Cheater

April 3, 2013

I ran across this letter on the internet.

In it the mayor appoints the city’s chief financial officer as the “citizen appointee” to the El Paso Fire and Police Pension Fund board.

What caught my attention is that the mayor evidently has a statutory responsibility to appoint a “citizen” to the board.

I have not read whatever law or ordinance requires the mayor to appoint a “citizen” here.  In all probability it contemplates a person from the community with no ties to the fire or police departments or to the city.  Otherwise why use the term “citizen”?  Every city employee is a citizen of somewhere.

Citizen?

The appointee is the chief financial officer of the city!  She also has served as the chief administrator of the El Paso county government.  The Texas Education Agency has appointed her to the oversight board that might end up controlling the El Paso Independent School District.

Her idea of conflict of interest and mine seem to be worlds apart.

She is a citizen in the sense that she is an inhabitant of a city.

She is not a citizen in the sense that must be meant here — not tied to the government or the employees.

Cheating

The mayor clearly chose to use lack of specific language to appoint someone whose vote can be controlled by the city.  He may not have violated a law, but he certainly cheated it’s intent in my opinion.

This kind of rule bending is typical of what is wrong with our local governments.  Our paid officials should be the guardians of both the letter and the spirit of the rules.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Posted by Brutus

For whom the bill tolls

April 3, 2013

Thanks to an alert reader, I finally have an objective comparison of El Paso’s property tax rates compared to other U.S. cities.

The Minnesota Taxpayers Association publishes its 50 State Property Tax Study yearly.  One section of it lists the top (most expensive) 50 property tax rates for homestead property by city.

For a home valued on the tax rolls at $150,000, El Paso was the sixth most expensive city amongst the nation’s 50 largest cities for the 2009 tax year.  Our effective tax rate was computed at 2.252% of the property value.  The average of the 50 cities was 1.325%.  Our tax rate that year indexed right at 170% of that average. (I’m guessing that we might soon be at double the average.)

“Stop,” you say!  Many of those cities are in states where they have income taxes, which we do not have.  Well, let’s take a look at Florida, which also does not have a state income tax.  Miami, Florida  was at 1.454% vs our 2.252% during that same period, making our rate approximately 55% higher than the other sun city.  Las Vegas was at 1.132%, a rate which is almost less than half our rate — and Nevada, too, doesn’t have a state income tax.

“Not fair” you say.  “Compare El Paso to other Texas cities”.  OK.  Austin was 10th in 2011 at 2.061%, and at least Austin residents can see visible, tangible results both in services, quality of life, economic growth, etc.

How many times have we been told that something will only cost us $84 (or some other amount) a year on the average house?  Well, all of those “onlys” have certainly added up.  Our tax rate will continue to escalate as long as our city representatives and managers are allowed to continue on the current course of mismanagement.

In fact, for 2011 our “progressive” city management has managed to make us the 5th most expensive of the 50 major cities with a 2.357% tax rate compared to the average of 1.358%.

How about for businesses?

Texas does have a franchise tax on businesses, so El Paso should be closer to the national norm.  Many feel that the franchise tax is more onerous than an income tax since it taxes gross income instead of profit.

In 2011, El Paso was the 7th most expensive city  for industrial property taxes.  We came in at 2.562% with the 50 largest city average being 1.503.  That puts our tax rate at 170% of the average.

The effective tax rates for both residential and commercial/industrial property are among the first things companies look at when considering whether to expand or relocate their business.  El Paso is not attractive.  We punish our taxpayers.  No wonder we have a hard time attracting jobs.

Perhaps one reason we have so much ambivalence among residents and voters is that we have a relatively lower rate of home ownership.  Maybe a large part of the population is apathetic about decisions that raise taxes because they will get the benefit, but not the bill.  After all, approximately 25% of El Pasoans live below the poverty level as compared to 17% for Texas as a whole.  I’m thinking that I have some more homework to do.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Posted by Brutus

Scheming Institutionalized

April 2, 2013

It now seems that more than one school district in the area was involved in manipulating student grade levels to avoid state and federal sanctions.  Other local districts are conducting investigations to see if they too were involved.

