Which Came First, The Corrupt Politician or The Special Interest?

            In my first two entries, I have been focusing on the inappropriate relationship of special interests between the City of Laredo management and elected officials. I very much wish to continue along this trajectory; however, the focus will not be First Recycle and the revised city recycling program. I will be focusing on CDM and the methane feasibility studies. What I am writing, I am writing from firsthand experience and the conversations I have had with members of city management. My testimony is not from speculation or second hand information gained from third person parties. This is not my opinion! It is expert testimony and as such would prove invaluable to any court interested in indicting individuals involved in the abuses mentioned to determine if infractions of laws were committed. (SIGH)…I know where the “bodies” are hid, but it seems no one is interested in finding them.

            Let us now proceed to exhume this body. CDM is an engineering firm with an office based in San Antonio, Texas. Their area of expertise, at least the San Antonio branch, and their association with the City of Laredo has been with waste water and water utilities. In 2011, CDM, along with other firms, responded to a Request For Qualifications (RFQ) in reply to city management’s interest in a possible waste to energy program using the methane gas produced at the landfill. The purpose of the study was to assess the potential of the landfill’s digester gas, methane, as a viable long term, sustainable resource. RFQ’s which meet the specifications prescribed by the city are scored by department directors, and the firm with the highest score is generally awarded the contract. The scoring system is in place to ensure all companies capable of meeting the specifications have a level playing field and an equal opportunity to do business with the city. This system, when properly administered, is also advantageous to the city by guaranteeing the most competitive price for a service is obtained.  Unfortunately, this is the point where the system is most likely to be corrupted and the integrity of the system undermined. I will demonstrate this shortly.

            CDM was awarded the contract, in 2011, to conduct a methane feasibility study which was completed in 2012. According to the scoring system, CDM was the highest scoring vendor; despite not being the least expensive vendor. A few months ago, there was some media buzz about the city’s interest in conducting a second methane feasibility study.  This proposal sparked a lot of debate about the need for such a methane study and the costs associated with it. What most people did not realize was this will be the second study conducted. So why is a second study needed?  It is not needed. The cost of the first study was $138k. The real problem with this study is the cost associated with it. I have talked to two independent firms since who stated they could have performed this study for $30k. So why did it cost $108k more than it need to? The answer is because of special interests supported by our city management and our elected officials. This is yet another example of taxpayer subsidization of private industry. This second study is going to cost over $330k to conduct and millions of dollars in taxpayers’ money if it is implemented. The awarding of a second contract  for a second feasibility study with CDM allows me to demonstrate what I meant about the scoring process being corrupted and  not fulfilling its potential and designed use in  providing a level playing field for vendors and guaranteeing the most competitive price for the city. Violating this scoring process is a violation of state law. City management awarded CDM a second needless contract for the methane feasibility study despite the fact that another firm scored higher and should have been awarded the contract if, indeed, a second study was actually needed.

            I was privy to the results of the first study. The results indicate that attempting to use methane to power a generator in order to produce electricity and feed it back to the electrical grid would produce a whopping $0.04 per kilowatt hour over a ten year period. Do these results sound like our city management and elected leaders are being fiscally responsible? Of course it does not. I wonder if they read a prospectus for a stock that stated the same dismal return on their capitol over the same time period, if they would willingly and gladly fork over their hard earned money to buy shares. I doubt it.  The problem is someone is profiting while the taxpayers take a shellacking. This example is one of the “smaller” examples of taxpayers’ money being misappropriated. I will be exposing all the abuses I have a personal of knowledge of, but my exposure of political corruption must continue in gradations for two reasons. First, I want to establish a pattern of corruption and abuse of power within the city management. Second, I want to ensure the culpable parties do not become comfortable and their criminal actions do not cease to be noteworthy after a week. Until my next entry, think about how all this abuse is just from one department. Count all the city departments and estimate how much taxpayer money is potentially being wasted annually.

