Texas Watchdog

All aboard Austin’s Taxpayer Express. Unlimited seating available.

Wed Feb 8 15:22:00 2012 CST

Austin, where money is no object except for grocery shoppers and taxpayers, is offering weekend rides on its MetroRail train for just $2.2 million a year, according to a story today by the Austin American-Statesman.

For city residents used to this sort of thing and choo-choo aficionados no further explanation is necessary.

For the rest of you, climb aboard our zephyr, the Logic Is Limited, for a luxury excursion to the inscrutable nether reaches of rail transit.

Passing us in the window to your left is the MetroRail, finally up and running two years late and at $1.3 billion, twice the original estimated cost. You don’t see many passengers, as the Statesman has occasionally reported.

No, those sometimes empty cars on the 16.5-mile weekday run don’t come close to breaking even. Disappointing for what was sold to taxpayers as a commuter rail, but for transit advocates, beside the point.

But up ahead, ladies and gentlemen, are hourly runs in both directions Friday night and Saturday through midnight for MetroRail. Weekend test runs last March found the 108-seat trains full.

Full trains are money losers, too, just not as much. So the more runs you make the more you lose, only less than the money you lose on every run during the week. And if the losses are big enough they might justify asking taxpayers to buy more trains for the weekends.

As we pull into the station, let me assure you none of these are concerns of the Logic Is Limited.

Our rail service is founded on sound transit principles and a generous stimulus grant from funds sent back to Washington, D.C. by the states of Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Please be careful stepping off.

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo of train by flickr user Sunfrog1, used via a Creative Commons license.

Texas health officials deny records request on foodborne illness

Wed Feb 8 10:31:00 2012 CST

The Food Safety News was denied records by the state of Texas to find out exactly which restaurant was linked to a national salmonella outbreak last fall, but other states complied, pointing to Taco Bell as the culprit.

In federal documents, Taco Bell was referred to only as “restaurant Chain A.”

Michigan, known for its poor ranking with regard to public records policies, this week became the second state to comply with the request from the trade magazine. Oklahoma turned over its records last week. Food Safety News reporter James Andrews filed his requests on Jan. 19 with the “Center for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration and the 10 state health departments involved in the outbreak, asking health officials for the name of the fast food chain and the locations of the three restaurants where more than one victim ate.”

Nebraska denied access with a letter.

Texas had the most reported illnesses with 43 and simply denied the request.

Andrews said he called the press office at the Texas Department of State Health Services, which bounced him from person to person until finally telling him no.

He also received an email from the department citing a prior ruling by the attorney general. The AG had found that certain public health records related to "cases or suspected cases of diseases or health conditions" are not subject to release under the Texas Public Information Act. The AG in 2010 had given the agency permission to withhold such records in the future without seeking new rulings.

In an email, Andrews said he was told by the state health department that “they were not able to provide the name of the restaurant because they saw that as the responsibility of the CDC and FDA and those agencies had chosen to withhold the information.”

The Food Safety News is run by the Seattle-based law firm Marler Clark, which specializes in plaintiff’s suits in food sickness cases. Taco Bell did not respond to an interview request from the publication.

CORRECTION: This story was updated at 4:17 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 8, to reflect that the Texas Department of State Health Services had sent correspondence to Food Safety News regarding the denial of the public records request.

***
Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feeds in your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.

Photo of petri dish by flickr user News21-usa, used via a Creative Commons license.

Like this story? Then steal it. This report by Texas Watchdog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. That means bloggers, citizen-journalists, and journalists may republish the story on their sites with attribution and a link to Texas Watchdog. If you do re-use the story, e-mail news@texaswatchdog.org.

Dallas Police Department website still down after hacking incident, officers' usernames and passwords published

Wed Feb 8 09:45:00 2012 CST

Dallas’ finest have been knocked offline by that most sinister of all criminals. No, not a crazed violent felon or a serial predator.

A computer hacker.

Over the weekend, according to the Dallas Police Department, the agency noticed late Sunday that the names and passwords of several Dallas PD employees had been posted online.

Today is Wednesday, but a visit to the department’s Web site goes nowhere, as in, ‘unavailable at this time.’

Deputy Chief Randy Blankenbaker downplayed the troublesome mischief to NBC 5 in Dallas-Fort Worth: “It was a small number of employees and, at this point, there is no indication anybody saw the information. We have some folks that keep an eye on things that are open-sourced, like Facebook and Twitter, and do searches to see things being discussed about the Dallas Police Department.”

The damage must have been fairly extensive, since the site shows no signs of coming back.

News reports have connected the incident to a hacking group calling itself Anonymous, which last week hacked the site of the Texas Police Association's website and published the names and home addresses of 700 Texas police officers.

That site is now back up.

But Anonymous has been much heavier than the small stuff; the group has also hacked FBI phone calls. It also vowed to take down Facebook at one point.

