EXPOSED: Texas Cronyism and Secret Meetings Steal Citizen's Land Via Eminent Domain

The following article repring is one of the best written concerning the Tarrant Regional Water District and the criminal activity going on there.  Obviously the Fort Worth Weekly has written several excellent articles concerning the TRWD and their misdeeds, this one is right on target as well

Although election day is almost here and this story isn't exactly about Fort Worth, it probably has the possibility of negatively impacting more people than the city council elections.

Please read before going to the polls on Saturday, May 11th.....

Louis
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Breitbart News has learned of a broad-ranging, long-term property seizure scheme in Texas’ Tarrant County Regional Water District, in which District employees have abused eminent domain privileges, forced homeowners and businesses off their properties, and awarded no-bid contacts via secret meetings that are never reported to the public.

Background

The Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD) was created in the 1920’s, originally designed with a mandate for water supply and flood control.  The TRWD owns three lakes, operates five others, and oversees flood control inside the political boundaries of the district, while providing water supply to the Northern Trinity River Water Basin, which stretches across eleven counties in North Texas.

In the last decade, the TRWD initiated a billion dollar “economic development” project called Trinity River Vision. It has allowed the TRWD to seize vast tracts of private and commercial properties and spend hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money – always awarded in no-bid contracts to the same local firms.

Only a small part of Tarrant County’s population may vote for the five-person water district Board. Three seats are up for election on May 11^th, with early voting already underway. Three challengers are seeking to return accountability and transparency to the Board. 

The Master Plan

The power for a water district to seize property via eminent domain was first granted in 1995, under a bill authored by Rep. Gerald Yost, “to provide for the conservation, preservation, protection, recharging, and prevention of waste of the groundwater”. Eminent domain was strictly limited to issues involving water supply and flood control inside a given water district for these purposes.

The Trinity River Vision was created by the TRWD in 2003 and adopted by the Fort Worth City Council, permitting it to bypass any vote by residents. It was ostensibly designed to “preserve and enhance the river and its corridors.”  Citizens complained the TRWD was engaging in economic development, using “flood control” as a fig leaf.  The TRWD denied this allegation for two years, until 2005’s legislative session when HB 2639 granted enormous power specifically to the TRWD, and only the TRWD.  The bill permitted the agency to "promote state or local economic development “, activities far exceeding its traditional flood control and water supply authority.

The bill also allowed the TRWD to create a non-profit corporation (The Trinity River Vision Authority), for which the power of eminent domain was further extended. Now, eminent domain – the power for the government to seize property – was suddenly in the hands of a non-profit corporation, with no public oversight.   This gave the TRWD the power to seize any land for any reason, not only in the district, but anywhere it extended its “water service area” without public voter approval, allegedly to serve the “flood-control” project called Trinity River Vision.

With the way now clear for eminent domain seizures to make the Trinity River Vision a reality, Jim Oliver, the general manager of the TRWD, chose J.D. Granger to oversee the massive operation without conducting a job search. Granger’s previous occupation was an assistant district attorney, with no apparent experience in business, infrastructure, civil engineering, or water matters. His salary was set at $110,000 per year.  Jim Oliver currently earns over $330,000 in annual salary.

Since then, enormous amounts of land have been seized via eminent domain.  When asked for details regarding just how many properties this included, and the cost, TRWD spokesman Chad Lorance said access to that information required an open records request filing.  However, the Tarrant County Appraisal District lists 591 properties owned by TRWD with an assessed value of some $414 million.  As far back as 2010, the Fort Worth Business Press referred to Tarrant County as “the eminent domain capital of the world”.


Secret Meetings

The Texas Open Meetings Act generally requires 72-hour public notice prior to a meeting of a quorum of a governmental body that discusses public business.  However, a clarification to the Act was placed in former Rep. Yost’s 1995 Texas Water Code legislation, under Section 36.064(b):  “A meeting of a committee of the board…where less than a quorum…is present is not subject to the provisions of the Open Meetings Act”.

The TRWD seized on this exception, as it permitted secret committees to be formed in which as many as two, and possibly zero, Board members meet. A committee could consist of anyone the organizers chose.  It could meet entirely in secret, with no notice given to the public. It could be held anywhere, at any time, for any reason.  No minutes had to be recorded or published. No record of who attended had to be kept. 

Anyone could be invited, or excluded.  

And so, for the past six years, eminent domain seizures and no-bid contracts have been discussed in dozens of secret meetings. Sources report individuals and businesses that would benefit from agenda items have attended meetings, while those who would suffer were not invited – or even knew of the meetings.



The public knows these secret meetings occurred because the committees issued recommendations, which were subsequently brought before the TRWD Board in an open meeting. However, rather than discuss issues in open debate, the Board moved directly to consideration of these secret committee’s recommendations, and holds a vote.



In the past six years, of the 60 meetings of the TRWD Board, the Board has unanimously approved 339 of 339 “recommendations” proposed by these secret committees.



Violations of the Law?

A common law interpretation of the Texas Open Meetings Act by the Texas Attorney General suggests these secret committee meetings violate the Open Meetings Act.

“Opinions of this office [Section III.D] have held that a standing subcommittee consisting of less than a quorum…is subject to the requirements of the act because of the danger that the full board might merely rubber stamp a subcommittee's decisions and thereby deprive the public of access to the decision-making process”.

