elpasospeak

Should it all be over but the shouting at this point?

One of our county commissioners released an email that our county hospital chief executive sent to him this August 15, 2014.  The email said “There were no bonuses paid in 2014 and we expect no bonuses through this year”.

Then in the early part of November the hospital board awarded the CEO a bonus of almost $120 thousand.  It looks like the county commissioner learned about the bonus through the public’s reaction to the situation.

Did our CEO forget his statement to the county commissioner?  Why did he not clear the record immediately when he decided to receive the bonus?

Was he lying or did he forget?  Could it be that he feels no responsibility to the county commissioners?  The CEO works for the hospital board.  The board is appointed by the commissioners.

To me this is worse than lying to your boss.  This is lying to your boss’s boss, and in effect to the public.

We have seen a disturbing pattern of duplicity from this CEO over the years.  He seems to think that he can tell stories to the public and then do as he wishes.

At this point it is hard to believe what he says.  We need to have confidence in the truthfulness of the people running our public institutions.

We are told that he will soon be announcing a change in plans relative to the children’s hospital.  What part of that can we believe?

We deserve better

Brutus

Our county judge was quoted the other day in a Times article about the bonuses the county hospital gave some employees.

Note that some employees evidently got bonuses.  The regular rank and file workers probably did not.  It must have been the special people that did.  I’ll bet the 56 people who got fired did not.

The Times article told us that the county hospital has not disclosed a list of who received a bonus and how much money they received even though the Times has filed a request for the information.  The hospital says that it takes time to compile such complicated data but that they will provide the information in a few days.

Our county judge commented about the lack of transparency over at the county hospital.  She pointed out that her bunch has absolute transparency.  In fact mere members of the public can have access to the financial dealings of the county simply by accessing the county web site.  From the article:

Every check the county writes, salary information and other data are available on the county’s website, she said.

University Medical Center should follow that lead, she said.

“UMC is a public entity and it’s funded by the taxpayers,” Escobar said. “There is no way to build public trust except through transparency.”

I did not remember seeing anything like that on the county web site from my previous visits.  Sure enough there is now a section on their home page captioned “Transparency in Government” that has these links:

– Adopted Budget
– Financial Reports
– Deposits and Disbursements Register
– Raw Format Budget
– Fraud, Waste and Abuse Policy
– Capital Improvement Plan

I decided to look into the paychecks of county employees.  The deposits and disbursements register does not seem to have individual paychecks on it.  Instead, we can see an entry like this one every few months:

            10/03/13 EPCO-PAYROLL FUND  CFS      100413        4,690,015.52   101

Really clear, huh?

Help yourself, try the links above.  The first one ultimately takes you to four different budget books that each have ten to twenty links–all of which you would need to review to see the whole budget.

As far as salary and bonuses go, I have no idea where to find that information.

Our county judge either has never taken the time to review her transparency efforts or she is not telling the truth.

I suppose it is too much to expect the Times reporters to do some fact checking instead of just printing what their benefactors tell them to.

We deserve better

Brutus

The board of managers of our county hospital has some explaining to do.

They recently gave a six digit bonus to their chief executive officer.

The county hospital experienced some significant events last year.  The readers should be able to remember more but these are the ones I can recall:

• They had to lay off more than 50 employees because of financial difficulties
• They reported that the children’s hospital deal that the county hospital CEO heavily promoted has left the hospital holding the bag on 71 million dollars worth of debt
• They had to take a payday loan, borrowing against next year’s property taxes to make it through the year
• Our county commissioners gave the hospital authority to issue 151 million dollars of bonds
  • to remodel floors of the hospital that have not been maintained even though we are told that the hospital operates at a profit
  • to build new outpatient clinics, but then just a few weeks later the CEO said that the money will have to be repurposed, whatever that means
• They had to pay 1.1 million dollars to a woman that was subjected to outrageous treatment just because a federal employee told the doctors and hospital to do it.  From The Texas Tribune:  Aside from the vaginal probe and CT scan, the woman also underwent a forced observed bowel movement, a rectal exam and an X-ray. She was eventually released six hours later then billed $5,000 because she refused to sign a consent-to-search statement.

They gave him a bonus?  In many companies he would have been fired before they even got to this bonus evaluation.

Now one of county commissioners has called for his board member’s resignation.  At least someone has his priorities straight.

This board is appointed by our county commissioners.  We need some changes.

We deserve better

Brutus