***
Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feeds in your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.

Photo of PC guts by flickr user animakitty, used via a Creative Commons license.

Rep. Kay Granger’s $52 million for Trinity River makes list of Congressional ‘earmarks’ for projects near members’ property

Tue Feb 7 15:31:00 2012 CST

Rep. Kay Granger’s tireless work in Washington has delivered nearly 52 million dollars to downtown Fort Worth redevelopment. Taxpayers can rest easy knowing she has put that money in the hands of her son, JD.

Granger, R-Fort Worth, didn’t top the Washington Post’s list of 49 members of Congress who managed to bring more than $300 million in federal money to places close enough to benefit them or someone close to them.

That would be Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., whose $124 million in what the Beltway crowd quaintly calls earmarks has spiffed up downtown Tuscaloosa where Shelby just happens to own an office building.

Granger had to settle for second, edging out California Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who believed Americans were anxious to part with $50 million to provide light rail for Union Square and Chinatown in San Francisco.

The Post examined the greasy dives into the pork barrel by all 535 members of Congress and found 33 who helped direct spending to projects within about two miles of where they live or own property.

Another 16 lawmakers slung suet-smeared slabs at programs, businesses and colleges where relatives might reasonably be seen to benefit.

And although the practice is sometimes looked down upon by the public (hence all the allusions to pigs, their ears and waistlines), as Texas Watchdog has pointed out, the story reminds us this wallow is altogether legal. The Senate earlier this month voted 59-40 against an amendment outlawing earmarks.

While the amounts of money and the projects varied, there was a single unwavering reply to questions by the Post to the pork mongers: In no way was personal benefit a consideration before my fatty, two-fisted barrel grab.

Granger has taken full advantage of her legal right. In 2010 she delivered to her district $70.4 million in 35 different installments, 29th among everyone in the House, according to the government accountability non-profit Open Secrets.

Over the past 10 years Granger has made sure all American taxpayers got a stake in the revival of downtown Fort Worth. The project includes rerouting the Trinity River for those taxpayers in Maine who might not have known the river needed rerouting.

The executive director of the Trinity River Vision Authority is JD Granger. Until 2010, mother and son owned a condominium a half a mile south of the project, the story says.

Texas put four others on the list, piglet snatchers compared to Granger.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, who has lobbied for light rail earmarks, helped secure $5.25 million to the University of Houston in 2009 and 2010. At the time her husband, Elwyn Lee, was vice president of student affairs.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, managed to get $2.98 million to widen three miles of bypass for U.S. Highway 287, the dust of which probably stuck to the windows of two nearby homes Barton owns.

Just up the road from Republican Rep. Lamar Smith’s San Antonio home are three road improvements paid for with $950,000 Smith earmarked in 2009 for the Fort Sam Houston military base.

That same year Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, D-Mercedes, brought home $665,000 to help widen a road for the development of a commercial property near the family’s food processing plant. Hinojosa is a partner in the commercial development.

El Paso Times digs into questionable moonlighting by UTEP professor, schools corruption

Tue Feb 7 12:08:00 2012 CST

We relayed to you yesterday the stellar reporting of the El Paso Times on political donations from a felon to some high-ranking state figures.

And that’s one example of some strong work the Times has been doing.

The paper also reported on the extra-curricular income of S. Fernando Rodriguez, head of the Criminal Justice Program at the University of Texas-El Paso.

Rodriguez, who was placed on leave following the Times’ story, earned nearly $1 million in fees for his outside work, for which he is required to get permission from the university.

Especially when some of that money is linked to an operation whose chief is under federal indictment for defrauding a program to aid children suffering from severe mental illness and their families.

Add to that some of the work the Times has done on corruption in the El Paso ISD, and you’ve got a newspaper doing things the old-fashioned way: reporting news. A rather antiquated notion, but we appreciate the Times for keeping it real.

***

Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

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Photo of magnifying glass and money by flickr user Images_of_Money, used via a Creative Commons license.

Cornyn, Dewhurst, Reyes make charitable gifts of (some) campaign cash from convicted felon; Perry still has $80K from El Paso businessman Bob Jones

Mon Feb 6 11:39:00 2012 CST

It is Texas Watchdog’s privilege to extend a laurel and hearty handshake to the El Paso Times for dogging state politicians given more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from convicted felon Bob Jones.

The newspaper two months ago extracted promises from U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst to give their Jones donations, catalogued here by Texas Watchdog, to charity.

A federal judge last February sentenced Jones to 10 years in federal prison and ordered him to pay $68 million in restitution for embezzling millions of dollars from government programs while he headed the National Center for Employment of the Disabled.

Perry, the primary beneficiary of Jones’ generosity, raking in $80,000 between 2002 and 2005, has not yet given away the tainted campaign money, the Times is reporting today. A Perry spokesman, however, says the checks are in the mail. Almost.