That’s the allegation brought in a lawsuit against the TRWD (the plaintiff of which is an acquaintance from college) -- that the Board rubber-stamped these 339 secret committee “recommendations”.  The lawsuit references a November 2010 issue of American Water Intelligence.  That article reported that a water pipeline project (running through the plaintiff’s ranch and nature preserve) had been awarded to ten separate engineering firms.  Subsequent to publication, minutes of the November 16 TRWD Board meeting revealed the Board’s rubber-stamp approval of only five companies, with five others approved in the meeting of December 21.  How could a trade magazine have known that ten companies were going to receive contracts prior to meetings of the TRWD Board?  The lawsuit alleges that a secret committee publicly leaked this information before the actual Board approvals, buttressing the “rubber stamp” allegation. 

Former Rep. Gerald Yost said, “If committees are making [de-facto] decisions on any matter, eminent domain or otherwise…they are violating the intent of the bill. They need to be taken to court and actions of committees without approval or prior authorization should be voided”.

Should the court rule against the TRWD, all its actions could be nullified.  If the TRWD conspired to avoid the Open Meetings Act, each offense is punishable by a fine of $100 - $500 and/or one to six months in jail.  

Further, Texas Penal Code Sec. 39.02(a) -- “Abuse of Official Capacity” – provides for First Degree Felony prosecution for any misuse of property or funds exceeding $200,000 belonging to the TRWD’s managers or Board members.

Where’s the Local Media?

Why hasn’t the Fort Worth Star Telegram reported on a story in its own backyard? Especially considering the TRWD’s offices are located on the bottom floor of the newspaper’s own building?  John Basham, a challenger in the upcoming TRWD election, said that he has repeatedly contacted the newspaper with all the allegations reported in this column, and others, since 2008.  According to Basham, the newspaper ignored him.  A check of the paper’s archives turns up few stories questioning the propriety of TRWD, and no investigative articles.  When asked about this last week, two editors at the Star Telegram refused to comment.  The paper has run a smattering of articles in recent weeks, but focusing on the election rather than alleged improprieties.

Otherwise, the only significant mention of the TRWD was a full-page ad taken out in the paper last month, promoting the TRWD.

As former Rep. Yost said, “Too often, no one is paying attention to what these folks [water districts] do”.  One might wonder if that goes for the Star Telegram, as well.

Other Mysteries

TRWD election challenger John Basham believes the TRWD Board to be unaware of secret committee specifics, suggesting Board members are either unconcerned with property seizures, or benefit from their own votes.  He speaks of a bizarre culture of silence pervading TRWD offices, possibly to provide the Board with plausible deniability.  Mr. Basham said, “Since announcing my TRWD candidacy, I’ve been contacted by current and former district employees . These good, hard working people all say that upper management at the TRWD and the TRV systematically keep the Board in the dark.”  Mr. Basham also referred to a recent telephone conversation with TRWD director Jim Lane, in which, “I told him what the staff was saying to me about the Board being lied to, and Lane replied, ‘it wouldn’t surprise me a bit, because I’ve been in government long enough to see it all.’”  Upper level staff includes Trinity Vision Manager Jim Oliver, J.D. Granger, and Planning Director Wayne Owen. 

The $2.4 billion pipeline referenced in the above litigation would run from Lake Palestine to a junction between two other TRWD owned lakes, with the intent for TRWD and the City of Dallas to share Lake Palestine’s additional water.  Yet why is TRWD proceeding with the project when its own internal study advised against it?  The study’s authors concluded on Page 12 that, “It was not deemed practical for TRWD to use Lake Palestine except for extreme emergencies or to compensate for the unavailability of water due to infrastructure failure or maintenance.” 

So, why might the TRWD’s secret committees award no-bid contracts to ten different firms for a $2.4 billion project when its own engineers think it's a bad idea?

Mr. Basham has made open records requests of TRWD, which failed to respond with any records, why records are being withheld, or a request to the Texas AG for an Exception -- all in violation of open records laws.   Mr. Basham has prepared, and will be filing, a complaint with the Tarrant County D.A. and a writ of mandamus, requiring the TRWD to produce requested documents. 

So, why is the TRWD stonewalling?

A 10-page, 4-color glossy report extolling the TRWD was mailed to district voters just in time for the election.  Who paid for this publication?  Were public funds used?  Adrian Murray, a former challenger for the TRWD post, has filed ethics violations alleging use of TRWD’s public funds for political campaigns.

Campaign Finance Cronies

The TRWD election is on May 11^th, and the incumbents appear alarmed -- with good reason.  If they get bounced, the new Board members will have access to documentation hidden from public view. 

Incumbent Jack Stevens disrupted an event held by the challengers. One attendee reported he “appeared flustered by difficult questions posed to him by participants”.  Incumbent Jim Lane left a panicked voicemail for Mr. Basham, forwarded to this reporter, saying he “wanted to take issue with these campaign measures [you’re using]…[you have] an overzealous campaign manager, spending a whole lot of money…”  

This is particularly unusual considering Mr. Lane is not even running for re-election.



