Blaming the new guy

August 2, 2016

Now that we have a new chief executive officer at our county hospital, the details about the hospital’s past financial difficulties are beginning to come out.

Their preliminary budget for 2017 shows a whopper of a loss:

2017umcbudget

The numbers do not include the children’s hospital because they say that those numbers are not available yet.

In 2016 the hospital budgeted for an $8.3 million loss.  This year they are shooting for $15.8 million in losses.

The 2017 numbers include an increase in property tax income from $87 million to $93 million.

The new chief executive will have to figure out how much of this year’s projected loss is actually carry over from prior years that someone chose not to recognize.

And now we have to wait for the numbers from the children’s hospital.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Re-runs

August 1, 2016

This came in from a reader the other day:

http://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/education/episd/2016/07/30/whos-who-episd-cheating-scheme/87618624/

One would think that the Times would add something to the story … not just rehash it. This isn’t “award-winning” work, How about doing some real investigation and find out what did or did not happen at Austin? Appears that Moore is working on commission for the federal prosecutor.

2 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times | Permalink
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No comments please

July 31, 2016

Our post the other day about the city council agenda item that introduced the proposed 2017 tax ordinance included these words from the agenda:

Public comment typically is not taken during the first reading of ordinances. Public comments are invited at the date of the scheduled public hearing.

Shame on them

There are many things wrong with their statement.

When does “typically” apply?  Do they encourage public comment when they need support?  Should council be able to choose when they hear comments about proposed ordinances?

Shouldn’t our elected officials encourage public involvement?

What moral right do they have to stop us from commenting?

Do we have to be invited to speak?

Their statement is an attempt to brow-beat citizens and discourage them from participating.  By discouraging public comment when the ordinance is first introduced they make it more difficult to bring forward suggested modifications at the “final” reading.

Council and city staff evidently feel that their time is too valuable to be wasted listening to the citizens.

We deserve better

Brutus

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More problems with our county hospital board

July 30, 2016

The June 14, 2016 meeting of the board of managers of our county hospital district turns out to have had another violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act.

Item 12 on the agenda concerned a potential real estate deal.  The item was considered in executive session.

When the board reconvened in regular session the lady reading the agenda items for the public and the board introduced a resolution that according to her was “approved in executive session”.  You can see the reading at about 33 minutes into the session here.

Referring to executive session, a court has ruled that they “may not conduct a straw vote of a formal vote during such a session”.

The board members are required by law to take training about the Texas Open Meetings Act.

Then again one would think that the assistant county attorney assigned to the hospital district would teach them how to do the right thing.

We deserve better

Brutus

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EPISD bonds–selective disclosure

July 29, 2016

This slide from a June 29, 2016 presentation to the EPISD facilities advisory committee shows that the district’s new deputy director of finance and operations has brought some of the techniques that she used to mislead us when she was our city’s chief financial officer over to help with the bond election:

EPISDBondElectionScenarios

What the chart fails to point out is that there is open talk at the district indicating that some of them think that the real bond requirement is north of one billion dollars.

To think that the district will go from 2017 to 2042 without another bond request is absurd.  We know that they requested bonds in 2003 and 2007 and will probably request the bond amounts shown in the chart above later this year.

As we saw over at the city her figures to not reflect reality.

We deserve better

Brutus

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