Editorial: It's Time for Resignations at City Hall

Provided

By Thomas Warren III, Editor-in-Chief

A senior city staffer made an admission today at the Potter County District Courts building that should be recognized for what it is — a major bombshell.

On Thursday morning, attorneys for Alex Fairly and the City of Amarillo met for a hearing regarding Fairly’s ongoing lawsuit against the City for its decision to bypass the voters and issue $260 million in taxpayer-funded debt to pay for a rebuild of the Amarillo Civic Center. It is already ridiculous on its very face that our elected officials would try to bypass the will of the voters, despite the Civic Center project having been rejected twice in two different election cycles. However, the brazenness of the City Council to now just push the project anyway is something truly despicable.

While the project’s push from the City Council is bad enough, I’m not sure Amarilloans knew just how bold they really were in their deception until today. During questioning in court by Fairly’s attorney, T. Lynn Walden, Amarillo assistant city manager Laura Storrs admitted that the City Council published an incorrect agenda on the day the City Council voted to pass the debt on to voters, thus misleading voters on how the the debt would be guaranteed. According to Walden, the agenda for the meeting stated the debt would be made up of tax and revenue notes to pay for the project, despite the fact that revenue notes, which are funded through fee revenues like utility fees, were never a part of the discussion to pay for the project.

When pressed on why the City of Amarillo published an incorrect and inaccurate agenda for the meeting, misleading taxpayers and potentially violating the Texas Open Meetings Act, Storrs acted like a slimy politician and wouldn’t give a straight answer, saying that she had simply copied the agenda language from the language of a previous debt issuance, despite the fact that the previous issuance was funded, in part, by revenue notes, and this item would not include revenue notes. She eventually just told Walden, “it was a typo on my part.”

There you have it. Senior city staffers knowingly published an incorrect meeting agenda, potentially violated state law, and allowed our City Council to once again cover their tracks on their way to screwing the taxpayers.

You might be wondering why it matters that she listed the wrong item in the agenda. After all, all debt is debt, right?

Wrong.

Revenue notes are guaranteed with future proceeds from specific revenue streams in an effort to help offset the cost to the taxpayers. Essentially, it is a way for elected officials to promise that at least part of the debt from the project will not actually be passed on to taxpayers and will instead be paid by funds that are already rolling in the door through fees.

By claiming the Civic Center project would be funded in-part by revenue bonds, the City of Amarillo represented to the taxpayers of this community that the entire $260 million in debt for the project wouldn’t fall solely on their shoulders, and instead, the cost would be less to the taxpayer. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth, as the entire $260 million is expected to be paid for through property taxes.

Additionally, Storrs also told Walden that the actual property tax impact could carry an increase of up to 51 cents per $100 valuation, which would equal out to about a 115 percent property tax increase. Don’t worry though, because Storrs said the City hopes to refinance that cost so it won’t be the full 115 percent increase.

We should all feel really comfortable with that because we can always trust every word that comes out of a bureaucrat’s mouth, right?

Storrs said so many other things on the stand that cast the City in a bad light that it really would be funny if it wasn’t so sad for taxpayers in this city. Perhaps my favorite was suggesting that maybe the entire Civic Center project wouldn’t actually be funded by property taxes since using hotel occupancy taxes could be an option to pay off the debt. The only problem with that thinking is that the hotel tax revenues are currently leveraged to their maximum to pay off the debt our City Council took on to build Hodgetown. You would think a senior city staffer like Storrs would know that.

At one point, Storrs also suggested that members of a Civic Center committee appointed by the City Council had indicated a consensus that they wanted to rebuild the Civic Center in a way that would allow them to pay for the project without going to the voters. Meanwhile, former Amarillo City Councilman Randy Burkett, who was on the committee, was shaking his head in the courtroom, telling those sitting close to him that Storrs’ story about the committee’s supposed consensus wasn’t true.

However, Storrs wasn’t the only sleazebag to testify in court on Thursday. The City of Amarillo called as its sole witness during the hearing Steven Adams, managing director of Specialized Public Finance, Inc. Adams was brought in by the City of Amarillo’s attorneys to justify all of the debt the City Council took on for this project. When pressed by Walden, Adams ended up admitting on the stand that his company has a financial interest in the debt being issued, with his company standing to make up to $200,000 for their work in helping the City of Amarillo issue the debt.

Thursday made me feel awful about our local government. We truly have a bunch of conniving bureaucrats running things at City Hall who want to take every penny they can from the taxpayers, and a bunch of hired guns who are more than happy to help them do it, so long as the check makes it in the mail.

And what might be the worst part about this is our city officials’ blatant disregard for important state laws like the Texas Open Meetings Act, which is supposed to give taxpayers more access to government, not less. That law only works when citizens are truly informed about the functions of government, not kept in the dark by city staffers who don’t care if they provide the public with incorrect information.

I can’t believe our city government has gotten to this point. We all knew it was bad, but until Storrs took the stand on Thursday, I’m not sure we all realized this kind of conscious lack of care existed in our government.

We all knew Ginger Nelson had spent years lying to taxpayers every time she needed to get out of a jam. Remember when she announced she wanted an extended term, walked it back, then shamelessly pushed for it anyway? Remember when she deflected blame for the City Council moving its meeting times, despite the fact that evidence showed that she personally asked for it?

We all knew that Jared Miller had lied to residents to protect the bureaucrats at City Hall. Remember when he kept backtracking on stories about misconduct at Animal Management & Welfare just to protect the bureaucrats from accountability?

We knew all of these bureaucrats and slimy anti-citizen politicians weren’t for the taxpayers, but against them. However, did we really know just how far they would go to mislead the citizens of this city?

Amarillo taxpayers deserve way better, but we can only get better if we clean house. After the events of Thursday, I think it’s time for the house cleaning to begin.

I am calling upon Mayor Ginger Nelson and Councilmembers Freda Powell, Eddy Sauer, and Howard Smith to resign their positions immediately. They have let this kind of culture of disregard — or perhaps incompetence, depending on how you view it — to permeate throughout City Hall. By failing to do due diligence to ensure that the correct information was provided to the taxpayers about the debt issuance before voting on it, Nelson and her City Council showed that either they were ready to go to any lengths necessary to take advantage of the taxpayers or they had such a lack of care that they didn’t bother to see if the information was right. Either way, their actions were wrong, and they need to resign.

Furthermore, I am calling upon Storrs and city manager Jared Miller to resign. Both Storrs and Miller were tasked with bringing these issues up to the City Council and one or both of them failed to provide accurate information about this issue. If they won’t work to ensure that taxpayers have access to complete and accurate information about their city government, then they both need to start looking for other jobs. Their salaries are funded by taxpayers. It’s time they start acting like it.

The time has come for accountability. Our elected officials and the bureaucrats who enable them have taken advantage of Amarillo taxpayers for too long. It’s time for a change in this city and in order to make that change possible, it’s time to clean house.

Shame on all of you that have taken advantage of the Amarillo taxpayers. Our city deserves better, and if you don’t believe so, then I suggest you seek a job elsewhere.