There are a lot of parties supporting the incumbents in an election that shouldn't merit this much attention.   The incumbent’s campaign financing documentation lists donors that include several engineering firms that have directly benefitted from the TRWD’s no-bid contracts: Freese & Nichols PAC; Daniel Buhman; James J. Parrish; Edward Motley and Gregory Welch (CH2M Hill); Lockwood, Andrews and Newman PAC; David Yanke (SAIC Engineering); CDM Smith PAC; William Dillon, Dorian French, and Carl Krogness (Brown & Gay); and the aforementioned Wayne Owen – just to name a few.

The incumbent PAC’s Treasurer is Eric Fox, the government affairs lobbyist for Lockheed Martin.  Why is a lobbyist for one of America’s largest companies, identified as the 20^th most powerful person in Fort Worth, spending his time running a PAC for a water district election?



Do any of these contributors have undisclosed financial interests in the Trinity River Vision?



An Election That Matters



The Water District election is complex.  The portion of the ballot where voters are asked to select Board candidates is the last item on the entire ballot.  Voters are asked to vote for “none, one, two, or three” members of the Board.  All three challengers must win in order to remove all three incumbents. The challengers promise to return transparency and responsive government to the district.


Challengers John Basham, Timothy Nold and Mary Kelleher are intent on removing the incumbents.  Mr. Basham has publicly said he is concerned about corruption.

 ”I don’t think these people went into government corrupt, but the old saying is true. One bad apple can spoil the whole barrel and this particular barrel is rotten to the core”.

Lawrence Meyers blogs at www.ichabodscranium.com

Follow him at @ichabodscranium

ETHICS GONE BYE-BYE IN FORT WORTH

Don’t Let This One Pass “Go”

Next week, the Fort Worth City Council may declare bankruptcy. Of the moral variety, that is.
Despite virulent opposition from a small handful of citizen activists, the council will consider a set of ethics code changes so shady and self-serving they make Monopoly’s Rich Uncle Pennybags look like a pinko liberal.

The changes would allow the council to prevent residents’ complaints from ever reaching the city’s ethics committee. Instead, the council would simply consult the city attorney (you know, the person they pay to sit with them at every meeting).

Residents wouldn’t be able to recommend who should sit on the ethics committee, and — get this — city boards and commissions would no longer be required to follow Texas open meetings laws.

Remember how the person who divvied up the Monopoly money always seemed to win? Well, this is kind of like that, only there’s real money involved.

That’s what happened in 2010, when the city’s ethics commission actually manned up and ruled against the city for allowing three gas company employees to sit on a committee deciding what company to hire for an air-quality study of drill sites. So Mayor Mike “Pennybags” Moncrief fired all three members of the ethics review committee and hired replacements without consulting the council or residents. Voila! Ethics problem solved!

Anybody who thinks government shouldn’t work like a rigged board game should probably show up at city hall at 7 p.m. Dec. 4.

THANKS TO THE FORT WORTH WEEKLY FOR THE HEADS UP!  The Fort Worth Startle Gram is asleep at the wheel.....as usual.

The 800 Pound Bird



Mayor Price cried "ouch" when she broke her collarbone

earlier this year in a bicycle accident.  Constituents cried

"ouch" when she broke a campaign promise. 



Betsy Price on her worst day seems to be a better mayor than Mike Moncrief. We like her push for recycling, her rolling town hall meetings. Even though she personally was OK with lifting the moratorium on gas waste injection wells within the city limits, she listened to the public, changed her mind, and on her watch injection wells were banned from Fort Worth.

All that said, however, there’s a big ol’ turkey gobbling around in her closet: the gas well ordinance. When she was running for mayor, Price said she approved of gas drilling within the city but that the health and safety of residents had to come before gas company profits. Here was her promise at a candidate forum: “As Mayor, my first and foremost priority will be the health and safety of our citizens in Fort Worth. That means we need up-to-date, independent testing when it comes to gas drilling. We need to study our current zoning and ordinances in relation to gas drilling … .”

Well, that has turned out to be just a lot of gassing. The city council did take a peek at the ordinance in the last year, when changes were proposed. But then drilling opponents charged that the proposed changes benefited only the drillers. And the drillers said that if the regulations got any “tougher,” they’d take their rigs and go home. And in April, Price and the council decided to do absolutely nothing about the holes in the ordinance that you could drive a drilling rig through.

What happened to caring about the health and safety of your constituents, Mayor? Bike rides and fitness campaigns won’t do much good when all those deep breaths are full of foul pollutants.

FINALLY...SOMEONE WITH SOME BRASS!

Note to Followers:  This is a wonderful article written by one of the few people with some real moxie at the Fort Worth Star Telegram. My hope is that this article by Dave Lieber will make its way around Fort Worth and people will begin to pay attention to the ways that this city (and many others) are literally screwing the tax paying public with various "fees" on our water bill.  These "fees" are taxes folks....pure and simple...and Fort Worth already has the highest city taxes for any major city in the great State of Texas.

IF YOU GET INVOLVED, perhaps we can rid ourselves of council members who just don't seem to get it.....Zim Zimmerman, Sal Espino, Dennis Shingleton and Joel Burns.

OH...and send a nice note to Dave and tell him thanks for keeping all of us in the "Watchdog" loop of information!

Mac
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It's time to stop the nickel-and-diming of America

BY DAVE LIEBER

Posted Saturday, November 3, 2012

watchdog@star-telegram.com

http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/11/03/4386393/the-watchdog-its-time-to-stop.html#storylink=cpy

Something remarkable happened recently at the Fort Worth City Council that should not go unnoticed. The city Water Department asked for a 3 percent increase for customers. That would have added almost a dollar a month to each water bill.

