someone to watch over you

The daily advertising circular known as the Amarillo Globe-News continues to tilt at the windmill known as city health insurance for commissioners. Today the paper informs us that the city has spent $105,200 on this "perk." Well-- as always with the Globe-News, we must read carefully. The headline says the insurance cost the city $105,200. The article begins

City health insurance for commissioners began to emerge as a political football as early as February, when City Manager Alan Taylor asked for legal guidance about the practice that has cost the city about $73,800 since 2000.

The city has spent $105,200 in premiums and claims since 2000 to insure its elected officials, their spouses and dependents.

Officials enrolled in the plan - Mayor Trent Sisemore, City Commissioners Debra Ballou McCartt, Robert Keys and Terri Stavenhagen and former City Commissioners Kevin Knapp and Dianne Bosch - in that time period have paid $31,400 in premiums into the city's self-insurance fund.

It took me a few seconds with a calculator to sort it out: the total cost was $105,200 of which participants paid $31,400 leaving $73,800 for the city to pay. That's less than $19,000 a year. So for the cost of less than one modestly-paid city employee we get four city commissioners and a mayor. It doesn't seem excessive to me, but I guess that depends on your tolerance for government spending.

It's clear that the Amarillo Globe-News headline was misleading. Their motivations for bringing all of this up are not so clear. If they're just educating the public about commission actions that are all too often shrouded in the secrecy of mid-afternoon meetings, then they're doing a public service. Of course, we libruhls think education should be reality-based and misleading headlines aren't exactly reality-based.

In any event, several questions come to mind:

• City Manager Alan Taylor stated that

  There had already been [in February] some of the comments from some of the candidates that they were going to make this an election issue.

  Who are these candidates? Who was asking about this policy in February - immediately after Trent Sisemore announced that he would not seek a third term? How did this person or these people-- who obviously are not incumbents-- become aware that commissioners are eligible for city insurance? Why specifically are they concerned about this practice? And why did the AGN attempt to make things look worse than they are?

• City Manager Alan Taylor also stated

  that he asked [City Attorney] Norris for the opinion about a week before the attorney issued it, and he only learned that commissioners received insurance benefits a week or two before that.

  Alan Taylor was Assistant City Manager for seventeen years before becoming city manager last year. Why did ignorance of this policy extend so high up? Why, in fact, do our former city officials-particularly John McKissack and former Mayor Keith Adams-have such bad memories on this issue?

• According to the AGN,

  Former Mayor Keith Adams, and former commissioners McKissack, Kevin Knapp, Dianne Bosch and Kel Seliger voted unanimously to pass the risk pool resolution.

  Knapp bristled when asked about his eligibility, Bosch defended hers, and Seliger, McKissack and Adams claim they don't remember. McKissack speculates that he and Seliger were "left out of the loop." What specifically was the process that led to commissioners' eligibility? Would different decisions have been made-and would people's memories be better-if city commission meetings were held in public? (Holding meetings at 3 p.m. on a weekday is tantamount to locking the door and posting a sentry.)

As I have stated I don't care about the fact of commissioner eligibility. I don't think it's an issue at all. But I am almost always out of sync with Amarillo voters. If something was done under the radar that most voters disapprove of, that is an issue. And, frankly, commissioners' behaviour is beginning to "smell bad," as Republicans are starting to admit of Tom Delay.We at PTS renew our call for city commission meetings to be held at an hour when more citizens can attend and monitor the proceedings. Like the plans to demolish Arthur Dent's house in the late, great Douglas Adams' The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy our city commission's proceedings all-too-often appear to be

on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard."

SPACEDARK