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

A Tiffany Dome for City Hall

December 3, 2012

I wrote in another post about how the city spent $94,993.76 to replace 17,000 square feet of ceiling tile on the 10th floor of city hall last year.  I sure hope they did not have to pay much for the warranty since the building might soon be torn down.

City staff claims that this amount was obtained through a competitive bid process.  In other posts I have said that is not so.

Let’s look at the numbers.

Using Google one can find the exact tile they used for less than $10,000.  Let’s add 20% for profit.  We are now at $12,000.

The city evidently wanted new grid.  I don’t know what was wrong with the old one, but let’s assume they need to tear down the old one and put in a new one.

In writing this I was going to go off and research the individual costs.  Then an idea came to me.  I wonder if the city has actually done other ceiling projects?  Well as it turns out they have right here.  Wander down to items 17, 18, and 19.  To save you the arithmetic their first recommended bidder wants $1.33 per square foot to tear down and install acoustical ceilings (without materials).

This was a 2011  award the city made through another buy board (our local Region 19), just not the buy board that lets us send 4% of every purchase to Houston.  By the way Region 19 rebid this in 2012 and the low bidder for tear down and install was at 70 cents (down from $1.33)–but we will use the 2011 numbers since they were available at the time.

We have:

  • $12,000 for the ceiling tiles (available to you and me on the web, who knows what you could get them in volume for)
  • $22,610 for labor to tear down the old grid and install the new one
  • $10,000 for the materials in the ceiling grid

That brings us to $44,610 and even that number is just a price survey (not a competitive bid–which would be lower).

In the construction business they refer to site conditions–things that make the work more or less expensive.  Could the extra $50,000 that we spent be because the workers had to work on the 10th floor of city hall?  Did the contractor determine that it is a cesspool filled with snakes?  I don’t know.

Humor aside, here we have a situation where we paid twice as much as we should have.   Why would they use a buy board out of Houston when an El Paso buy board was half the price?

We deserve better!

3 Comments | City government, Purchasing, State Government | Permalink
Posted by jcurrey

More Of Our Money For Houston

November 30, 2012

Next Tuesday’s City Council agenda has an item to award a 4 million dollar contract for construction work without a real competitive bid.  Read the item here.

I have written about the non-competitive issue before.  You should read Saying It Does Not Make it So.

The company in question put a new roof on city hall last year to the tune of 694 thousand dollars.  Yes, the city hall that they are about to tear down.  Read There They Go Again for the gory details.

Remember that four percent (that is 160,000 dollars) goes to the Harris County Department of Education because the city is buying off of a buy-board!  I would think that we could use the money.

I sense that we may be seeing the old two-step here.  I have no evidence yet, but I suspect that they are up to something more.

Remember that the city has been telling us that it will take about two million dollars to tear down city hall.  That’s the city hall with a new roof, and a new chiller, and a whole bunch of valuable emergency communication equipment that they say will be imploded into the rubble (click here to see $63.9 million and climbing).

Last year the city issued a contract to this same firm for 750,000 dollars.  Why the big jump to four million dollars?

Is it possible that the city will use this new contract to get away with tearing down city hall without a real bid?  There is probably real value in the salvage.   Are they going to claim that they do not have enough time to conduct fair bidding?  How long have then been planning to tear down the building?  Four percent of 2 million dollars is 80,000 dollars.  How much money could we save by conducting  a bid with existing city employees?  How much would it really cost to tear down city hall if we let the market work?  Is there real value in the salvage and are we going to get it or is some contractor going to get it?

So far we have not seen any bidding activity from the city where they are trying to find a contractor to tear it down.  The city says it takes about 60 days to run a Request for Proposals.  Have they decided to use this new contract?  Hide and watch.

Call your city representatives!  Be careful not to tell them what to do.  Incredible as it sounds that appears to be illegal.  Read Cone of Silence by clicking this link.

I wish that we could get the El Paso Times cover these stories.  I know that they have to fight cost issues, but it seems to me that they could bring real value to this situation.

We deserve better.  Maybe we will get it in the next election.

2 Comments | City government, El Paso Times, Purchasing, State Government | Permalink
Posted by jcurrey

Introduction

November 26, 2012

Brutus invited me to contribute to this blog, so I think I will give it a try.

Brutus has the ability to point to facts with the intensity of a laser thus shining a spotlight on an issue while  M. T. Cicero uses his amusing wit to help us think about what is going on.

I don’t think that I will write as frequently as Brutus. Nor do I intend to dwell on specific issues, at least initially. I want to start with how our politicos hijack words to mislead us.

Let’s start with “federal” as in the so called federal government.

The online Oxford dictionary today defines federal as “having or relating to a system of government in which several states form a unity but remain independent in internal affairs”.

During the ratification process of our Constitution there was a fear that the United States government would crush the state governments.  Indeed the “supremacy clause” stated “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding”.  Some people thought that “made in pursuance thereof” protected us from laws that were not to be allowed under the Constitution.  Others knew better.

The fear of centralization became so widespread that the Tenth Amendment was enacted later.  It states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

At one time that government was federal.  The senators were appointed by their state legislatures.  Each state had two senators that were appointed to represent the interests of the state and it’s people.  The states had a say in what became law and who the high level officials were who ran the government and in international treaties.

That all went away when senators started being elected directly by the people (the 17th Amendment–1913).  Now the states have no say in the laws that are passed.  Our government is no longer federal.  The states are not independent in their internal affairs.

Call it “the national government”, “the government in Washington”, “the United States government”, “the central government” but not the “federal government”–because it is not federal.

Some would argue that common usage redefines the word and that the “federal government” is the one in Washington because that is what it is called most commonly.

Precedent does not make principle.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

1 Comment | Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

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