Foxes in the Henhouse

December 7, 2012

Let me start by saying that I am glad that the Texas Education Agency (TEA) has done something about the El Paso Independent School District Board.

Also let me skip over my feelings that the El Paso Times is right in pointing out that much of what has gone wrong there should have been addressed by the TEA a long time ago.

So now we come down to my concern.  Who did the TEA go to for suggestions about the members of the newly announced board of managers?  Why have they appointed members from other governments?  Why did they not get executives from the business community to serve?  What back room did this happen in?

Have they ever heard of conflict of interest?

Let’s look at who the TEA has put on the new board of managers:

  • The paid TEA designated school district monitor.  She should not be both the district monitor and a member of the board of managers.  Those are two different jobs.  Anyone that has run a decent sized organization can see that this just will not work.  She might be qualified for one position or the other, but not both at the same time.
  • A City of El Paso employee that controls water in the city.  My personal opinion is that he has done a great job managing our water resources.  He is also known in the community as being heavy-handed and one who sees to it that he gets his way regardless of the effect on others.  The fact that he has publicly stated that he saw no problem with a member of his controlling board selling expensive equipment to his government owned utility without a competitive bid shows us how he will be thinking.  Don’t expect openness and transparency from this guy.
  • A politician who just lost his re-election campaign as a state representative.  Rumor has it that he is thinking about running for Mayor of El Paso.  Would this position help him?  I can think of a former state senator who is temperamentally more of a fit here, if we have to have politicians involved.
  • Another City of El Paso employee that is the city’s Chief Financial Officer.  She also is the Chief Administrator for the El Paso County Judge.  Now she will be on the non-elected board of managers of this school district.  Will the City Manager and the County Judge now have a vote at the school district?  How does she vote when an issue  between the school district and the city comes up?  How about between the school district and the county?  Talk about a conflict!  She is in charge of purchasing at the City of El Paso.  That alone should say enough about the quality of her work.  She told us that moving city hall would cost us $33 million dollars.  We are at $63.9 million and climbing.  She apparently does not have time to do her city job right, much less work with the county, and now the school district.
  • There is one last position to fill.  Evidently the TEA is asking another politician, our state senator, for a list of recommendations.  How about someone that has run a large organization?  How about someone that can represent the voters instead of other governments?

The influence of the City of El Paso on this board is troubling on many levels.  Think about it.  I suspect that the El Paso Times  will now have a whole new set of travesties to write about.

A temporary managing board for the school district makes sense to me if the members are qualified and free from conflicts of interest.

I thought our school district is supposed to be INDEPENDENT.

We deserve better!

Our children deserve better!

6 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times, State Government | Permalink
Posted by jcurrey

Grading their Agendas

December 6, 2012

To my knowledge the laws controlling government agendas in Texas are pretty specific about when and where they must be published, but do not address much about the content of agendas.  The only local  exception to this that I am aware of is the City of El Paso ordinance number 16806 that is quite specific about the backup material that must be provided when an item is placed on the agenda.

I thought it would be interesting to see how much information our local government agendas give us citizens and to assign a grade to them.

Many of the agendas tell us that there will be discussion and action on various topics but fail to give us any of the backup documents that the voting group gets to see.  Most of the items on agendas are put there by the paid staff.  Generally they want their governing board to approve a recommendation.  That means that back up materials (bid analyses, proposed contracts …) are given to each of the voting members before the discussion.

The public generally does not get to see the backup materials before the vote, even though it should.  If the XYZ school district administrators want their board to approve a policy to paint all second graders green, the item would typically be placed on the agenda as “Consider and take possible action relative to certain students”.  If as a citizen you think that painting all second graders green is not a good idea, you have no way of knowing what they are considering until after they have already done it.  So much for public input.

I did a brief review of some of our local government agendas available on the web to see what I would find.  I only looked at one agenda each, so the one I looked at might be an exception.  Maybe I should consider this grade like a 6 weeks grade, not the final score.

The grades are my opinion:

