E-mail archiving

November 1, 2013

There has been some discussion lately about local governments deleting e-mails.

This presentation out of Laredo does a great job of explaining many of the retention requirements.

The fundamental rules come from the Texas Local Government Records Act of 1989.

Some of the basics are:

  • E-mails that deal with government business are government records — even if sent from a personal device.
  • Destroying local government records can be a Class A misdemeanor and under certain cirsumstances a third degree felony under section 37.10 of the Texas Penal code.  There are also criminal penalties under the Texas Public Information Act.  These penalties could lead to removal from office.
  • The sender is the custodian of the record.  The receiver can delete messages unless
    • the receiver needs to take action based upon the message
    • the message is required for documentation
  • The receiver may delete e-mails that are spam, personal, unsolicited mail like news articles, and carbon copies.
  • For those emails that must be kept, the periods of time defined by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) indicate how long they must be kept.  The periods of time generally are between 2 and 5 years, depending upon the nature of the message.
  • The TSLAC defines messages that must be kept for documentation.

I have not been able to find a law or regulation that requires any Texas local government to keep all e-mails.

There are commercially available devices that allow a government to capture all incoming and outgoing e-mail traffic.  These devices centralize the storage of the e-mails and thus make searching far easier.  Instead of having to go to each desktop or device an administrator can search the central archive.

Maybe it is time for our local governments to install these e-mail archiving devices.

We deserve better

Brutus

Leave a Comment » | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
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County hospitals

October 31, 2013

I have friends on both sides of the aisle about the new children’s hospital in El Paso.

One says that it will cost the taxpayers a fortune and that no children’s hospital makes a profit.

Another says that our hospital is a separate entity from the county hospital and that it is self sustaining financially.

It has been open for about  18 months now so I thought I would look into the finances.

A quick visit to their web site elpasochildrens.org  gave me absolutely no financial information about the organization.

Failing there, I moved over to the county hospital website www.umcelpaso.org and found some information.

Not separate

The children’s hospital building is part of the county hospital district.  In fact the financial documents describe it as the “El Paso Children and Women’s  Tower”.   The children’s hospital leases it’s facilities from the county hospital. It’s financial situation directly affects our taxes.  It does have a separate CEO and board of directors.  The board is “self perpetuating” which I think means that the board appoints new members, not the county commissioners.

The following information was taken from the county hospital financials:

El Paso Children’s, a Texas not-for-profit corporation, is a separate entity apart from the Hospital District.

The Hospital District provides an allowance for uncollectible accounts based upon a review of outstanding receivables, current economic conditions and cash flows of El Paso Children’s.  (In other words the county hospital  takes more or less money from the children’s hospital depending on how things are going).

The county hospital provides about $28.4 million of services to the children’s hospital each year.  We don’t know if this is the true cost.  Is the county hospital subsidizing the children’s hospital?  Could it be the other way around?

Since the county hospital owns the children’s hospital building the county hospital increased their depreciation expense $9.9 million in 2012.

The Hospital District has entered into an affiliation agreement with an area hospital to improve the  level of health care provided to the County indigent population by participating in one of the state’s Medicaid supplemental payment programs for privately owned safety-net hospitals. The Hospital District provides funding for the nonfederal share of the Medicaid Supplemental Payment Program (“Private” UPL Program). This amount approximated $43.7 million in 2012 and $35.8 million in 2011.  It would appear that our county hospital is paying another local hospital that is privately owned to provide care to indigent patients.

Losing money

The county hospital had an operating loss of $17.8 million dollars in 2012.  Gross charges attributable to charity were 24%.

I’ve seen some financial engineering before but the people over at the county hospital seem to be specializing in it.

The jungle drums are beating out messages about a rift between the county hospital and Texas Tech as well as talk about dumping cancer patients out on the street and referring them to privately owned companies.

I plan to look into those issues.

We deserve better

Brutus

6 Comments | County Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

New Texas

October 23, 2013

Out Texas State Senator wrote a column for the El Paso Times this Sunday.  Taking from the column:

“Looking forward we should strengthen dual-language programs because literacy in multiple languages correlates with increased opportunity.  We should expand early childhood programs and college preparation courses.  As we know, education is the key to the New Texas.”

New Texas?

What is he talking about?  Another state (like New Hampshire)?  A changed state?  I wonder if the rest of Texas  is aware of his plans.

Speaking of plans, what are his plans?  How does he propose to have a “New Texas”?