At the high school level the technique seems to have been to reduce the number of children from the 10th grade whose English language skills were deemed to have been substandard.  Evidently some students were placed in the 9th grade for a while and then promoted to the 11th grade.  According to news reports some were sent away (taken out of school).

It appears that the testing occurred in the 10th grade.  I guess that we don’t have enough money to check to see that all of our grade levels are performing to standard.

Without for a minute trying to defend the people who manipulated the system, some questions come to mind:

How should a school be evaluated when a foreign language student enrolls in the school without having attended the first through the 9th grades in the school district?  Has the student had time to learn English?

Are there special tests for students arriving from foreign countries?

Should grade level placement of the student be decided by the administrators based upon the individual student’s capabilities?

At what point does self preservation (keeping your job by doing what your boss asks you to do even when you disagree) kick in?

On the other hand, the situation shows us how government employees (not just educators) get together to learn strategies from each other that help to subvert the intent of the rules.  The El Paso Independent School District not releasing the draft report of the cheating audit was probably the result of an administrator or lawyer learning from some other agency how to avoid releasing the document by calling it a “draft”.

I have to wonder how many other schools around the country have been involved in similar efforts to “bend the rules”.

Too often I get the feeling that it is government employees versus the “crazies”.

Eternal vigilance is the cost of liberty.

Cato

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

The week of March 31, 2013

April 1, 2013

I got some feedback from some of you that it is hard to read this blog every day and as a result some of you miss some articles.

They are shown with the most recent post at the top and the ones immediately prior to it listed below it.

Here is a list of the posts from last week:

Brutus started the week this Monday with Rubbing shoulders.  He pointed out that the city has seen to it that the departments at our new expensive city hall are mostly internal ones.  The public has been relegated to multiple buildings spread across town.

Tuesday saw Brutus writing about the city hiding debt so that they do not have to publicly raise the tax rate based on expenditures in Rushing into debt.

Cut and paste writing took the Times to task for reprinting the same things over and over and over.  Strike two focused on the serious flaw in the ballot language for Proposition One.  These were published Wednesday.

Thursday saw Part of a story from me.  This blog got an interesting tip about the Times.  Brutus took the state senate to task in Goose or gander?

I published Slight of hand? this Friday.  It looks like the city is creating a diversion.  Why?  Brutus posted In the land of the blind man the oye-eyed jack is king.  The board of our county hospital seems to be doing the same thing that many of our other managing boards are doing — following instead of leading their executive and insulating themselves from the public.

Saturday saw Catch me if you can from Brutus.  He senses a secret deal with the railroad.

On Sunday Cato posted Release the audit.  The El Paso Independent School District is hiding the $800,000 audit from us while at the same time it is firing officials that have significant public support.

Leave a Comment » | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Muckraker

In the land of the blind man the one-eyed jack is king

March 29, 2013

What’s going on at our county hospital, formerly known as R. E. Thomason General Hospital, but now called University Medical Center of El Paso?

The hospital district wants us to sell $162 million of bonds that we will pay for (with interest it will be a lot more — twice as much? — I don’t know yet) through  our taxes.

This deserves some attention, so I think I will do my part.  I went over to their web page to find out more about a recent board of managers meeting (March 12, 2013).

What I found is disturbing:

  • The report of the President/CEO was on the consent agenda
  • “Review and take appropriate action on financial statements for the El Paso County Hospital District…” was on the consent agenda
  • No backup material for items was posted

The board considers consent agenda items as a whole, without discussion.  That means that the CEO’s presentation and the financial actions were to be considered without public comment or scrutiny.

Most governing boards ask staff to provide backup material relating to agenda items to the board members before the board meeting.  Even the El Paso city council makes those items available to the public through their web site.  In my opinion that actually makes city council more transparent than this board.

I guess we can save money on their vision center if they have one.  This board meeting had no transparency.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Posted by Brutus

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