  • F    Anthony Independent School District.  This agenda is a model for brevity and obscurity.  While they appear to be using the same software that the Canutillo district uses, they do not provide any backup information even though they could.
  • A    Canutillo Independent School District.  The agenda tells us what they will consider and includes a link to an “Agenda Packet” that seems to give us the information that the board is to look at.
  • D    City of El Paso Texas.  Their agenda includes backup information for most items and in all fairness when compared to the other entities in this list it is the best.  The problem is that they are violating a very specific ordinance that requires them to post more information than they are.
  • B-   El Paso County.  It looks as though they have a policy of presenting backup material on the web site, but they appear to be conveniently inconsistent.  A previously postponed mandatory presentation from the CEO of the El Paso County Hospital District (University Medical Center) included backup material that was simply a four point listing  (Strategic Plan, Leadership Development, Operations Improvement, Financial Update) of what was to be presented.  There were no details.
  • D    El Paso County Community College District.  The agenda gives us a pretty complete idea of what action is being considered (including names and dollar amounts) but none of the analysis or competitive data that the staff used to make their recommendation.
  • F    El Paso County Hospital District (aka University Medical Center).  Horrible.  First it is hard to find the agendas.  Once you do find them it appears that they only post agendas for meetings yet to be held.  I could not find past agendas.  There are no backup materials.  The agenda wording is very vague.
  • F    Socorro Independent School District.  The agenda tells us very little.  Among other items they consider awarding competitive contracts without telling us who they suggest should win the award.  How can a competitor tell his side of the story when he does not know what he is up against?
  • D    Ysleta Independent School District.  The agenda gives us a pretty complete idea of what action is being considered (including names and dollar amounts) but none of the analysis or competitive data that the staff used to make their recommendation.

The only web site that I could find that to allows us citizens to do key word searches is the one for the City of El Paso.  They all should.

We should each contact our elected representatives at these organizations and tell them that we want to see everything that they see when considering agenda items except for those things that are properly handled in executive session.

We deserve better.

Leave a Comment » | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District, Open Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by jcurrey

Hey, El Paso Times! What’s up?

December 5, 2012

What was that all about?

The headline of Monday’s (December 3, 2012) El Paso Times occupied over 34 square inches of newsprint.  It was a headline, a statement, an explanation, and an oversized picture of someone who was to start his federal criminal trial that day.

The long article ran down the full column of the front page and continued for almost half of another page.

I don’t ever remember seeing the Times give this kind of treatment to a defendant in our local corruption cases on the day of his trial.  My memory may be faulty.

The article said some nice things about him and also brought up some issues that don’t look so good.  I came away from reading it thinking that the article was pretty balanced.

My question is why?  I would think that the court would not want the jurors to be influenced.  Maybe they weren’t.

I question the timing of the article and the emphasis given to it.

Maybe someone will be kind enough to enlighten me.

Leave a Comment » | County Government, El Paso Times, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by jcurrey

Chucoleaks.org

December 4, 2012

Our girl Stephanie won another round with the City Attornies; who knows how many we are paying to protect not us but our City Gov?  The Texas Attorney General ruled favorably for her request for texts and other communication between the Mayor , the Reps and the City Manager.  This should be interesting.  I’m sure we will find out again about how they feel about the electorate and  behind the scene machinations of the past few months.   

Keep it up Steph.

Word on the street is that the ex mayor in filing a few more suites to stop the implosion.  Keep it up, Ray.

You’ll see it first on Elp Speak.

Stay tuned

2 Comments | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by M.T. Cicero

Buddy can you spare a penny?

December 4, 2012

As part of the discussion about how to handle the financial mess we are in, I hereby throw my two cents in.

First in deference to Cato and his recent post I use the word “federal” in this post to mean the government of the United States.  I recognize his point that it is not “federal” but for the moment that is what people call it.

Cut federal  spending across the board by 1% per year.  I would hope that Congress could eliminate ridiculous programs to do this, but the reality is that between special interest groups and the sacred cows that our legislators are feeding, this becomes a political free for all.  Cut federal spending across the board–every department–by 1% per year.

Does anybody know of an organization that cannot cut 1% from it’s spending?  We can do this without diminishing the programs that are being funded.  Some believe that waste accounts for 8% of all government spending.  Some say more, some say less.  We should all be able to  agree that there is waste and fraud in government spending.  Let’s cut from there.

What about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment and all of the social programs?  Let’s cut from the waste and fraud, not from the programs themselves.

Some in government would say “but cutting the waste is hard”.  Baloney!  Get to work.  Do your job.  “Mr. President, I don’t know how to cut waste in my department”.  “You’re fired”.

With population growth that gives us a 2% spending shift–if our current spending was on a flat line–which we all know it is not.  The spending shift this would cause is greater.

With this kind of discipline  plus a 2% shift per year we would  gain confidence.  More people would be hired, retirement funds would prosper.  Homes would be built, cars would be bought.  Taxable income would increase.  More money would come into the treasury.  The economy would grow.

We could get ourselves out of this mess over a relatively short period of time.

Don’t touch anything else right now.  Yes we need to get the employee’s portion of the Social Security “contribution” (popularly known as the payroll tax) back to where it used to be.  Not now.  Maybe we need to do something about deductions and capital gains.  Not now.  Don’t get in the way.  Let the economy grow.  It wants to.  Growth is the easy way out of this mess.

Try this for a couple of years.  If it does not work, try something else.  In the mean-time Congress should learn how to play gin rummy or something less destructive to our futures.

There are similar plans to this being considered.  Let your U.S. Representative and Senators know what you think.

We are in a mess.

We deserve better!

2 Comments | Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by jcurrey

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