Hospital board will change

December 8, 2014

The El Paso County Hospital District board has come under fire for recent events.  There have been calls for the resignation of the board.

The current story is that they will be issuing a written reprimand to their hospital administrator.  Previously the hospital board was marching lock-step with their administrator.  Now they say they want to chastise him.  Enough!  This is self serving hypocrisy.  Blame your employee for what you previously praised.  Both the board and the administrator need correcting.

State law does not allow the county commissioners to fire any of the board members except for absence, lack of qualification (being related to the wrong people), or  “misconduct”, which is defined in terms of misuse of property.

Many people who have served on these local citizen  boards feel that their tenure was dependent upon the continued support of the entity that appointed them.  This current hospital board evidently does not subscribe to that belief.

Contrary to what the county hospital site says the hospital board members are appointed for three year terms, not two year terms.

Looking at the chart below, which came from the county web site, the commissioners will be able to appoint two new board members in a few months.  Then again the chart might not be correct, we are dealing with elected officials after all.

Board Member Name & Info: Appointed By: Appointed / Expires:
Tracy Yellen At Large Member Apr. 1, 2013 – Mar. 31, 2016
J. Steve DeGroat County Judge Apr. 1, 2014 – Mar. 31, 2017
Laura Ponce Commissioner Precinct 3 Apr. 1, 2012 – Mar. 31, 2015
Jim Volk At-Large-Member Apr. 1, 2014 – Mar. 31, 2017
William Hanson Commissioner Precinct 1 Apr. 1, 2013 – Mar. 31, 2015
Brother Nicolas Gonzalez Commissioner Precinct 4 Apr. 1, 2013 – Mar. 31, 2016
Monica Salaiz-Nevarez Commissioner Precinct 2 Apr. 1, 2013 – Mar. 31, 2016

While the commissioners might not be able to force the departure of any of the members, we should expect to see some of the members pay more attention and do a better job.

If nothing else it is time for the hospital board members to meet with the commissioner that appointed them.  These board members are our neighbors and they do not want the opprobrium associated with this situation.

In the meantime, the county commissioners do have control over the hospital district’s budget and, believe it or not, the hospital’s purchasing.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

6 Comments | County Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Facilitating a lie?

December 7, 2014

Could the Times have helped their readers if they had handled their January story about Helen of Troy differently?

In January of this year we learned of the sudden departure of Helen of Troy’s founder and CEO.  The Times wrote an article (you can retrieve it from the Times web site but it will cost you $2.95) about the situation and told us that it was part of a management succession plan.

The CEO left his position in the middle of a month.  That did not sound like an orderly plan so we posted The rest of the story.

Now the Times tells us that the former CEO is suing the company.  The lawsuit claims that he was forced out in order to protect the board of directors and their “lucrative” compensation.

The company is now having trouble growing under the new management.

Helen of Troy is a publicly owned company.  The shareholders have a right to the truth about what happens at the company.  The company’s public statements at the time of the departure were misleading and probably caused some shareholders to take decisions about keeping their stock that they might not have made if the truth had been made known.

I suspect that someone may get in trouble now with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Wrong message

December 6, 2014

Our loyal reader Reality Checker commented about this the other day.  I thought that it deserved more visibility.

Our police chief has been doing a good job in my opinion.

I hope that he steps in and changes the new color scheme that the department plans to use with their new patrol cars.

Changing from a blue and white to a black and white design is not what concerns me.

It is the change of their “tag line” or “motto” that is bothersome.

Our cars now  have “To Protect and Serve” painted on them.  It seems to me that this might help remind the officers what their job is and what their relationship to the citizens is.

The new cars have dropped the old tag line and now will say “El Paso’s Finest”.  Most of our police officers are good, but are they our finest?

Recently we have seen situations around the country where police might have or should have acted differently.  I would hope that policemen around the country are considering what has been happening and are evaluating what they might do to help avoid results like we have seen lately.

“To Protect and Serve” seems like a good reminder that can help our police do their jobs well.

We deserve better

Brutus

11 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Fixing nature

December 5, 2014

Our Public Service Board has ended up with the responsibility for the storm water system in El Paso.

City council transferred the responsibility to them so that a fee could be added to our water bills and council would not have to face the voters after having raised property taxes to pay for drainage improvements.

The people that I have spoken with tell me that the PSB would rather not have this responsibility.  The public is not happy with either the money they are being charged or the condition of the system.  Some say that city council made the transfer because they knew that the public would become unhappy with the PSB and that council could use the unhappiness to take direct control over our water utilities and the land that they own and manage.  If council had direct control over the issue council would be able to sell the land and make the developers happy.  As a group the developers are some of the biggest campaign contributors that council has.

Fixing nature

Now the PSB is indicating that they will have to raise fees so that they can finance $540 million in bonds to fix the drainage problems.  Our final bill will be much higher after including interest payments.

One of our regular readers categorized the spending as a waste the other day.  He is right.  Rain falling on our mountains creates large amounts of water that our facilities cannot adequately handle.  It has been that way since the beginning of time.

Why spend that kind of money as a partial fix to a problem that only happens once or twice a year?

There is a problem with water building up on I-10.  If for some reason we cannot live with that then there are more economical ways to fix the problem than building a multi-million dollar pumping facility that would only be used occasionally.  Past experience with our local utilities leads me to believe that since the pumps would only be used occasionally they probably will not function when we need them.

Could we put “French drains” in the problem areas of the freeway and divert the water under the freeway and let it flow out the south side?  Yes there would be water on the south side of the freeway.  It would be the very same water that used to flow there before the freeway was built or any drainage pumps were installed.

Some are saying that the $540 million number is just a guess.   We simply do not need to spend the money.  Nature will find a way to overload anything that we install.

We deserve better

Brutus

9 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

A lie is a lie

December 4, 2014

Recently an email was released by one of our county commissioners that has been the subject of discussion locally.  Our county hospital administrator had written that  “There were no bonuses paid in 2014 and we expect no bonuses through this year”.

The hospital administrator did not use any adjectives to specify the type of year he was referring to.  He did not write of a “light year”, or an “academic year”, or of a “fiscal year”.  Absent the adjective we would read his words to mean the period starting January 1 and ending December 31.

If on Tuesday I say to you that I will not leave town until next week and then I leave on the very next day or Wednesday, you have every right to feel lied to.  Just because I chose to play with words and start my week on Wednesday does not mean that I told the truth.

Unfortunately we have too many public officials that play word games with us instead of telling the truth.

In fact the problem is so widespread that on January 5, 2010 our feral congress passed H.R. 946, the Plain Writing Act of 2010.  Unfortunately the act does not apply here unless you want to go down the path of either the “commerce clause” or some other theory that would make it applicable here.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

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