But the council said no, leaving a $1 million revenue gap that ended up being covered by reserve funds. We were spared a staff-recommended rate increase. That almost never happens.

Even more remarkable, the fight was led by the council's newest member, Kelly Allen Gray, who joined in July. She said later, "If the city is going to have these fee increases, we have to do a better job of making our citizens aware of what is happening in our city and why we need these increases -- as opposed to just voting on the increase without having a true discussion."

Amen.

In a 5-4 vote to deny the increase, Gray was joined by Mayor Betsy Price, Jungus Jordan, Frank Moss and Danny Scarth. Voting to save the increase: Zim Zimmerman, Sal Espino, Dennis Shingleton and Joel Burns.

The nickel-and-diming of Americans everywhere with small increases in fees, services and taxes year after year is the subject of a new book, The Fine Print, by David Cay Johnston. Johnston argues that the fees and increases are so small that most people don't notice them.

Yet they add up. Phone bills, cable TV bills, electricity bills, Internet bills. They go up, not down, although Americans were promised that competition would lower most of these rates. That never happened.

Why can't government actually work to lower rates we pay?

That's where Fort Worth comes in. Leaders face a once-in-a-decade decision. They get their first chance in 10 years to renegotiate the city's 40-year trash and recycling contracts with Waste Management. The contract is up for renewal March 30. It expires in 2043.

The city isn't sure whether to take bids or renegotiate, says Brandon Bennett, director of public health and code compliance.

He says no rate increase is planned.

How about this? Take the opportunity to actually lower residential trash bills; don't settle for a zero increase. This might not be as difficult as it sounds.

Fort Worth residents pay some of the highest trash rates in Tarrant County for the least curbside service. My monthly trash bill for a 96-gallon bin and a recycling cart along with once-a-week limited pickup is $24.63 with taxes. (Fort Worth also offers smaller bins for $12.75 and $17.75 before taxes.)

Johnston says of Fort Worth residents, "You pay double and only get half as much service. So you're really paying four times more."

Of course, there's a difference between trash collection for big and small cities.

Small cities accept franchise fees from selected trash haulers. Small cities also raise trash costs for businesses and use that money to lower the cost for residents. Fort Worth doesn't get to do that since it doesn't select a commercial vendor.

What Fort Worth does is pad the cost of a pickup by adding a few dollars to the monthly bill to pay for its trash enterprise fund. The fund pays for a customer call center, removal of illegal dumping and other trash-related costs including trash class, which residents must attend if they violate recycling rules. These extra dollars tacked on to the bill amount to a trash tax, but nobody calls it that except me.

Working out the bugs

When the city implemented its newfangled trash collection system half a dozen years ago, it was a catastrophe. Nothing worked at first. Since then, the bugs have been corrected and residents say they are happy with the service (according to a city survey expected to be released next month).

Now is the time to take advantage of the marketplace and shave a couple of dollars off each monthly trash bill. Tarrant County cities are already served by the two biggest players in the business, Waste Management and Republic Services. Together, they account for almost half the trash collection business in the nation, Johnson says.

Waste Management holds the city contract. But Republic Services Area President Nick Stefkovich told me last week that his company will bid for Fort Worth's contract if given the opportunity.

"It's a competitive environment, and that's good for business. We all get better at providing service," he said.

A third major player, Progressive Waste Solutions, also known as IESI, handles several cities in the area, too.

Let's summarize: there are three major players in our market. Fort Worth, the mother of all contracts, is up for renewal. And city leaders might not seek bids?

"We don't know," Bennett says. "Some decision has to be made one way or the other."

He adds, "I anticipate our contracts will come in equal to or lower than what they've been in the past 10 years." His plan is to pass any reduced costs on to customers by "not having to raise rates." Commendable, but surely we can do better.

Let's stop the nickel-and-diming of Americans by marching in reverse. Seeking bids on major contracts is a lot more work for city employees. But competition means better service and bigger savings. Please do what's best for us customers.

The Watchdog column appears Fridays and Sundays.

Dave Lieber, 817-390-7043

Twitter: @davelieber

BROKEN PROMISES FOR A CHEAP PRICE

Excerpt from the Fort Worth Weekly April 25, 2012
http://www.fwweekly.com/2012/04/25/price-line/

If Mayor Price really wants to leave Fort Worth a better, greener place, a lot of folks wonder why she and the council did absolutely nothing last October when they had the chance to act on health and safety concerns over the gas drilling that has become the city’s signature industry and the source of its most bitter public debate. The injection well decision, as welcome as it was to drilling critics, was just an oily drop in the bucket of that larger fight.

The city staff, based on the findings of an air-quality study that  was itself controversial, had proposed a set of new ordinances. [Blogger Note:  The city staff knew that the proposed changes would not be accepted by industry or neighborhood leadership, which is why it was presented in such a manner]

Critics called them a weak response — but were even more flabbergasted when the council shot down even those half-measures and made no move toward stronger regulation.

Price, who promised during her campaign to look at the “hodgepodge of rules” governing gas drilling and its effect on air and water quality (“Leading Molly,” April 20, 2011), defended the decision.