Dewhurst has shed $10,000 of the $22,500 he received, and a spokesman said the rest would be handed out by the end of the month.

Cornyn has so far donated $5,100 of about $12,000. Reyes gave $3,500 of a total of $18,500 to the U.S. Department of Treasury. His staff says he is in the process of purging his campaign accounts of all Jones and Jones family donations.

All of Jones’ contributions were made before his indictment in 2008 on 37 counts of public corruption. Texas law does not require elected officials to return donations from people later convicted of crimes.

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feeds in your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.

Follow Texas Health Care Report on Twitter, and fan us on Facebook. Texas Health Care Report is a project of Texas Watchdog.

Photo of money by flickr user stephend9, used via a Creative Commons license.

Major change could come out of Houston ISD procurement audit

Mon Feb 6 08:59:00 2012 CST

If the response by Houston schools officials to past audits is any indication, district parents and residents could see major changes to the school system’s procurement practices during the next few months.

Two separate organizations – the Washington-based nonprofit Council of the Great City Schools and the Houston accounting firm, Null-Lairson – have both examined the way the school system does business.

The council released its report of the audit it conducted in October last month. Null-Lairson is scheduled to complete its audit and issue its findings to Houston Independent School District officials during the upcoming weeks, board members and administrators have said.

HISD revised policies and changed personnel in key positions after the Council of the Great City Schools’ 2010 audit of the district’s capital facilities program found, among other things:

Substantial financial errors

The program had been operating without annual budgets, standard contract forms or budget evaluations.

The program had no set timelines for the completion of projects and lacked standard guidelines as to how projects would be established, evaluated and completed.

The program had no tracking system of amendments to projects that enlarged their scope and price tag, and that district staff had “no understanding of the impact” of such changes on costs.

District improvements based on that 2010 review were significant, Issa Dadoush, HISD’s general manager for construction and facility services, told Texas Watchdog in a phone interview.

Among the most critical revisions in HISD procedures included:

Merging the previously separate construction department and facilities department. “Before, they were totally independent,” Dadoush said. “They were two silos and didn’t communicate with each other.”

Cultivating a pool of custodians similar to substitute teachers. “Back in 2010, it was not unusual to have 12 to 14 percent of our custodial staff absent,” Dadoush said. “We covered that with overtime, spending about $11 million annually. Since we created the (new system), we’ve saved HISD about $6 million.”

Re-establishing the district’s preventive-maintenance program. Now, Dadoush said, HISD is 27 percent more productive, acting on 139,000 work orders, as opposed to 110,000 prior to the council’s 2010 audit.

Starting an employee-evaluation process for contractors and consultants to hold them accountable. “The council’s 2010 report showed us that many employees didn’t receive evaluations,” Dadoush said. “Now, we articulate goals and objectives, and what are our performance measures, as well as the consequences for not meeting them.”

Hiring spot checkers to examine performance.

Becoming a “data-driven organization, where we analyze the cost-per-square-foot relative to others in our industry,” Dadoush said.

Though all those measures are good ones, Dadoush emphasized he and his colleagues aren’t finished yet.

“We’ve moved from a fair organization to a good organization,” he said. “We respond to about 95 percent of our work orders in a timely fashion. That means we still have thousands of work orders not responded to in a timely fashion. We want to get that number to 99 percent.

“We’re a work in progress,” Dadoush said. “We’re an open book.”

HISD officials paid about $22,000 for the 2010 council review, HISD spokesman Jason Spencer said.

District administrators are still waiting for the council’s bill for this year’s audit on HISD’s purchasing procedures, Spencer said.

The school board in October approved paying Null-Lairson up to $87,500 for the audit that firm is currently conducting.

The council’s October audit found that the ways HISD does business “lead to a perception of manipulation of and distrust in the procurement process.”

The report also concluded that “the majority of the district‘s purchasing... is awarded based on a number of weighted factors that are not always transparent or consistently applied.”

Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, told Texas Watchdog that HISD’s lack of transparency in its contract-awarding methods was the district’s most serious problem.

Spencer declined to answer questions of how the district would address the council’s findings, saying that would be “inappropriate” until the Null-Lairson conclusions are released.

***
Contact Mike Cronin at mike@texaswatchdog.org or 713-228-2850. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelccronin or @texaswatchdog.

Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us onTwitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feedsin your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.

Like this story? Then steal it. This report by Texas Watchdog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. That means bloggers, citizen-journalists, and journalists may republish the story on their sites with attribution and a link to Texas Watchdog. If you do re-use the story, e-mail news@texaswatchdog.org.

Texas Watchdog's Mike Cronin interviewed on News 92 about Houston ISD paying for two audits

Fri Feb 3 18:06:00 2012 CST

Texas Watchdog's Mike Cronin talked with radio newsman Scott Braddock this morning about his story regarding the Houston schools paying for two audits of its procurement practices.