If anyone would like to contact me, they may do so at: dmills1679@gmail.com

Laredo City Mangement Lack Morality

This blog entry is meant to compliment my last contribution dated Oct 8, 2013.    

I used to believe that a lack of investigative journalism was responsible for the continued political corruption Laredoans witness. I now know this is not the truth. The cause of the corruption in Laredo is due to a lack of morality. People may not accept my assertion and counter that they are moral because they do not hurt children, murder, or rape; however, refraining from such actions does not necessarily affirm morality. What I mean is most people would not commit such heinous crimes in the first place. A person who actually lives by a code of ethics and possesses morality should be experiencing internal conflict when attempting to, or are being coerced to commit an action they know is wrong, because they are searching their consciences for ways of reconciling that action with their personal code of ethics. If a person is not experiencing this internal conflict, or lack the intestinal fortitude to speak out against the immoral; then they have no ethics. Now that I know the cause of this corruption, I can illustrate how a lack of morality, by our City management, perverts the current Recycling Program allowing it to become more of a benefit to special interests than to the taxpayers.

            In July of this year, 2013, the City of Laredo Solid Waste Department stopped delivering collected residential recyclables to the Material Recovery Facility (MRF) at the landfill because of upgrades to equipment. Instead, they began to deliver all recyclables to a warehouse in the 900 block of Logan Street off of Market Street. Further, all stored recyclables which had not been processed at the MRF were also transferred to this warehouse. This is no big deal to some readers; however, think about what the conditions inside a metal building without A/C, during the hottest months of the year in Laredo, would be like. Further, consider what those extreme conditions would do to any residual organic materials which were comingled in the recyclables. Correct! They began to decay and a putrid odor was detectable in the neighborhood and blue bags and other plastic items were strewn across the landscape. I know this for fact because I witnessed it firsthand. I witnessed rotting materials piled to the roof of this warehouse. The unacceptable conditions in this warehouse had persisted for almost two months and were becoming difficult to conceal from the local residents. The City management realized this too because Solid Waste began working overtime during the first week of October to remove this offal from the warehouse and store it outside at the landfill. After witnessing these abhorrent conditions, I personally went to Fox News and then called KGNS Pro 8 News, on October 4, 2013, to inform them of this offensive health hazard. Sadly, no reporters investigated until a week later when all the recyclables and the offending odor were removed and the area tidied. A coincidence? Perhaps. In any event, the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ) did respond to my complaint and is investigating the incident.     

              I would like to make clear that the length of time the recyclables were stored at the warehouse was due to poor planning on the part of City management and not directly linked to a lack of morality on their part; however, it is also important to realize that failure to formulate a contingency plan in case of unforeseen delays in the upgrades of the MRF stemmed from their stupidity, but I digress. The storing of trash/recyclables in such close proximity of a residential neighborhood does, however, stem from a lack of morality. In fact, which councilman allowed a neighborhood in his district and his constituents to be treated with such contempt and disrespect? More importantly why? The answer to the latter questions is because of City management’s commitment to subsidize First Recycle with taxpayer dollars. The warehouse in question is owned by AX Forwarding; a sister company of First Recycling. Since the City was nice enough to foot the $8 million dollars, courtesy of the taxpayers, to create a recycling program complete with updated equipment and curbside delivery which First Recycle will profit from, a person would think AX would just allow the city use of its facility free of charge. This is not the case. The City was paying AX Forwarding $5K a month for its use. If prodded, City officials may try to justify their actions by stating it is a violation of the City’s Code of Ethics to accept donations or gratuities from companies or persons they are doing business with, in this case AX Forwarding, and are justified in their payment for use of the facility. However, this is not a defense because the City did not seek at least two other quotes from other warehousing companies in order to benefit from the lowest bid. This is a direct violation of City of Laredo purchasing policy. While this infraction of their own policies may not be illegal, I maintain it is highly unethical and demonstrates a lack of concern by City leaders to consider the welfare of the taxpayers as priority. Instead, City leaders openly favor the private interests they currently support.