She did exactly what she promised, Price told the Weekly. “We want to make sure it’s all safe. We reviewed those ordinances — and overwhelmingly, neither industry or the neighborhoods wanted the draft that came forward on those original ordinances. And there have been no studies to show that anything being done under our ordinances is dangerous.”

Not quite. Neighborhoods opposed the proposed ordinances because they were toothless, lacking any real protections for communities despite continued claims of poisoned groundwater and polluted air.

And many residents still have questions about the industry-friendly interpretation of data from the two “official studies” accepted by the city, one funded by the drilling industry and another by the city. The second air-quality study, for example, examined 375 well sites but only one that was engaged in drilling and only one where fracking was happening. (“Blowing Smoke,” Sept. 14, 2011).

Tests funded by skeptical community groups reached different conclusions. Colleyville and Southlake residents funded their own study and reported Tuesday that fracking on those cities’ borders releases dangerous levels of toxic chemicals into the air.

Price and the city council set no timetable for taking up the issue again.

Libby Willis [Fort Worth League of Neighborhoods] represents thousands of Fort Worth residents who still want the changes that the new mayor now dismisses. For now, though, Willis is giving Price the benefit of the doubt.

The longtime neighborhoods leader said she remains hopeful that the council will revisit the issue with better results. “Maybe it was a little overwhelming for them. Maybe we need to take a more incremental approach to those issues,” she said.

But Price sounds less than amenable to the idea of revisiting the ordinances and implementing gas industry regulations. “You never say never to anything, but I feel like our ordinances are very good and our communities are very safe,” she said.

Representative Lon Burnam wasn’t as charitable as Willis toward a mayor who so frequently apologizes on behalf of the gas industry. He met with her a few weeks ago and said he was “appalled” by comments she made about the industry.

“She’s extremely likable, but the proof is in the pudding when it comes to public policy,” he said. He criticized her recent 10-day trip to China to discuss the developing natural gas technology in that country. Price defended the trip, which was sponsored by the U.S. Energy Department as part of an international effort to promote energy efficiency to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

The Chinese “don’t know a lot about fracking,” Price told the Star-Telegram in December. “They’re very interested in the knowledge we have here.”

In her interview with the Weekly, Price said that natural gas is the cleanest-burning energy source, though she added that public health is always her number-one concern. [Really?]

Given the massive amounts of coal the Chinese government uses, natural gas should be seriously considered as an alternative, she said, and noted that the trip included discussions of all energy sources, including wind and solar.

“They’ve got a terrific air-quality problem — they’d kill to have days like this,” she said, pointing out the window to an atmosphere that, ironically, many local residents believe is dangerously dirty, due in significant part to gas drilling. “We’re all breathing the same air,” she said. “It’s a global world.”

FORT WORTH ETHICS - A THING OF THE PAST





CHIPPING AWAY
Fort Worth's code of ethics is being rewritten -
or gutted depending on your point of view.
By: Peter Gorman


Two years ago, members of the city’s little known and little used Ethics Review Committee found out what happened when you pissed off Mike

Moncrief. The mayor tossed their board and major parts of the city’s ethical rulebook out the window.

It was a rather stunning example of the kind of personal power play that the ethics code was intended to prevent. Moncrief fired the committee members without prior approval of the council and appointed new members without regard for the code’s requirement that citizen input be sought.

What had the ethics panel done to draw such reaction? It had ruled that it was a violation of the city’s ethics code for three highly placed gas company employees to sit as members of a committee making recommendations on the details of an air quality test that had far-reaching implications for the companies that paid their salaries.

Perhaps as remarkable as what Moncrief did was the fact that he got away with it. A majority of the city council backed him. And now the things that he did are being written into — or out of — city ordinances and codes on a long-term basis.

One of the proposed changes that has activists worried most is what amounts to a free pass for city officials, allowing the city attorney to rule on a large percentage of conflict-of-interest questions and cutting the ethics board out of the process. Since the city council hires and fires the city attorney, there is no safeguard in place to keep the council from getting whatever opinions it wants.


Picht: "The ethics code was created to
hold city officials in check, not rpotect
them."

 A  second  possible  change  involves the way the ethics commission is appointed. Currently, the city council must reach out to the community for recommendations on ethics panel members. If the changes now being worked on are approved, the council will no longer have to do that.

A third key change being considered would allow advisory boards and committees to be exempt from the Texas Open Meetings Act — something that is legal but is not the current practice in Fort Worth.

A lot is at stake when a city’s ethics code and ethics commission are potentially weakened. Far-reaching ethical questions come up daily in a city the size of Fort Worth, said Robert Wechsler, a leading researcher on ethics issues for legislative bodies nationally.

“Millions of dollars in contracts and awards go out on a regular basis. Inside information on key areas for future city development is available to certain officials and businesspersons, but not to the average person. Friendships can color deals; so can animosity,” said Wechsler, research director for the nonprofit Cityethics.org. “And that’s why you have a code of ethics and an ethics review board, to make it clear what is an ethical conflict and what is not. With the rule of thumb being that if you need to ask the question, it’s probably a conflict.”

No one on the city council or on the ethics review commission is taking credit for pushing the changes, but no one seems to be working at stopping them either. The amendments are being written by the city attorney’s office — which provides legal advice to the council and other city officials.