Cronin was interviewed on News 92 FM about his report, which noted that the Houston school system now says the review by the nonprofit Council of the Great City Schools wasn't really an audit.

Listen here

Listen to the audio of the interview in the player below.

***

Contact Jennifer Peebles at 281-656-1681 or jennifer@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @jpeebles and @texaswatchdog.

Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us onTwitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feedsin your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.

Photo: Radio innovator Guglielmo Marconi at a desk with his equipment. Originally appeared in the March 1903 issue of The World's Work, now in the public domain and used here under a Creative Commons license via Wikipedia user Thomas H. White.

Fort Worth ISD trustee seeks closed meeting, says public forum to interview board applicants would 'jam up' process

Fri Feb 3 14:56:00 2012 CST

In Fort Worth, the school district has decided that rather than let voters decide who will fill a vacant trustee seat, the sitting board is better qualified.

The board claimed an election would be expensive, therefore it would do the selecting for the people. It will meet Feb. 21 to discuss who will join its ranks.

At least one board member, though, believes that the process should be closed to the public.

Fort Worth ISD Trustee Ann Sutherland feels that holding a public forum with the applicants would create a scenario where some could "jam up" the process.

"It's going to be huge and ugly if we do," Sutherland said, according to an article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Sutherland also wanted to keep the names of the applicants private, but the district’s counsel advised that would be illegal.

But the school district attorney, Bertha Whatley, believes the board can interview applicants and discuss its choice behind closed doors. Whatley said the Texas Open Meetings Act allows such, citing Texas Government Code Section 551.074.

Ann Sutherland

Today, the Star-Telegram weighs in with an op-ed on the situation, predictably – and reliably – coming down on the side of transparency.

Sutherland has been at times a foe of transparency. She was loud in her protest last fall of the public availability of e-mails sent by elected officials and public employees.

And an account last summer, also in the Star-Telegram, noted that Sutherland was texting with the representative of a potential vendor during a meeting on whether to hire the vendor to handle the district's collections from delinquent taxpayers. The representative's firm won the contract.

Of course Sutherland may have texted him in he past; he and his firm, Linebarger, Goggan, Blair & Sampson, had helped her campaign in the past.

And she’s not afraid to defend her stance.

***
Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feeds in your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.

Photo of crayons by flickr user KTVee, used via a Creative Commons license.

Texas state officials want billions more for schools, health, roads; transportation official floats doubling of vehicle registration fees

Fri Feb 3 12:09:00 2012 CST

My, my, my, the hands of begging bureaucrats are out awfully early.

First, there was Tom Suehs, executive commissioner of the state Department of Health and Human Services, saying he’s going to need as much as $17 billion more to run Medicaid.

Then Robert Scott, Texas education commissioner, said he just has to have more money to help struggling students and to pay for the school accountability system the Legislature called for.

And what if we nearly doubled vehicle registration fees to raise $14 billion for transportation projects, Ted Houghton, chairman of the state Transportation Commission, suggested to a transportation gathering in Euless.

Barrett Strong had a better groove, but Houghton was just as direct. “We need revenue,” he told the group.

All this grubbing and almost a year before the Texas Legislature comes back to Austin.

Suehs says Medicaid needs the money because the Legislature didn’t adequately fund the program in an effort to balance the budget in the last session. Scott is overseeing a public education system riven with lawsuits contending the Legislature was negligent in its funding.

Education and social service officials in Texas are always complaining about their woeful financial situations. But when the generally well-heeled Department of Transportation is out trying to tap taxpayers for billions this early the Legislature is going to have its work cut out for it.

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feeds in your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.

Follow Texas Health Care Report on Twitter, and fan us on Facebook. Texas Health Care Report is a project of Texas Watchdog.

Photo of Texas state Capitol by flickr user The Brit_2, used via a Creative Commons license.

Texas weathers recession well; incomes in Washington, D.C., shoot up 8.1 percent during the down years

Fri Feb 3 10:37:00 2012 CST

Imagine what the last 111 years would have been like had Anthony Lucas come down off the Spindletop hill near Beaumont and announced, “By gads, I’ve just struck government.”

Now, Lucas didn’t do too badly providing the starter fuel for the world’s modern industrial age. And a new study by Sentier Research says Texans are still doing pretty well by the black gold.

But from 2007 to 2010 the households that by far best weathered a brutal and lingering recession were nestled in the bosom of our federal government, Washington, D.C., a Wall Street Journal story Thursday says.

Household income in the nation’s capital climbed by 8.1 percent during that time, more than twice the 3.6 percent growth of the leading state, Wyoming, and nearly three times the 2.9 percent in North Dakota. The top four states, including Alaska and Louisiana, are the beneficiaries of booming oil and gas industries.

