No answers from the Doctor

July 18, 2014

Well I was wrong again.

In Thank you Dr. Noe! I closed with “This is better”.

It was not.

After posting this item “Discussion of recent contract changes that were completed prior to the departure of former City Manager Joyce Wilson” on the Thursday before this week’s city council meeting, the doctor publicly told us that he wanted to withdraw the item.  He indicated that after discussing the issue with various city officials he had the answers he wanted.

What about us?

After meeting in executive session for a rather lengthy session council came back into open session and announced that the agenda item would be deleted and that the city would be furnishing a copy of the amended contract relating to  the deputy city manager that has been sent home but that will still be paid through next year.

His original agenda item included other contracts that were changed in the last days and hours of our former city manager.

Nothing is being said about those contracts if there were any.

We don’t know.

But why would the agenda item have been deleted and one contract change produced with no comment about other changes?

What would the harm have been in continuing with the agenda item?  Some personnel actions are not subject to public disclosure but all contracts are.  Were contracts with vendors modified at the last minute?  If no other contracts were modified we could have learned that in open session.

Instead the city published a single contract and we are left to wonder if there were others.

We deserve better

Brutus

10 Comments | City government, Open Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Secret deals

July 17, 2014

We learned from El Paso, Inc. the other day that our city’s chief financial officer has been in masquerade since September of 2012.

Evidently our former city manager promoted the chief financial officer to the position of deputy city manager back then.

She chose to keep her lesser title.

Why?

Her behavior on this issue is inconsistent with her past penchant for publicity.  The Times has written several highly favorable articles about her star rising.  We frequently see her smiling face in a photograph while wearing the same basically black color scheme.  Hiding her candle under a bushel is not one of her attributes.

Then why have both she and the city kept her promotion secret?  Could it be that back in September of 2012 us “crazies” were reeling from the staggeringly wrong estimates that she gave us on the ball park, the city hall move, and revenue projections?  Could it be that we would have objected if we had known?

Was this part of a payoff to get her to continue to publish misleading financial projections?

Deceitful

Don’t we have the right to know the true position and rank of our public officials?  What does this say about our former city manager and her?  What other deals have been made that are being kept secret?

Can we believe anything that they have said?

We deserve better

Brutus

7 Comments | City government, El Paso Inc., El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

New weekly in town

July 16, 2014

Reality Checker had the same reaction as I did  when he read the Sunday, July 13, 2014 electronic edition of The El Paso Times.

The publication had one political analysis piece about “White House drug policy” (as if a building can formulate a policy), an article about another unfortunate who was run over by a train, two local interest stories (one about a sandwich shop closing, the other about a pastor trying to raise money), and an article that talked about the use of “bato” and “vato” in Spanish.

There were four sports articles on the front page, with an article about the San Diego chicken being the headline article.

El Paso is the 19th largest city in the United States yet our daily newspaper could not find it in itself provide one in-depth news report about El Paso.  They did not even choose to reprint an article about world news from a news wire.

Weakly or weekly

Maybe they could accumulate the occasional reports that they publish for a week at a time and then publish them all in a single edition.  El Paso already has a weekly publication that many of us enjoy reading.  If the Times did some objective investigative reporting and started to proofread what they publish I might subscribe.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

7 Comments | El Paso Inc., El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Payday loans for the county hospital

July 15, 2014

Our El Paso county hospital wants to be known as University Medical Center of El Paso.  They seem to have forgotten that their purpose is to provide medical care at taxpayer expense to citizens in the county that cannot afford medical care elsewhere.

A few years ago the county hospital chief executive officer was among the leaders of a movement to get the voters to go into debt to build a children’s hospital.  They convinced the voters that this was a good plan.  Instead of starting with a modest facility and then growing it in size and scope if they could make the project financially viable, they built a wonderful multi-story facility that cannot pay it’s bills.

There is a great deal of confusion among the voters about who should pay for what.  The county hospital financial statements claim that the county hospital makes over $9 million dollars profit each year at the expense of the children’s hospital.  That might be true if the children’s hospital could pay it’s bills.  The county hospital charges the children’s hospital for rent even when the voters paid for the new hospital through bonds.

My understanding is that while the children’s hospital has a separate hospital license it is owned by the county hospital.  Some people think that the current political situation is part of a plan for the county hospital chief executive to take control of the children’s hospital.  Together or separate it appears that neither one makes a profit and the taxpayers have to foot the bill.

Getting worse

The situation is going to get worse.  Recently Texas Tech University announced plans to build a new teaching hospital on the west side of El Paso.  They did not ask the county hospital people to run the new hospital for them.  In fact they asked a publically owned hospital company to operate the hospital for them.  This is the same group that openly opposed the creation of the new taxpayer funded children’s hospital saying that they already had such a facility in El Paso and that there was not sufficient demand for another, especially a big one.

We now have an open split between Texas Tech which has been operating out of the county hospital and our county hospital district.  Look for more activity to move to the teaching hospital and away from the county hospital.

It seems that our county hospital chief executive is not getting along well with others.  This is costing us money.

Now the situation has reached the point where the county hospital district wants permission to borrow $60 million through tax anticipation notes.  In other words they want to borrow money on future tax revenue.  In the private sector they call this a “payday loan”.

Payday loans are expensive.  We should stay away from them.

We need management at the hospital district that does not drive us further to the poor house.

What should we do?

We deserve better

Brutus

24 Comments | County Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Stating the obvious

July 14, 2014

James commented the other day about an agenda item on the Tuesday, July 15, 2014 city council agenda.

Our airport manager wants permission to sign a contract for over $292 thousand for advertising services without bidding it.

The backup material claims that the advertising services are exempt from bidding requirements under section 252.022(a)(16) of the Texas Local Government Code.

The proposed contract is for “the development of an advertising campaign to attract public attention to El Paso International Airport as a gateway for the City of El Paso.  The Scope of Work includes video production services to provide principal video, post production services and delivery of one finished 30 second television spot and one finished long-form video not to exceed 90 seconds in duration”.

You decide

Texas local government code section 252.022(a) says:

This chapter does not apply [to] … (16) advertising, other than legal notices.

So what is advertising?  Most of us would think that the work described here  is preparation of material to be used in advertising — advertising is the process of publication and making visible the material that will be created here.

However, Merriam-Webster gives the following as it’s third definition of the word:  the business of preparing advertisements  for publication or broadcast.

Section 252.022 was modified by our legislature in 2007 to exclude advertising from competitive bidding requirements.  Before that advertising had to be handled competitively.

Not final

City council can still subject this contract to a competitive process if it wants to.  The state law simply allows council to avoid competition here, it does not require them to.

What for?

Our intrepid Reality Checker commented on this blog that most people already realize that our airport is a “gateway to El Paso”.  I certainly hope that our city does not decide to spend money to inform people that interstate 10 is a gateway also.

Hopefully city council will examine the need for spending this money.  Will one 30 second video really cause more people to use our airport?

We deserve better

Brutus

 

 

9 Comments | City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »