Foxes in the Henhouse

December 7, 2012

Let me start by saying that I am glad that the Texas Education Agency (TEA) has done something about the El Paso Independent School District Board.

Also let me skip over my feelings that the El Paso Times is right in pointing out that much of what has gone wrong there should have been addressed by the TEA a long time ago.

So now we come down to my concern.  Who did the TEA go to for suggestions about the members of the newly announced board of managers?  Why have they appointed members from other governments?  Why did they not get executives from the business community to serve?  What back room did this happen in?

Have they ever heard of conflict of interest?

Let’s look at who the TEA has put on the new board of managers:

  • The paid TEA designated school district monitor.  She should not be both the district monitor and a member of the board of managers.  Those are two different jobs.  Anyone that has run a decent sized organization can see that this just will not work.  She might be qualified for one position or the other, but not both at the same time.
  • A City of El Paso employee that controls water in the city.  My personal opinion is that he has done a great job managing our water resources.  He is also known in the community as being heavy-handed and one who sees to it that he gets his way regardless of the effect on others.  The fact that he has publicly stated that he saw no problem with a member of his controlling board selling expensive equipment to his government owned utility without a competitive bid shows us how he will be thinking.  Don’t expect openness and transparency from this guy.
  • A politician who just lost his re-election campaign as a state representative.  Rumor has it that he is thinking about running for Mayor of El Paso.  Would this position help him?  I can think of a former state senator who is temperamentally more of a fit here, if we have to have politicians involved.
  • Another City of El Paso employee that is the city’s Chief Financial Officer.  She also is the Chief Administrator for the El Paso County Judge.  Now she will be on the non-elected board of managers of this school district.  Will the City Manager and the County Judge now have a vote at the school district?  How does she vote when an issue  between the school district and the city comes up?  How about between the school district and the county?  Talk about a conflict!  She is in charge of purchasing at the City of El Paso.  That alone should say enough about the quality of her work.  She told us that moving city hall would cost us $33 million dollars.  We are at $63.9 million and climbing.  She apparently does not have time to do her city job right, much less work with the county, and now the school district.
  • There is one last position to fill.  Evidently the TEA is asking another politician, our state senator, for a list of recommendations.  How about someone that has run a large organization?  How about someone that can represent the voters instead of other governments?

The influence of the City of El Paso on this board is troubling on many levels.  Think about it.  I suspect that the El Paso Times  will now have a whole new set of travesties to write about.

A temporary managing board for the school district makes sense to me if the members are qualified and free from conflicts of interest.

I thought our school district is supposed to be INDEPENDENT.

We deserve better!

Our children deserve better!

6 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times, State Government | Permalink
Posted by jcurrey

Grading their Agendas

December 6, 2012

To my knowledge the laws controlling government agendas in Texas are pretty specific about when and where they must be published, but do not address much about the content of agendas.  The only local  exception to this that I am aware of is the City of El Paso ordinance number 16806 that is quite specific about the backup material that must be provided when an item is placed on the agenda.

I thought it would be interesting to see how much information our local government agendas give us citizens and to assign a grade to them.

Many of the agendas tell us that there will be discussion and action on various topics but fail to give us any of the backup documents that the voting group gets to see.  Most of the items on agendas are put there by the paid staff.  Generally they want their governing board to approve a recommendation.  That means that back up materials (bid analyses, proposed contracts …) are given to each of the voting members before the discussion.

The public generally does not get to see the backup materials before the vote, even though it should.  If the XYZ school district administrators want their board to approve a policy to paint all second graders green, the item would typically be placed on the agenda as “Consider and take possible action relative to certain students”.  If as a citizen you think that painting all second graders green is not a good idea, you have no way of knowing what they are considering until after they have already done it.  So much for public input.

I did a brief review of some of our local government agendas available on the web to see what I would find.  I only looked at one agenda each, so the one I looked at might be an exception.  Maybe I should consider this grade like a 6 weeks grade, not the final score.

The grades are my opinion:

  • F    Anthony Independent School District.  This agenda is a model for brevity and obscurity.  While they appear to be using the same software that the Canutillo district uses, they do not provide any backup information even though they could.
  • A    Canutillo Independent School District.  The agenda tells us what they will consider and includes a link to an “Agenda Packet” that seems to give us the information that the board is to look at.
  • D    City of El Paso Texas.  Their agenda includes backup information for most items and in all fairness when compared to the other entities in this list it is the best.  The problem is that they are violating a very specific ordinance that requires them to post more information than they are.
  • B-   El Paso County.  It looks as though they have a policy of presenting backup material on the web site, but they appear to be conveniently inconsistent.  A previously postponed mandatory presentation from the CEO of the El Paso County Hospital District (University Medical Center) included backup material that was simply a four point listing  (Strategic Plan, Leadership Development, Operations Improvement, Financial Update) of what was to be presented.  There were no details.
  • D    El Paso County Community College District.  The agenda gives us a pretty complete idea of what action is being considered (including names and dollar amounts) but none of the analysis or competitive data that the staff used to make their recommendation.
  • F    El Paso County Hospital District (aka University Medical Center).  Horrible.  First it is hard to find the agendas.  Once you do find them it appears that they only post agendas for meetings yet to be held.  I could not find past agendas.  There are no backup materials.  The agenda wording is very vague.
  • F    Socorro Independent School District.  The agenda tells us very little.  Among other items they consider awarding competitive contracts without telling us who they suggest should win the award.  How can a competitor tell his side of the story when he does not know what he is up against?
  • D    Ysleta Independent School District.  The agenda gives us a pretty complete idea of what action is being considered (including names and dollar amounts) but none of the analysis or competitive data that the staff used to make their recommendation.

