Water Boarding

Word on the street is, the Tarrant Regional Water District has decided to extend their terms on the board until 2013.

What's that going to cost YOU?

We're betting they'll say it's about saving money on the election, NOW their worried about saving money?

Maybe they need it for future restaurant endeavors.

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More Culture of Corruption

From the Tarrant County breeding ground.  Via Watchdog Nation.

And in the Watchdog's column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth retirees double dipping is described as "common".  Well, these folks learn from the best. 

UPDATE: In January 2012, federal prosecutors announced that Spencer Barasch, formerly chief enforcement officer in the Fort Worth, Texas office of the Securities and Exchange Commission, had agreed to pay $50,000 to settle charges that he violated federal conflict-of-interest standards by providing representation for financier R. Allen Stanford, the Associated Press reported.

Barasch is now a partner with the Dallas law firm, Andres Kurth LLP.

Malcolm Bales, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas, said the fine, the maximum amount allowed under law, shows that the government is serious about cracking down on former federal officials who attempt to us their influence in the private sector, the AP reported.

Bales said, “There should be zero tolerance for people who serve the public and then go into the private sector and use [that service] for personal benefit,” he said, according to the AP.

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Different Texas agency, same Texas corruption?

The North Texas Tollway Authority keeps making the "news".  WHY?

Because they've been through 5 guys in 5 years.  WHY did the latest head resign?  Because he was going to be fired.

WHY?  Because he thinks some of the million(s) of tax dollar relationships with some of the same companies since the 1950s are too cozy.  And maybe all those connections the board members have with the companies and politicians could be considered a conflict of interest. 

Hell, this is Texas...WHO are we kidding?

Is it time for the sunset of NTTA?

It ain't the only "Authority" that's overdue.

When it comes to Toll (Toal?) Roads and Rivers, it's all about WHO you know.


Some notes YOU can't afford to miss in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram articles this week.

The recommendations come after several potential conflicts surfaced involving individual board members, as well as the tollway authority’s institutional relationship with a handful of firms that are paid tens of millions of dollars per year to perform engineering, legal and other services.

Board chairman Kenneth Barr of Fort Worth disclosed that his brother is a lawyer with Locke Lord, a firm that does about $6.9 million a year in tollway authority legal work. Barr said he consulted with the tollway authority’s legal counsel, also a Locke Lord attorney, before accepting a board position in 2008 to ensure there was no ethical conflict.

The report said the tollway authority had “perceived and potentially real conflicts of interest” with HNTB, an engineering firm that is currently under contract for about $15 million a year in tollway work. When asked later what that meant, Alvarez & Marsal managing director Ron Orsini said the audit has uncovered a situation in which one HNTB consultant was approved to pay an invoice for another HNTB consultant – all with the tollway authority’s blessing.The report didn’t attempt to catalog how often the arrangement existed, or how long the practice had been in place, Orsini said.

Ethnicity has become an issue in recent months, when tollway staff disclosed that most of their contracts are awarded to firms governed by white males – although the report points out that the tollway authority is making progress in diversifying its contractors.

But the report also found that tollway staff publicly discussed winners of procurement contracts before the board had voted to approve the contracts.“Some board members did not trust the staff’s procurement process. It’s not clear when a procurement officially ends,” said Eric Noack, Alvarez & Marsal vice president.

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Mighty Neighborly

The Trinity River Vision Authority strikes again.  The Tarrant Regional Water District voted to use eminent domain to take more existing businesses and property.

JD Granger says they have tried to get to know the owners.

What was different about this Tarrant Regional Water District meeting?  Someone of the board asked questions. 

Read about it in the Fort Worth Business Press.

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Promises - Part 2

Betsy Price has been making many promises.  Let's hope she doesn't follow Moncrief's Fort Worth Way with those.

Read about those promises in the Fort Worth Weekly.

However, Static must point out that Moncrief (who endorsed Price over his longtime friend Jim Lane) said the same thing when he was seeking the job in 2003. Back then, the average person felt excluded from the local political process; city officials wanted to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on a questionable downtown project (a luxury hotel); the school board was wrapped in turmoil; voters were pissed off. Any of this sound familiar?

(Brink said Moncrief had a solid record as a state senator, and the most controversial thing about him was personal rather than professional: He’d sued his uncle Tex Moncrief over the family oil money.)

Moncrief told Brink he had no “hidden agenda” (his staunch support for unfettered urban gas drilling would become quickly and painfully obvious). He wanted more collaboration between the city council and the school board (didn’t happen). He agreed with tax abatements in certain cases but said they should be hard to come by (ha!). He looked forward to moving from the legislature to the city council because local politics is “closest to the people” (many of whom he would later bully or ignore when they disagreed with him). He listed his priorities, beginning with a “user-friendly” city hall.

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Right on the Money

A letter in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram speaks volumes.  There's no abundance of water but while the city goes broke, the Tarrant Regional Water District and the Trinity River Vision Authority seem to have an abundance of money.  Someone should ask the gas drillers and the politicians where they got it? 

Trinity travails

Tubing on the Trinity, skiing on the Trinity, wakeboarding on the Trinity, kayaking on the Trinity -- we have all this while area lake levels are dropping at what should be an alarming rate.

Please tell me I'm not the only lifelong resident of Fort Worth who remembers when crossing the Trinity most summers meant not getting your feet wet.

The Trinity River Vision in conjunction with the Tarrant Regional Water District is wasting our most precious resource by creating the illusion of an abundance of water in downtown Fort Worth.

By now, economic development by the water district should be considered a clear conflict of interest. How do you draw new business into a region where lake levels are at double-digit lows, where they will be soon, and where future water resources are a question mark?

Tubing on the Trinity is not the answer.

-- Keith Charles, Fort Worth

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WHO in their right mind

Would support (push) SB 875? 

Read about it on TXSharon.  WHO elected this gashole?

If you keep electing people like Bonnen, then you should at least pay attention to the ways these people misuse their office and stop pretending that you are the party of personal property rights.

The Denton Record Chronicle quotes attorney Kirk Claunch on his opinion of the amendment:

“I can’t think of any piece of legislation that’s more un-American than one that deprives a private property owner of the right to defend themselves against abuses from a big oil company or anybody else,” Claunch said. “This is law that essentially says we are going to let the oil and gas industry do whatever it needs and to run over anybody that gets in its way without any consequence.”

Rights, what rights?  This is the new Texas...unfortunately headed the Fort Worth Way...

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YOU are invited!

Come see the new Paradise Center! 

Kudos to the Paradise crew and friends!  Carry on!!

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