“The ethics code,” said former council member Clyde Picht, “was created to hold city officials in check, not to protect them. So to have the city attorney, whose salary is set by the city council and who serves at the pleasure of that council, rewrite the city’s ethics code … well, I’m not sure that the city attorney is the best person to write the code meant to keep those officials in check.”

Despite the potential impact on the city and its taxpayers, the process of changing the ethics code is being done so far under the radar that even some community organizations that are generally quick to howl about ethical lapses and lack of transparency say they didn’t know what was in the works.

“We need a  strong  ethics code because if we don’t keep a separation between the city and the business of business, we’re going to end up with the kind of stuff we had with Moncrief,” said Jerry Lobdill, a retired physicist and longtime activist on gas drilling and other issues. “The business of the city is paid for by the taxpayers of the city, and a strong code of ethics and a strong ethics review board are there to remind city officials that they are public servants.”

He doesn’t expect the situation to get better any time soon. The city council, he said, “simply defies anyone to bring them to task.”

Perhaps the most controversial change being proposed to the ethics code is the get-out-of-jail-free card for public officials.

Currently the code gives the ethics review commission the duty and power to rule on the “appropriate disposition of allegations of [ethics] violations.”

The new version, however, notes that as long as a city official has reasonably relied “either directly or indirectly” on a written opinion from the city attorney’s office, then no ethics violation has occurred. Only have a verbal OK from the city attorney? You’ve got 15 days to get it in writing, and you’re still home free. If a complaint has been filed about the official’s conduct, all that is required is for the city att

orney’s opinion to be produced, and “the commission shall dismiss the complaint.”


 Ashford: “The three members

of the ethics review committee

 … heard the complaint, and they

agreed with me.”



“People are not paying attention if they let something like that slip by,” said Jim Ashford, whose complaint regarding the air quality study woke the former ethics committee from its lethargy two years a

go and started the whole ball rolling. “If the new version is OK’d, a city official who  is acting on the opinion of a city attorney will have absolute immunity from being held accountable. And that is just wrong.”

Ashford, who has been active in urban gas drilling controversies for several years — and still has a lawsuit against Chesapeake for the noise that one of the company’s compressor stations makes — also noted that even if the attorney turns out to be wrong in his or her opinion, the city official is not held accountable for any ethical wrongdoings. “And of course, even if the city attorney provides an opinion that is criminally wrong — that’s taking it to the extreme — the city attorney cannot be held responsible either. He or she only offered an opinion, after all.”

Wechsler, the ethics researcher, said the proposed exemption is used widely — but he still disagrees with it.  “Probably the number-one ethics problem in the U.S., on every level, is officials going to attorneys for ethics advice,” he said. “The attorney cannot be held responsible, and yet the official is off the hook. That makes people have less belief in the honesty and integrity of their government.”
For an official to be able to go to an in-house attorney for ethical rulings rather than to the ethics commission itself is just forum shopping, he said. “You’re just going to someone you think will give you the opinion you want.”

And officials will benefit, he said, because an attorney is going to go by the letter of the law, while the ethics committee can go beyond that, to consider how things appear. An attorney, Wechsler said, might say something is legal but will cause a scandal and who cares, while the ethics board will be looking to prevent the scandal by avoiding even the appearance of impropriety.

“Then, with the city attorney working, in effect, for the city council and at the pleasure of the city council — well, there’s a built-in conflict there,” Wechsler said. “I don’t think any city attorney worth their salt would want to be in the position of making ethics calls for the people he or she works for.

“The whole thing simply promotes corruption,” he said. “I’m not saying all city attorneys are corrupt, but it gives a city attorney way too much power.”

Not surprisingly, Fort Worth City Attorney Sarah J. Fullenwider sees it differently. “Let’s say you’re a volunteer on a board or commission, and something comes up, and you go to the city attorney and ask if you have a conflict. If the city attorney says there is no conflict, then the issue is, do you want to then subject that person to a possible ethics committee violation, or do you want to say the issue has already been settled? That’s what we’re looking at with that change.”

Picht, who has a reputation as a straight-shooter, rejects that reasoning. “The city council will manipulate the ethics code to their advantage — they’ll go to the city attorney, and he or she will go along with nearly anything to avoid a pay deduction or getting fired.”

Carter Burdette, a former long-time city councilman and currently a member of the ethics review committee, doesn’t see that conflict.

“I don’t get the feeling that allowing the city attorney to render an opinion in that circumstance is a get-out-of-trouble card,” he said. “As a former attorney I was paid all my life to render opinions to people, and I took that very seriously, and I think most attorneys do. So I don’t see any problem with that.”

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Another potential change to the ethics code hinges on the difference between “shall” and “may” — one of those details of semantics that can turn out to make a major difference in how an ordinance actually works.

In the current code, the city council is required to reach out to local organizations for suggestions as to who should serve on the ethics review commission. The section says, “The city council shall develop a list of community, civic, and professional organizations which shall be invited to make suggestions for appointments to the committee.”

The new wording says the council may solicit such organizations to suggest appointees.

Wechsler sees the difference as much more than a quibble. “If Fort Worth is eliminating the community from the process — and changing “shall” to “may” certainly allows for that — well, then Fort Worth is going backward,” he said. In other cities, he said, the trend is the other way, in favor of having community groups recommend ethics board members, to increase the likelihood that the board will be politically independent.