Corpus Christi, Odessa and Longview-Marshall ranked second, third and fourth among metropolitan areas experiencing household income growth. The McAllen area was sixth and Amarillo tied for seventh. The Brownsville, Beaumont and El Paso areas made the top 20.

Texas as a whole ranked ninth among the states, with overall household income growing by just .8 percent.

The Wall Street Journal provides a fine interactive map showing all of the rankings of states and 297 metropolitan areas.

The rest of the country isn’t doing nearly as well, having seen median household income drop by 3.5 percent to $51,287 a year, the study says. Thirty-eight states lost ground. Not surprising, Michigan’s median income drop of 9.5 percent was the worst in the country.

***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feeds in your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.

Photo of money by flickr user 401K, used via a Creative Commons license.

South San Antonio High school coach quits following questions of missing funds and porn on school computer

Thu Feb 2 17:25:00 2012 CST

The antennae rise when a high school administrator abruptly quits and announces, “The second I don't work there any more, the gloves come off. All the secrets I know about this district are going to come out. I don't have anything to lose anymore.”

We’re here if you need us.

The quote comes from a story in the San Antonio Express-News, and the guy delivering the welcome news is the departing basketball coach and athletic director from South San Antonio High School, Gary Durbon.

But first he has a few things to clear up.

His dad, former superintendent Ron Durbon, was fired in November amidst allegations he failed to fire up an investigation after it was found pornography was accessed on school computers, specifically one used by his son – Gary, the guy who is poised to spill the beans.

It also appears that the older Durbon also created some bad blood by obtaining a restraining order against the school board’s president and a trustee, whom Ron and son had sued over the pornography-on-school-computers episode.

The Texas Education Agency found good reason for canning Ron.

Gary was, until recently, best known for being the go-to guy for Tony Limon, the high school basketball player who was sued for punching a player during a game in 1999.

Limon said, coach said it was cool to punch; coach said otherwise.

What’s for sure not cool is stealing public money. And when some $25,000 in football funds turned up missing last fall, Gary was “reassigned.” Gary was supposed to be the watcher of the walking dough. But he told a local TV reporter: "I've never handled money. I don't count it. I don't deposit it. Nor have I ever been given a job description that says I am to oversee the money that comes into this department. So what you were told by the district is false."

We have to wonder the fate of the Ron Durbon Athletic Center.

Especially if Gary follows through on his promise to take off whatever gloves he was wearing. If he does, well, we answer our phone any time of day.

***
Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feeds in your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.

Photo of basketball hoop by flickr user acidpix, used via a Creative Commons license.

Critics question cost of Houston ISD's nonprofit audit; district says review wasn't an audit

Thu Feb 2 15:31:00 2012 CST

Some parents whose children attend Houston schools are wondering why district officials are spending taxpayer money to have two separate organizations to audit very similar things.

Especially because one of them was supposed to be free.

The Council of the Great City Schools, a Washington-based nonprofit organization, conducted an October examination of the district’s methods of buying and selling goods and services.

Administrators at the Houston Independent School District now are awaiting a bill from the council – even though Superintendent Terry Grier repeatedly told Texas Watchdog, other news outlets and the public for more than five months that the council audit would cost nothing.

HISD trustees in October approved paying a Houston accounting firm up to $87,500 to also audit the district’s business practices. That evaluation is being conducted now. Final results are expected sometime during the upcoming weeks, school board President Mike Lunceford and district officials have said.

Jason Spencer, an HISD spokesman, told Texas Watchdog last month that the council audit would cost the district taxpayer money. A council review of HISD’s capital facilities program in 2010 came with a price tag of about $22,000 – or roughly a quarter of what Null-Lairson will earn from conducting its current audit.

Peggy Sue Gay, 52, a mother of two HISD students, expressed the same concern and also asked, “Why did the Council of (the) Great City Schools do the ‘high-level management review?’ They have only conducted seven such studies in the past 12 years.”

Gay, who is represented by HISD District VII’s Harvin Moore, added, “I thought this was supposed to be an audit - but it ended up being a ‘high level management review.’”

But Spencer said in an e-mail that “HISD asked the Council of the Great City Schools to review the district’s procurement practices, not to perform an audit. A thorough audit of HISD procurement is under way,” Spencer added, referring to the Null-Lairson evaluation.

He also said, “I’m not aware that we’ve ever used the word ‘audit’ in connection with the (council) review. If we did, we were using the word generically. Again, I don’t specifically recall us using that word. Audits are highly involved and expensive exercises, it would not have made sense for us to expend taxpayer dollars on a pair of redundant audits.”

Spencer said the council’s work “does not meet the technical definition of an audit.”

But immediately after announcing in August that the council would examine the district’s purchasing procedures at a public meeting, Grier called the council inspection an “audit” during an in-person interview with Texas Watchdog.