Much of his guest column spoke of transparency in government.

Spell it out for us Senator, and don’t make us  learn a new language like “political speak” or “double talk”.

Where were you?

The Senator’s column spoke of bribery, mail fraud, and conspiracy in our school districts.  Why is it that he never took action as a prosecutor on these cases when he was our county attorney for 17 years?

The Texas Code of Criminal Procedure defines the duties of county attorneys as:

Art. 2.02. [26] [32] [33] DUTIES OF COUNTY ATTORNEYS. The county attorney shall attend the terms of court in his county below the grade of district court, and shall represent the State in all criminal cases under examination or prosecution in said county; and in the absence of the district attorney he shall represent the State alone and, when requested, shall aid the district attorney in the prosecution of any case in behalf of the State in the district court. He shall represent the State in cases he has prosecuted which are appealed.

Eternal vigilance is the cost of liberty

Cato

11 Comments | County Government, El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

Upscale promises

October 8, 2013

The new shopping center we know as The Fountains at Farah is another example of the two step process that gets used in El Paso to get the public to help pay for new development.

The pitch, or step one

The first step was the request for $12 million in tax rebates from the city and county.  The money was needed to make the project economically viable for the developers.

The sales pitch was that the new center would bring “upscale retailers” to El Paso.

They got their $12 million after a long battle. This quote from El Paso Inc. summed up the loser’s argument:

Simon Properties, which owns Cielo Vista Mall, and De la Vega Group, developer of Las Palmas Market Place, argued the center would simply steal tenants from other El Paso shopping centers and malls, especially damaging as the economy was slipping into recession.

The Inc. went on to write that our local leaders took measures to keep that from happening:

The city and county responded by tying the entitlements to a requirement that The Fountains attract net new tenants to El Paso.

We now know that Best Buy and Barnes and Nobles are doing precisely what the losers feared.  They are both closing existing stores and moving to the Fountains.

Step two

What about the promised upscale stores?  El Paso Inc later published another article that explained why no luxury stores have decided to come to El Paso.

The developers tried, but we just aren’t affluent enough, especially since our property tax bills will go up as a result of this.

None, nada, zero, zilch upscale stores.

The result

El Paso got a very nice brand new shopping center.  The taxpayers gave away $12 million.  Existing stores did move out of old centers and into the new one.  The existing tax paying retail center owners got taken.

We deserve better

Brutus

14 Comments | City government, County Government | Permalink
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Keeping up with the Jones

September 30, 2013

The headline article in the Times today talked about the scheduled sentencing of some more people that have been involved in the public corruption cases here in El Paso.

These three individuals pleaded guilty to illegal activity relating to health insurance for local school district and government employees.  Access HealthSource was administering the health coverage.  Bribes were evidently offered to elected officials in return for their votes to give Access contracts.

This story is another one of those that the Times writes often about.  Maybe it is good for circulation.

More of the story

Below is my opinion:

What the Times failed to mention today is that they played a big part in creating the environment that led to the corruption.

For many years Young Insurance had the contracts to administer health insurance for the major school districts and local governments in town.  Steve Young was the head of the firm.  He administered the health insurance programs with fairness, efficiency and honesty.  The employees were happy.  He stepped in frequently to get to the bottom of problems so that employees were taken care of.  Young Insurance regularly saved the employers money and kept their health costs in line.

Enter a former local big shot (who is now in federal prison) who decided he wanted Young’s business.  Allegations were made about the fact that Young Insurance was not in fact an insurance company.  Other allegations were made that Young was secretly taking money from hospitals even though video coverage at the time showed Young explaining his financial dealings with the hospitals in open city council meetings.

The Times saw a scandal.  Scandals are good for circulation.  They published article after article about the situation.  We see the same behavior with the El Paso Independent School District story and the public corruption story today.

Eventually the pressure on Young and his business became too destructive.  He sold his business to the same Access HealthSource, owned primarily by our federal detainee.  Our former county judge who is also now a  federal prisoner and who coincidently has the same last name as the Access owner then helped to lobby for Access.

The result is the scandal that was covered again in the paper again today.

What about Steve Young?  Charges were never filed.  The investigating agencies never made an accusation.  He never got so much as a reprimand.  I think he lost his business thanks in large part to relentless hounding by the Times.

Steve died penniless a few years ago, but not before the Times printed a below the fold front page article that explained he had done nothing wrong.  Steve was grateful for that.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

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