Even more troubling to Wechsler and others is the proposed change that would remove most city advisory boards from the transparency requirements of the state open-meetings law.

The current city code makes no distinction between official boards and advisory boards. Under the proposed revision, however, advisory boards would not have to post meetings, allow the public to take part in meetings, or even keep minutes that would be available to the public.

In Texas that is generally legal, according to the Attorney General’s 2012 Open Meetings Handbook, which notes that “an advisory committee that does not control or supervise public business or policy is not subject to the [open meetings] Act.”

It’s not that simple, though. The handbook also notes that “if a governmental body that has established an advisory committee routinely adopts or ‘rubber stamps’ the advisory committee’s recommendations, the committee will probably be considered to be a governmental body subject to the Act.”

Wechsler said that since advisory boards  are  making recommendations that will affect the community, transparency is required. “The gist of it is saying that advisory board members don’t have any real authority to change things, but that’s really just playing games with the ethics issue. The legal view might say it’s technically OK because of a loophole in the meetings act, but that doesn’t make it ethical.”

In  addition to the potential for secrecy involving advisory boards, Wechsler sees another downside to allowing them to operate in private. Why, he asked, would any city purposefully close out the community, “which might have expertise they could share? The only reason would be because you don’t want community participation.

“And then the flip side: What problem could having those meetings in public create? The answer is none.”

Ashford agreed. “To have advisory-only groups that don’t have to meet the standards for transparency, to have these groups meeting behind closed doors, well, to me that looks like the city is going to be denying citizens an open government,” he said.

There’s another, apparently minor, change in the proposed code revision that has Ashford riled up as well. Currently the code says the board is to include one attorney. The proposed revision would make that at least one attorney.

Ashford believes that the more lawyers there are on the ethics panel, the less representative the panel will be of the citizenry. “At one point in time, after he fired the old ethics committee members, Moncrief had three lawyers on the board,” Ashford said. “How is that representative of Fort Worth? Do we have a population made up of 60 percent lawyers?”

Wechsler said the ethics commission shouldn’t have any lawyers on it. “Attorneys are not my choice for those boards,” he said, “because they tend to be the people most likely to have ethics conflicts. They might represent [companies] that do business with the city, they might be political people — there are a host of reasons for not having them on ethics boards.”

He believes that an ethics board should hire an outside attorney to help with legal issues but that the lawyer shouldn’t have a vote. “It’s simply not appropriate for a lawyer to give counsel to a board on which he or she sits. That’s already a conflict. And that’s what the ethics board is there to avoid.”

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Ashford thought the presence of three gas-drilling employees on the committee violated the city’s ethics code. The employees, he complained, derived more than 10 percent of their annual income from the gas drilling industry — the threshold set by the code for determining whether officials have “substantial interest” in an issue and therefore must recuse themselves from voting or providing input.

“Well, the three members of the ethics review committee at the time — there were supposed to be five, but Moncrief let two slots go vacant — heard the complaint,” Ashford recalled. “And they agreed with me.”

Moncrief definitely did not. When the board issued its ruling, the mayor fired them. He did it on the same day that the council held a special meeting to hear the gas company employees’ appeal of the board’s decision.

At that Aug. 19, 2010, special meeting (“Has Fort Worth Lost Its Moral Compass?” Sept. 22, 2010), then-City Attorney David Yett explained to the council that despite the ethics review committee’s findings, the council didn’t have to see it that way.

They didn’t: The ethics violation finding was reversed.  According to the minutes of that meeting, Moncrief said it “was typical and standard operational procedure to ask citizens who were subject matter experts or industry experts to serve on the city’s task forces, commissions, boards, etc. He stated that the city had done this for years.”

After the violation was overturned, according to the minutes, “Mayor Moncrief requested a complete review of the city’s ethics ordinance.” Of course, Moncrief added, the council “certainly wanted to assure that the citizens had recourse when appropriate and to ensure public officials were independent, impartial, and responsible to the citizens of this great city.”

He also requested that the city attorney “bring to the council interim revisions that could be made to the city’s ethics ordinance to protect task force members” as well as any other interim changes thought necessary while the complete overhaul was being done.

And that set the tone for what’s been done since, said Ashford. “They were talking about what the city council wanted, but to me the ethics committee is there to protect the citizens from wrongs that the city officials might be doing.”

Louis McBee, a longtime activist and a co-founder of the North Central Texas Communities Alliance, believes the entire rewriting of the ordinance is being done to protect city officials. McBee has also filed ethics complaints. “Every complaint that Jim Ashford and I lodged was simply dismissed by the ethics review board,” he said.

Burdette — one of only two city officials who returned phone calls to the Weekly for this story — disagreed. “The suggested changes … will define and clarify some things in the current ordinance to make them more understandable to everyone,” he said.  “I don’t have a feeling that anything that’s been suggested lacks transparency.”

The ethics revision process seems to be flying under the radar of even some of the city’s most active watchdogs.

Several groups and organizations said they knew nothing of the code rewrite; others, including two longtime activists, said they are so disgusted with the way the city is handling this and other issues that they’re giving up on Fort Worth altogether.

“Something’s wrong there,” Wechsler said. “That goes to the heart of trust in government.

