Not competitive

September 29, 2015

The city’s new bike share program doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Let’s say that someone worked in the main city hall building and they wanted to deliver one of their totally objective press releases to the Times so that the Times could publish it as though it was the product of investigative reporting.

The city worker could walk out of city hall and use the bike share depot that is located adjacent to city hall.  He/she would provide the machine with a credit card and would be charged $6 for 30 minutes of rental time.

Our worker could then pedal over to the Times building but would probably want to deposit the bike in another depot so that it would be locked up while visiting the Times.  The nearest depot which appears to be at the Union Plaza, only a couple of blocks away.  Locking up the bike is a good idea since the charge for not returning one is $1,350.

Alternative

Then again the worker could call Uber and get there for the same $6, without the walk or the risk of having to pay for a stolen bicycle.

We deserve better

Brutus

10 Comments | City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

What debt?

September 28, 2015

A helpful reader sent us a copy of our county hospital’s May 2015 financial report.

umcmay2015financialcoverpage

The report is fascinating in what it does not disclose.  Nowhere in their listing of assets does the report show the $100 million or so that they claim they are owed by the children’s hospital.  It also does not show the income that they say they are owed from the children’s hospital every month nor does it show any bad debt reserve or expense.

In other words their balance sheet and income statement make no mention of the children’s hospital.  If you did not know to look further you would not know that the situation even exists.  Convenient huh?

On a separate page they did publish this:

umcmay2015childrensreceivable

No muss no fuss

As of May 2015 we can see that they have written off the entire $102,306,000.  That means that they do not expect to see any of the money and that the taxpayers have already eaten the bill.

Now we are hearing talk about the children’s hospital trying to find a strategic partner but having trouble because of their debt.

It seems that this is just another ruse.  If the county wanted to they could forgive the debt and the taxpayers would be no worse off.  That might allow some outside organization to start fresh and maybe keep the children’s hospital away from the county hospital and thus our tax bills.

We deserve better

Brutus

10 Comments | County Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Strange bid

September 27, 2015

I suspect that DavidK can help explain this situation to us.

The city council agenda for the Tuesday, September 29, 2015 meeting of council has an item on it that requests permission to reject all five bids that the city received for a quality of life construction project to be done at the zoo.

According to the backup material the item was looked at by 118 different people.  The city received 5 bids, all from local contractors.  Staff explains the rejections “due to not meeting the minimum requirements”.

The specifications were released August 4, 2015 and by September 29 the city is ready to reject the bids.  That seems like a short window to develop a bid but maybe it was fair.

Are the city’s requirements unreasonable?  Have we reached the point where no qualified contractors will bid on city business?

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Two ways out

September 26, 2015

One of our loyal readers has been encouraging us to write about this:

One of the stories that the people responsible for getting us into the mess with the children’s hospital are telling is that the government reimbursement rates changed after they did their planning.

Any and everyone in the hospital business should have seen this coming.  Hospital costs had been spiraling out of control for years and in the 2007 time frame the talk of the industry was about how much the hospitals were going to be cut.

Even more damning is the fact that the government is in the habit of telling us about their proposed changes months in advance of making them.

Here are just a few examples of those notifications:

The Thursday, November 1, 2007 testimony of the director of CMS before congress.

An industry warning dated July 1, 2007:

Start preparing for October when reimbursement rules change

Another industry warning dated July 12, 2007:

Reimbursement Changes on the Horizon

Two choices

The people who did this to us can only have one of two possible responses.  They might say “We didn’t know” but they should have.  The might say “We chose not to tell you” which is probably closer to the truth.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

4 Comments | County Government, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Abuse of power

September 25, 2015

We had another example this week of people in our local government not knowing their proper place.

According to an article in the Times, our county commissioners voted to allow a company to perform land surveys on some county property.  The company evidently is considering building some sort of pipeline.

This post is not about the whether we should have the pipeline or not.  We have almost no information about their plans.

What this post is about is how the commissioners used their power to deny someone what they have the legal right to do, just because the commissioners thought they could.

The current county judge was quoted this way in the article:

“If we had continued to deny them that right, then they could have taken us to court, we would have spent money fighting it and we were guaranteed to lose because they have that right,” County Judge Veronica Escobar said.

She said that the Commissioners Court’s decision earlier this month to deny the company entry to survey county land was an attempt to try to buy some time to convince the company to host a town hall type of meeting.

Abuse of power

She acknowledged that the company has the legal right to perform the surveys.  She acknowledged that the commissioners denied the company that right earlier this month.  She acknowledged that they denied the company the right to perform the surveys because they wanted the company to do something.

They (commissioners) had no right to deny the request.  They gave in when confronted with a legal battle that the current county judge confessed the county would lose.  That battle would have been paid for by the taxpayers.

Have we reached the point where people in office have forgotten that they are public servants?  That means they must serve the public, not occasionally but every time they act officially.

What we are seeing is elected officials using their power to get what they want, even if their actions are illegal.

Different rules for the elected?

This quote highlighted the double standard that we are seeing:

“The right thing in our view was for them to be good corporate citizens and participate in a true public meeting, a public meeting where every member of the community is able to listen to the same information and to listen to all the questions and responses to their questions,” Escobar said.

None of us have time to recount the numerous instances where she and her colleagues have not given us the benefit of the process she tried to demand from the company.

Both the city and the county are increasingly bullying whoever they want.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | City government, County Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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