Another board failure

June 8, 2016

The April 12, 2016 meeting of our county hospital’s board is another example of a board rubber stamping what their administrator wants.

The county hospital administrator wanted to hire an advanced gastroenterologist for $571,210 a year plus incentives.

The head of our local medical school was there and remarked that it would have been nice if there had been discussions since the medical school can and does provide physicians to work at the county hospital.

The underlying frictions were in regard to the competition that the county hospital was introducing and the salary, which on its face looks high.

Our county hospital administrator said that the hospital needs this new doctor as well as two more in that specialty and that his hospital would fund those two other positions if the medical school wanted to bring forward candidates.

The head of the medical school asked if the compensation would be the same for the two new doctors.  The answer was no according to our hospital administrator.  They medical school doctors would be paid less.

The board asked a few questions.  I found this graphic within about two minutes of starting a search:

gastroenteroligist

The doctors in question would be working as employees.

Maybe the high salary is deserved.  The medical school head left us with the impression that it was above competitive levels, however.

Once again one of our local boards bowed down to their employees.

At the vary least the issue should have been postponed while the two sides talked.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

 

5 Comments | County Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Who to believe

June 7, 2016

We unfortunately have a situation down at city hall where our city manager can fire contracted senior staff and pay them hush money to silence them.

There is no appeal.  In many cases this means that the senior staff member will go along with anything that our city manager wants to tell city council and the public.

This was not the case with our deputy city manager who got fired for telling the truth to city council.  She courageously told the truth and was immediately fired.  They then kept her quiet with hush money.

Where that puts us is that it is hard to believe anything that these people say.  Their statements of fact may in fact be lies that the city manager wants to put forward.

I’m not saying that our current city manager has done this.

We do know that our former city manager did when she fired a deputy for telling the truth.

It seems that we have a system where our city manager can have subordinates make presentations to city council that are not true.  How can we believe anything that they say?

Shouldn’t there be some kind of an appeal process so that our senior executives can tell us the truth without fear of retaliation?

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | Ball park, City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Pretty simple to do a good job

June 6, 2016

Evidently many of our local board members do not share our thoughts about what their  jobs are and are not,  so let’s talk about it.

The number one job of your board is to see to it that your entity provides the public with cost effective services according to your charter.

You do that through deciding policy and then managing your director/executive/administrator/manager .  Lets call this person your director.  Your director works for you.  You do not work for your director.  Your should see to it that your director executes the board’s policies morally, legally, and efficiently.

You are not there to be a rubber stamp for your director.  Not all ideas are good ideas.  You should question each and every action that comes before you as a board.  Unfortunately we see many cases in El Paso where agency staff flat out lies to their board.  Read your agendas.  Ask questions.  Reach out to people who know about the issue that are not involved with the agency.

Stop the favoritism.  If you were once a board member do not later take a job with the agency.  Do not hire your director and then let your director hire you.

Do not take money from your agency.  If they need something and you can give them an advantageous deal, give it to them for free.  If it looks bad you should avoid it.

If you must travel for your entity, pay for it yourself.  If you cannot afford it, don’t go.  Junkets look bad.

Don’t take a board position to advance your resume.  Be active, work for us!

Stay tuned in the coming days as we write about some examples of poor behavior on the part of boards and their directors/staffs.

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | City government, County Government, Federal Government, Open Government, Purchasing, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

A question about primary school education

June 5, 2016

I’ve had a few conversations with elementary school teachers in the last week where we discussed what our kids are learning.

Today’s students are taught about things earlier than we were.  An example is that algebraic principles are being taught in elementary schools whereas many of us did not learn them before high school.

The teachers shared with me their concern that while their students were ahead of us in many areas they notice a common failure to be able to perform subtraction.

Are we skipping basics by loading up their plates with too much too soon?

Brutus

3 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Children’s hospital

June 4, 2016

Watching a video of a meeting of our county hospital board, I heard a presentation from the head of El Paso First.

He told the group that he was in the process of visiting local and out of town hospitals to see what services they can provide to his members.

At one point he spoke of visiting out of town children’s hospitals to find places that perform services that are “still not” available in El Paso.

This makes me wonder what services our local taxpayer supported children’s hospital performs and how those services were chosen.  In short, do we have the right mix of services to serve our community effectively?

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | County Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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