“The whole point of a city or state or any other agency or business having a code of ethics is to provide the community with a sense of trust,” he said. “And when an ethics code is written in such a way that provides little transparency, well, that public trust is shaken.” Ethics go beyond laws, he said, in recognizing that the appearance of undue influence or unfair dealings can be injurious to a city, regardless of whether the letter of the law has been followed.

“It’s really not difficult,” said Picht. “If you don’t have ethics in government, you have nothing.”

LETTER TO THE EDITOR FROM AN ORIGINAL ETHICS REVIEW MEMBER

To the editor: Peter Gorman’s “Ethics: Chipping Away” (Aug. 15, 2012) brought back memories. I was formerly a member of the Ethics Review Committee that heard a complaint on Aug. 19, 2010, against certain council-appointed members to an advisory committee regarding gas drilling. The article is as sad as it is revealing.  Nothing has changed in the way this city views its responsibility to be transparent to its citizens in the conduct of its business. That is the revealing part. The sad part is that nothing will change. According to Mr. Gorman’s article, even two longtime activists are “giving up on Fort Worth.”

Their hopelessness was evident during that hearing in 2010. Mr. Ashton (Ashford) and Mr. McBee were the personification of courtesy and respect as the case was presented, but it was clear that they believed no one was listening to them. Our committee carefully reviewed the facts presented and applied them to the provisions of the Ethics Code. Only one result could be reached: An ethics violation had occurred because the council-appointed members of the advisory committee were employees of the gas companies. The astonishment in the room when we announced that finding was palpable, on both sides.

As we left, the members of the Ethics Review Committee quietly said goodbye to one another, knowing that our service to the city was over. It took less than 48 hours for each of us to receive that call from the city. Mine came before the meeting to remove me was held, and I was told in advance what the vote would be.

Mayor Moncrief has been fond of touting his pride in the “Fort Worth Way” during his tenure in office. Fort Worth has many reasons to be proud as a community, but the revised Ethics Code under consideration is not one of them.

Rebecca C. Lucas, attorney at law

Fort Worth

BANKRUPT AND CORRUPT - INDUSTRY LEGACY TO FORT WORTH

Robert Redford. Actor and Environmentalist

Stop Public Handouts to Oil, Gas and Coal

Robert Redford, Reader Supported News

18 June 12

very year, around the world, almost one trillion dollars of subsidies is handed out to help the fossil fuel industry. Who came up with the crazy idea that the fossil fuel industry deserves our hard-earned money, no less in economic times of such harsh human consequence? We fire teachers, police and firemen in drastic budget cuts and yet, the fossil fuel industry can laugh all the way to the bank on our dime? Something doesn't add up here.

We should not be subsidizing the destruction of our planet. Fossil fuels are literally cooking our planet, polluting our air and draining our wallets. Why should we continue to reward companies to do that?

As they go after more expensive and harder to access fossil fuels, it is like drilling a hole in our pocketbooks. We pay more at the pump. We pay in taxpayer subsidies to a highly profitable industry. And we pay in the rising costs of climate change in the form of floods, storms and droughts that hurt our homes and communities.

Our world leaders are gathering in Rio over the coming days for a historic meeting twenty years after the first Earth Summit. We are looking to our governments to show leadership and commit to real timetables and actions for fighting climate change, including ending fossil fuel subsidies. Sure, they've made commitments to stop these unnecessary payouts. But commitments need to become action to have any meaning. And despite strong words, we are not yet seeing action on the ground.

In the United States, President Obama has repeatedly proposed cutting $4 billion in annual federal subsidies to the oil and gas industry and several bills to cut fossil fuel subsidies are stalled in Congress.

Think about what else we could do with one trillion dollars. We could create clean energy jobs, limit greenhouse gas emissions that create climate change and help make a healthier and more secure life for our children. Instead, we give 12 times as much in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry as we give to clean energy industries like wind and solar.

If you have a dollar to invest - investing that dollar in clean energy creates three times the jobs of the same dollar invested in the fossil fuel industry. In fact, studies show that fossil fuel subsidies slow economic growth. Clean energy is a great example of building a green economy. Ending fossil fuel subsidies is good for our pocketbooks, economic growth and for our health and environment.

In poll after poll after poll, the public says they want more renewable energy and less fossil fuels.

So why aren't our world leaders doing more to deliver what the public wants instead of what oil, gas and coal companies want? We need to hold our leaders accountable for the choices they make on our behalf.

People around the world are waking up to the absurdity of subsidizing Big Oil and Coal. Over a million people have already signed onto a petition to end fossil fuel subsidies. And on June 18, people from all over the world will be sending world leaders message on Twitter and Facebook to #endfossilfuelsubsidies.

Just last March, President Obama said,

Instead of taxpayer giveaways to an industry that's never been more profitable, we should be using that money to double-down on investments in clean energy technologies that have never been more promising.

These proposals have so far failed in the face of strong industry opposition and the fossil fuel industry is equally obstructive elsewhere in the world.

In a time of economic hardship, progressing climate change and a growing demand for reliable and clean sources of energy, using taxpayer money to help oil, gas and mining companies represent a reckless and irrational use of taxpayer money and government investment. We can do better. We need the fossil fuel industry to stop asking us to pay the price for their greed. We need our world leaders to turn their words into actions. And we can start by reminding them to #endfossilfuelsubsidies.

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Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.