And Grier, school-board members and other district officials have repeatedly and consistently referred to the council review as an “audit” for more than five months.

Both audits have come in the wake of Trustee Anna Eastman’s call in August that an independent entity evaluate HISD’s procurement processes.

Grier also told Texas Watchdog during that August conversation that the reason why another independent firm would conduct an audit of similar HISD practices was to dispel any doubt the public might have about the council’s objectivity due to both his position on the executive committee and the fact that Chief Financial Officer Melinda Garrett received a council award in 2010.

That award recognized “a school business official who distinguishes himself or herself through service to urban education,” according to a district news release at the time.

Within weeks of Garrett receiving the council award, the council delivered a scathing critique of the district’s capital facilities program.

That 2010 report found substantial financial errors in HISD’s capital facilities program. It also stated that the program had been operating without annual budgets, standard contract forms and budget evaluations.

The review further concluded that the district’s capital facilities program had no set timelines for the completion of projects, and lacked standard guidelines as to how projects would be established, evaluated and completed.

The report also said no tracking existed of amendments to projects that enlarged their scope and price tag, and that district staff had “no understanding of the impact” of such changes on costs.

HISD referred to the 2010 council probe as an “audit,” including mention of it by that term in this press release still available on HISD’s own website.

***

Contact Mike Cronin at mike@texaswatchdog.org or 713-228-2850. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelccronin or @texaswatchdog.

"I (heart) being audited" mugs available for order from Zazzle.com.

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Fredericksburg councilman - accused of failing to pay taxes - targeted in recall effort

Thu Feb 2 12:36:00 2012 CST

Fredericksburg councilman Tommy Segner says he is a victim of politics, the truth of which depends on your perspective.

Segner, a rabble-rouser and business owner who managed to get himself elected to the City Council, is the target of a recall, the San Antonio Express News is reporting today.

As the paper reported last week the recall is being led by Segner’s fellow council members, Tim Dooley and Graham Pearson. Pearson said the ouster group was well on its way to getting the 457 petition signatures needed by Feb. 24 to force a recall in May.

The group believes Segner ought not be a voting member of a body that levies taxes when he, his wife and two of his businesses are being sued by the federal government for allegedly failing to pay $420,505 in taxes since 2001.

The lawsuit says the Internal Revenue Service tried on numerous occasions and failed to collect from Segner. “Furthermore, efforts to educate Mr. Segner as to the process and importance of these payroll tax statutes have proved futile, “ according to the suit. “Tax returns continue to be filed late, if at all, with little or no payments in them.”

As a council member Segner has displayed similar contempt for the government spending half of the taxation equation, criticizing the council and the administration along the way. It was Segner who called for a referendum in which voters said no to spending 3.2 million tax dollars on an aquatic park.

Notwithstanding the imperceptible curve of his learning about taxes or the federal laws he might have broken, Segner says the real trouble is his local government wanting him out of its hair.

“The bottom line is that I have caused some grief and embarrassment to certain members of this City Council, city staff and to some members of the swimming pool committee,” Segner said in a statement issued Tuesday. “So, my personal issues with the IRS seem to be a good excuse to get back at me.”

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Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo 'Tax Time' by flickr user Images_of_Money, used via a Creative Commons license.

State health chief says $15 billion+ needed to offset Medicaid growth in Texas

Wed Feb 1 17:58:00 2012 CST

A year ago the Texas Public Policy Foundation commissioned a report that predicted Medicaid without dramatic reform would bankrupt Texas and every other state.

Tom Suehs told Texas Hospital Association administrators today the day of reckoning might be coming a lot sooner than the study, Final Notice: Medicaid Crisis predicted, Quorum Report posted this afternoon.

The Legislature in its next session will need to add $15 billion to $17 billion in general revenue to offset the wild growth of Medicaid in the state, Suehs, the executive commissioner of the state Department of Health and Human Services, says.

(Please note: The entire story is available only to Quorum Report subscribers.)

Legislators made a decision in the last session not to fully fund Medicaid in an effort to pass a legally required balanced budget, Suehs told hospital administrators.The bill, he says, is coming due.

Suehs told the Hospital Association conference he has played Medicaid doomsayer with the Legislature before.

“I basically said something to the effect, ‘I don’t see how the Legislature’s gonna get out of this session without some form of revenue.’ I got in trouble for that,” Suehs said. “And I’m going to say the same thing today. I think I have a little bit more data with me today.”

In its own doomsday prediction, the Public Policy Foundation said program growth alone would eventually outstrip the state’s ability to pay for it. The expansion of public health care through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would add an estimated $31.2 billion to $38.6 billion to the overall growth in Medicaid of $112 billion between 2014 and 2023.

Make that overall growth of $127 billion to $129 billion in Medicaid with the Suehs adjustment.