            While writing this piece, my thoughts kept returning to the people of the District III neighborhood who were shown such disrespect by City leadership who allowed this hazard to defile their communal residential space. If this had been a warehouse near Shiloh, Del Mar, or Regency would the councilman/men of those districts have allowed such a hazard to be created in the midst of their constituents in the name of special interests? I doubt it. What about the media? Would the local news outlets have taken my complaint seriously and reported the facts surrounding this health and fire hazard if it existed in an upscale sub-division? I bet dollars to doughnuts they would have. Would the City Health Department have issued citations to the owner(s) of the warehouse if it operated in a more northerly locale? Of course! Would the City fire marshal have issued citations to the owner(s) for creating a fire hazard? In a heartbeat. If anyone doubts my assertion, just think back to the Big Green Monster. The objection to the Monster was a matter of aesthetics and not incited due to health and fire hazards. So just imagine…

 SIGH… The above listed hypotheticals just reinforce, at least in my mind, that a lack of morality is the reason political corruption is so prevalent and wide spread; especially in Laredo. If we study the events as I have described them, we will see that if one councilman would have exercised a sense of morality and shielded his constituency from unethical practices (which is what he was elected to do) he might have forced the rest of City management to act with integrity by default. What could be more immoral than politicians using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private businesses? In concluding this rant, I proclaim that the only thing more immoral is the lack of respect and the contempt that residents of this District III neighborhood have been shown by City management, the local media, and sadly, their own elected councilman.

Taxpayer Subsidization of Private Business in Laredo, Texas

It is regrettable that self interest and greed can sabotage the best of programs and the best of intentions. It is little wonder that people have become so apathetic towards our political process, to even the Municipal level. Below is just one example of the consequences of political apathy:

The City of Laredo has invested a lot of money into its current recycling program. In the past, they had partnered with Southern Sanitation, and the partnership produced negligible results at best. When Southern Sanitation declined to renew their contract with the City, the recycling program fell entirely within the scope of City of Laredo operations. To the surprise of no one, the program blossomed and produced better results than it did while in partnership to a privately owned business. This is why it is so surprising that City Management would insist on allowing a private business to sabotage the recycling program once again.

             The amounts of recycled materials reported for fiscal years 2011 and 2012, by the City of Laredo to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) were about 1% of the total residential trash collected for those years. In other words, to realize a savings of one year’s worth of air space in the Landfill, it would take 100 years of recycling efforts at the current pace.

            Given these stats, I was enthused when the City announced it was implementing a mandatory recycling program citywide. My enthusiasm was short lived, as a partnership soon formed between the City and the company First Recycle. I found this partnership particularly disturbing because I saw no reason to privatize a program that City services could manage alone, with potential profits never realized during their partnership with Southern Sanitation. The fact of the matter is the City owns the Material Recovery Facility (MRF) and the trucks that collect and deliver the recyclables. The City also pays for the fuel and maintenance of these trucks. Further, City employees collect the recyclable materials and City revenues pay the $1.25 per-ton fee the City must pay to the TCEQ for all rejected materials that must be landfilled.

            The commitment City Management has made to this endeavor and their partnership with First Recycle is one which is not to be taken lightly. The City has invested $8 million of a $12 million bond acquired for this purpose. The City has invested $2 million dollars in purchasing blue bins and an additional $6 million in modernizing the MRF with updated equipment. What has First Recycle invested in this program? Not one dollar! Of course this is such a sweetheart deal that First Recycle has recently extended their  current 3 year contract with the City to a five year contract .Why do City Management and our elected Council members insist on supplying all the necessities of running a successful enterprise yet insist on allowing a private business to profit? The answer—special interests.

            It is regrettable that a program with so much potential has been reduced to nothing more than a Trojan horse. The program appears excellent, but it actually hides a deep, exploitable flaw. In its current form, the recycling program is now nothing more than taxpayer subsidization of private business. Can council members really defend this decision?