The only web site that I could find that to allows us citizens to do key word searches is the one for the City of El Paso.  They all should.

We should each contact our elected representatives at these organizations and tell them that we want to see everything that they see when considering agenda items except for those things that are properly handled in executive session.

We deserve better.

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

Another shameful way to allow favoritism

November 26, 2012

Just when I think I have figured out the extent that our local administrators will go to to circumvent fairness and the law, their wicked (look it up, it means evil or morally wrong) minds come up with another travesty.

The El Paso Independent School District issued a Competitive Sealed Proposal (CSP) #13-106 for iPads, Computer, Telephone and AV (audio visual) parts.  Note the word competitive.   On the face of it I don’t know of too many vendors that sell products  in all of those areas, but maybe the results of the CSP could prove differently.

Twelve vendors responded. That is pretty good until you realize that most of them responded only to a portion of the bid.

What did EPISD do? They awarded the bid to all twelve, even after they found some bidders to be less desirable because of past performance. Preposterous! The stated justification was “to allow the campuses and departments the flexibility to compare and purchase products from several approved vendors based not only on price but availability and lead time” You can see that on the EPISD document here.  The explanation is at the bottom of the last page.

This is not competitive bidding, it is a sham. It allows the administrators to buy from their favorites among the twelve with impunity. By definition it is not competitive. It is however devious.  By awarding the bid to all twelve proposers, no proposer has anything to complain about. Now staff has a blank check to buy from any of the twelve.  Staff is free to pick who they like and eliminate anyone else.

Why does the school board allow this?

The El Paso Times uses a lot of ink writing about the board.  They need to look at the managers and staff in our local governments.

Our children deserve better.

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

The list goes on

November 22, 2012

Today is Thanksgiving Day.

Instead of writing this weekend, let me post an index of some of what I have been writing about local purchasing.

Managing Our Money addresses local governments using buy boards

City Management talks about the two step that they use down at City Hall

Sole-source or favoritism or laziness? gives an example of how the City lies so they can buy sole-source

There They Go Again chronicals a major waste of money

More No-Bid Spending shows how buy boards should be used

Jumping to Conclusions shows how EPISD cannot write an RFP even when they try

Saying it does not make it so exposes the lie that bid board contracts are competitively bid 

Leave a Comment » | City government, County Government, El Paso Inc., El Paso Independent School District, State Government | Permalink
Posted by jcurrey

Saying it does not make it so

November 20, 2012

I have been writing a lot about buy boards that our local governments have been using.  Contrary to what some of our local officials are claiming, the contracts on these boards are not competitively bid.  Some may be but most are not.  That of course is my opinion.  Read this post and draw your own conclusion.

The ones I have written about recently are run by government agencies like the State of Texas or the Harris County Department of Education (Houston).  They  let other agencies (like our City and County governments and school districts) buy under their contract without conducting a separate bidding process.

The buy boards do this to make money for themselves.

They do this for a fee that is paid by the vendor.  Some of them charge 4% of the value purchased. The vendor pays the fee to the buy board.  The 4% is a cost of doing business for the vendor.  It makes sense to me that if the vendor did not have to pay the 4% the price that is charged to the buying agency we could buy that much lower.

They pick the brand they want

The buy board goes through the process of issuing a request for proposals (RFP) and then awards contracts to the companies that they judge to be worthy.  Often they do not award a contract only for the proposal that they judge to offer the best value, but to several companies that they judge to be worthy.

An RFP should provide specifications for a product or service that the agency wants to get.  “A four door two wheel drive sedan” is an example.  The buy boards typically do it differently.  They ask “how much will you charge us for your product”?  You and I both know that a Chevrolet sells for less than a Mercedes.  Here is an example of an awarded contract.  The vendor simply promises to sell a particular brand of equipment for a percentage of discount off of list price!

With this example the next thing we would see is some local government official driving around in a Mercedes.  They would claim that they got it through a competitive bid!  (I did not want to call out anyone in particular so I used this example because I do not know of anyone driving around here in a government owned Mercedes).  But our local governments actually do use these buy boards to pick the brand they want instead of the most cost effective brand.  This costs us money.

The court says

 There has not been a lot of action in the courts over this issue recently.  That is probably because the 1951 Texas ruling in Sterrett v. Bell was pretty clear.  In discussing competitive bidding the court wrote:

“Its purpose is to stimulate competition, prevent favoritism and secure the best work and materials at the lowest practicable price, for the best interests and benefit of the taxpayers and property owners.  There can be no competitive bidding in a legal sense where the terms of the letting of the contract prevent or restrict competition, favor a contractor or materialman, or increase the cost of the work of of the material or other item going into the project”

Let’s see:

  • They pick the product they like
  • The price may be higher than the competent competition
  • The price is inflated (at least by the buy board’s fee)

I cannot see how this can be competitive bidding.

We deserve better.

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

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