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Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo of pills by flickr user EssjayNZ, used via a Creative Commons license.

Houston ISD awaits bill from nonprofit for procurement audit; last one cost $20K

Wed Feb 1 15:23:00 2012 CST

Turns out a recent review of the Houston school system’s way of doing business won’t be free after all.

Superintendent Terry Grier told Texas Watchdog on Aug. 8 during an in-person interview that the audit conducted in October by a national education nonprofit would cost nothing to district taxpayers.

Earlier that month, Trustee Anna Eastman formally requested that an independent entity examine HISD’s purchasing processes.

But Jason Spencer, a spokesman for the Houston Independent School District, said HISD officials are awaiting a bill from the Washington-based Council of the Great City Schools.

“We are expecting a bill from the (council) that will cover the travel expenses for those who visited Houston for the review, a writer’s fee for the person who drafted the report, and a small administrative fee for the CGCS,” Spencer wrote in an e-mail to Texas Watchdog. “These fees cover the basic costs of producing the report.”

When the district asked the council in 2010 to do a review of HISD’s capital facilities program, the district wound up paying the council $21,652.

That price tag is about a quarter of what board members approved in October to pay a Houston accounting firm to audit procurement processes.
District administrators will pay Null-Lairson up to $87,500 for the audit that is currently underway.

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Contact Mike Cronin at mike@texaswatchdog.org or 713-228-2850. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelccronin or @texaswatchdog.

Photo by flickr user quacco, used under a Creative Commons license.

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UT administrators steamroll over students, who say tuition panel violates open meetings law

Wed Feb 1 13:29:00 2012 CST

An increase in tuition at the University of Texas was pushed through in the dark, and a conservative student group is advocating for open meetings when tuition increases are at stake.

The suggested increases came after unsuccessful attempts by the student newspaper, the Daily Texan, to attend meetings of the Tuition Policy Advisory Committee, a 9-member board that makes recommendations to the school’s administration.

The Young Conservatives of Texas claims the private meetings violate a provision of SB 5, which was passed last session.

It is basing its argument on a small amendment to the bill. That section states that meetings of student fee advisory committees shall be conducted “in a manner that is open to the public.”

TPAC arrived at a 2.6 percent tuition increase for in-state students and 3.6 percent for out-of-state students each of the next two years. Public forums were held after the board meetings, and the increases were approved and ready to present to the university’s Board of Regents for a sign off.

Not good enough, said Tony McDonald, senior vice chairman of the Young Conservatives of Texas.

“They are sales presentations, held at the end of the semester when most students can’t attend,” McDonald told Texas Watchdog. “And at that point, they are not gathering public input.”

The final public forum for the recent proposed increase was Nov. 30, the Wednesday before the last day of the semester.

He said that the students on the committee – the law requires four – are “hand-picked,” and students are not elected to represent the student body before the administration.

“We want to be able to open up this process for the future,” McDonald said. “But at the same time, we are asking that the same remedy that is done for any open meetings violation, and that is that all business done in the dark has to be redone.

“Throw out the proposed tuition increase, and hold the meetings again with the committee in public.”

The Daily Texan story following the outcry over the lack of transparency included comments from Kevin Hegarty, the school’s chief financial officer and committee member, who is paid $379,173 a year.

The reason the meetings of the tuition board are closed “has to do with making people feel open to expressing their opinions,” Hegarty was quoted as saying.

Committee co-chair Steven Leslie, who is also provost of the University, “said he wants the tuition-setting process to be transparent, but the TPAC meetings are closed because members discuss confidential budget information,” according to the Daily Texan story.

Leslie is paid $381,023 a year.

The university’s top paid official is football coach Mack Brown, who receives $5.1 million a year.

The university two years ago announced layoffs and a $14.6 million annual shortfall.

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Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

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Photo 'Longhorn Bus Stop' by flickr user eschulz, used via a Creative Commons license.

Six-figure government-produced jobs: Texas' tech fund at $206K per job, federal stimulus came in at $300K

Tue Jan 31 14:02:00 2012 CST

The state’s Emerging Technology Fund has since 2006 invested 169 million taxpayer dollars in companies that have created 820 jobs, an expenditure of $206,097 per job.

The only thing that surprises us about the Dallas Morning News story today here at Texas Watchdog is the relative thrift of this particular government misadventure in capitalism.

When the federal government took a crack at job creation, with a little something called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Watchdog determined the cost to create a single job in Texas at almost $300,000.

Always thinking big, the feds poured $862 billion into the stimulus. Quite often, Watchdog discovered, millions of taxpayer dollars were spent here in Texas to create no jobs at all. Like the $23.1 million stimulus grants at the Texas Departments of Agriculture and Aging and Disability Services.

The Texas Department of Rural Affairs created a single job while it spent $4.4 million. The National Guard squeezed out one property upkeep position for $2.2 million.

