Methinks the lady doth protest too much

June 19, 2013

The word will probably be out by the time this post gets published.

It seems that our city manager will be staying on through the end of the year or maybe  the end of her contract.

That makes dropping the suit against the Texas attorney general even more important (see Now you don’t see it, now you do).

As long as the city manager is in control of city staff it will be difficult to get to the truth about past events at the city.

Texas law gives us the right to review the e-mails that the city is suing to repress.

If there is nothing to hide, let us see them.

This is not about principles.  Principles tend to come in bunches.  If these people have any, this is the only one that I have seen.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Now you don’t see it, now you do

June 14, 2013

As we know, the city is suing the attorney general of Texas claiming that personal emails involving the mayor and city council officials that pertain to city business should not be subject to disclosure to the public under state law.

The attorney general ruled that they are subject to disclosure after a citizen requested access to the documents.

Now the city is using our taxpayer money to fight the public’s right to see the documents.

The situation might change after the election tomorrow.  The mayor and at least two of the city representatives will not be re-elected to their posts because of term limits.  We will have a different city council and mayor.

I hope that the new council stops the lawsuit.

Then we should learn more about how city hall got torn down and the ball park deal was created.  I suspect that the lawsuit is not about principles, misguided as they might be.  Instead it appears that these people have something to hide.

We might know soon.

Eternal vigilance is the cost of liberty.

Cato

2 Comments | City government, Open Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

Talk is cheap

June 13, 2013

Tuesday, June 11, 2013 the appointed board of managers of the El Paso Independent School District voted  unanimously to limit public access to address the board during their meetings.  I wrote about that in No comment allowed.

Watching the video of the meeting I learned that:

The proposal came from both the superintendent and the board of managers.  The superintendent has helped make it more difficult for the public to take exception with his actions.  The only path of appeal that I know of when someone disagrees with the superintendent is to bring the issue to the board of managers.  We previously had a superintendent that had the auditing function report to him and not the the board — look what that got us.  Now our interim superintendent has made it more difficult for the public to bring attention to his actions.

The new policy also forbids those few members of the public that get to speak at the board meeting from using the names of students and employees as well as the positions of the employees.  So if you want to speak about the superintendent you might refer to him as the person sitting three positions to the left of the the president of the board.

No show for show

The board member that is also the chief financial officer of the City of El Paso was absent during that vote.  According to the El Paso Times the chief financial officer was opposed to the agenda item.

Why was she late?  Was she too busy?  Did she want to avoid the issue?  Does she have time to do her job on this board?

If she was opposed to the issue, why didn’t she ask for reconsideration of the item?  If she really felt strongly about the issue why did she remain silent?

Posturing

Maybe her statement to the Times had a different motive.  Her boss at the city is considering moving to Florida.  The Times ran an article this year about how she might be a good candidate to become the next city manager.

Claiming to oppose shutting down public comment while not taking action to preserve it is just plain grandstanding in my opinion.

It looks like this board now ranks worse than the elected board of trustees as far as public access is concerned.

Eternal vigilance is the cost of liberty.

Cato

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

No comment allowed

June 12, 2013

It seems that the board of managers that the TEA has imposed on the El Paso Independent School District thinks it does not need much public input.

Evidently citizens (known elsewhere as “crazies”) have been showing up at the board meetings to give their input.

The board wants to restrict that input, I guess because it is inconvenient to their schedules.

Among other things the board wants to move the section for public input to the end of the meetings.  That is a shameless attempt to make it less convenient for the public to speak.

They also want to limit speakers to three for an issue and three against the issue.  Wouldn’t you like to live in a world where things are that simple?

They also want to allow members of the public to only speak to the board every 60 days.

Is anything better?

The TEA supposedly appointed this board to provide accountability, transparency, trust and confidence to the public.

We now know for certain how some members of this group want to conduct business.

Business as usual

Only worse.  At least under the old regime the public had an opportunity to vent.  Yes the meetings were long.  The public obviously had a lot to vent about.  If these new people don’t want to spend the time necessary to conduct business in an open and fair manner, they should resign.  Could it be that these people are too busy with other things to do their job right?

Are we lucky or what?

Has the TEA appointed a group of people with the wisdom of Solomon?  Can it be that they know what to do and the public is really just an inconvenience?  Maybe if the board only met every 60 days we would be better off.

It’s the thought that counts

Even if pressure causes the board to backtrack on this issue, we still will know how they think.  This is a genuinely bad idea and should have never been brought up.  Whoever did bring it up clearly is on the wrong side of the issue.

Eternal vigilance is the cost of liberty.

Cato

2 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, Open Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

Buying a lie

June 9, 2013

Next week’s city council agenda has a flurry of purchasing items on it.  I guess council has been busy watching the management team disintegrate.

The Information Technology department seldom takes items out to bid.  They prefer to use buy boards.

Item 6A proposes spending $425,583.73 for various security devices (cameras, locks, and things like that).  The backup material points out that “The City has made the determination that purchasing from this cooperative offers the most cost-effective pricing”.

Horse feathers!

The backup material actually lists the items to be purchased as well as the prices.  The second item on the list is a Model 5200 electric strike.  The city is willing to pay $124.43 for each one of these.  A quick internet search showed a supplier willing to sell the items for $92.25.  The next item on the list is a Model 9500 surface strike.  The city proposes to pay $417.00 each.  They are available on the internet for $313.00.

Another camera on the list is an AXC-0515-001 that the city is prepared to pay $727.17 each for.  The first one I found on the internet was for sale for $649.00.

Safe landing

Then another item proposes to spend $1,000,000 over a four year period with an out of town company for “Airport Financial and Planning Services”.  Pricing was not part of the evaluation.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, Purchasing, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »