boards are trying to deal with the debts of the children’s hospital.  Some say that the number is above $59 million.  Every dollar that they do not pay is a dollar that the county hospital must absorb and that means higher property taxes for us.

The city just dealt with $7.35 million of required budget cuts because forecast revenue is short of what they wanted us to expect.  Our chief financial officer is a finalist for the job of city manager.  It looks like she may well be qualified to help us raise our tax rates.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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