The stimulus brain trust had its own, much larger, emerging technology fund, betting $535 million on a would-be solar panel manufacturer, Solyndra, and $118 million on a would-be car battery manufacturer, Ener1.

Both have provided jobs in an area not part of either business plan: bankruptcy law.

According to a report called for by the Texas Legislature, things aren’t nearly as dire for the Emerging Technology Fund, in spite of the meager job creation.

If you include the money the fund gives in matching awards for university research and researcher recruitment the job creation total increases to 1,883, the Morning News story says. The tech fund helped save 686 jobs in Texas.

The fund spurred an additional $592.3 million in outside private and other funding for startup companies in Texas, the report says.

Taxpayers have seen their $169 million portfolio grow to $174 million, or an average increase of less than half a percent a year since the fund was created.

Naturally, the assessment of the fund’s success cleaves along political lines. Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, said the increase in the portfolio’s value was “another indicator of the fund’s success.”

Craig McDonald, executive director of Texans for Public Justice, a liberal good government advocacy group, was perhaps being unfair to Perry by singling him out, given the record of his high-rolling federal counterparts.

“The governor,” McDonald said, “is not a very good venture capitalist.”

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Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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Photo of money by flickr user 401K, used via a Creative Commons license.

Texas health insurance outreach program closes, see primary source docs on meetings funded with the money

Tue Jan 31 09:27:00 2012 CST

When the announcement came down that the state was shuttering the Texas Consumer Health Assistance Program after its federal grant money expired, there was a collective tsk-tsk and reports of dismissed employees and blaming the congressional gridlock for “leaving smaller entities, such as the TCHP, in the front line to be cut.”

The announcement also came with a telling statistic: The office was opened with a $2.8 million federal grant, hosted 160 events around the state and fielded 6,000 calls to its hotline.

Audrey Selden, senior associate commissioner for consumer protection at the Texas Department of Insurance, which oversees the program, told a Washington Post reporter that “the grant provided us with the opportunity to ... actually take the 20 or 30 minutes, or however long, to help someone complete an application.”

Few knew of the program until it was gone. But at a cost of $466 a call, there was some critique and questioning.

The reports of the closing also noted that the grant provided for the hiring of nine employees, who moved about the state telling people of the health insurance options here.

But the state didn’t exactly hire nine employees. The operation, overseen by TDI, was administered by Selden, a Harvard lawyer who was not a new hire but has been with the state since 1994, according to records. She receives a salary of $145,653.

The office also had its own director, Aelia Khan-Akhtar, according to this document. Khan-Akhtar makes $74,421 and has been with the state at least since September 2010 as part of the state's Technical Advisory Committee on Claims Processing.

And the events numbered 151, according to records obtained by Texas Watchdog, including a Dec. 8 “meeting” in Washington DC – between Selden and the same Washington Post reporter who broke the news of the office’s closing. Also included in the meetings was an interview with a Fox affiliate in Austin.

State employees representing the assistance program at these meetings included Marty Otero, who previously worked for the Texas Workforce Commission, Mistie Hinote, a publications writer for TDI, and Kate Spencer, a Web administrator at TDI formerly with Texas Health and Human Services.

The team did presentations at McKinney ISD, Kroger stores in Denton and Lewisville and a Texas Department of Transportation small business briefing.

***
Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.

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Photo of needle by flickr user stevendepolo, used via a Creative Commons license.

Austin school system spends Title I funds for low-income students on PR shop

Mon Jan 30 12:00:00 2012 CST

The Austin Independent School District has come up with a novel way to lift the academic performance of its low-income students: spend $192,000 in federal taxpayer money on its public relations department.

The funds are expected to pay half the salaries for a public relations coordinator to oversee three translators, two multicultural outreach coordinators and a language support coordinator.

Among the objectives of what will henceforth be known as the Department of Public Relations and Multicultural Outreach will be “correcting inaccuracies advanced by the media," the Austin American-Statesman is reporting today.

The job description written by the district does not say whether these are existing inaccuracies or inaccuracies that may arise in the multicultural reaching out and the formation of relations with the public.

In addition to the standard-issue "branding and communication strategies," this new cadre will be the "internal key communicators,” to "accurately convey the district's message ... “ and be nothing less than the “ambassadors for district objectives and accomplishments.”

While continuing, always, to correct inaccuracies advanced by the media.

The district is apparently the first in the state to redirect money from Title I of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act in this way. As outlined in Title I, federal funds are used to provide districts and schools with high percentages of children from low-income families resources to raise academic standards.

Alex Sánchez, executive director of the newly named department, says the goal in Austin is to employ professionals to get Hispanic parents fired up about their children’s educations.

And as long as parent involvement is the objective, the Texas Education Agency says using Title I taxpayer money in this way is A.O.K.

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Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.

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