Gainesville Daily Register (Gainesville, Tex.), Vol. 127, No. 172, Ed. 1 Saturday, April 29, 2017 Page: 4 of 14
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4 - SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 2017
GAINESVILLE DAILY REGISTER
Opinion
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
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Fate of key transparency bills remains uncertain
Kathy Stanisich, Appleby
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Gainesville Mayor
Jim Goldsworthy
Gainesville City Hall, 200 S. Rusk,
Gainesville, TX 76240, 940-665-7777
YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS
President
Donald Trump
The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania
Ave., Washington, D.C. 20500
www.whitehouse.gov/contact
U.S. Senator
John Cornyn
517 Hart Senate Office Bldg.,
Robbie Baugh
Chairmain, Gainesville Hospital District Board of
Directors
FIRST AMENDMENT: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Fax: 202-225-3486 http://thornberry.
house.gov
Texas Governor
Greg Abbott
P.O. Box 12428, Austin, TX 78711
512-463-2000, http://gov.texas.gov
State Representative
Drew Springer
Vice President
Mike Pence
Executive Office Building, Washington,
D.C. 20501
vice_president@whitehouse.gov
Integrity of the court
The integrity of the courts must be upheld in the highest
degree. When the courts base their decision on an opinion of
the people and show one-sided facts then they are not serving
the defendant or their community.
A grand jury hearing is held in secret. The defense or the
defendant is not allowed in this secret hearing and therefore
no evidence is brought to the court showing that the
defendant may not guilty. Although the prosecutor has an
ethical duty to bring evidence showing that the defendant may
not be guilty this is not enforced. As a result the jurors most
often will return an indictment for the prosecutor. Basically
all the prosecutor needs is probable cause or we think the
defendant is guilty because...
According to the National Registry of exonerations out
of 228 child abuse cases 192 of them were convicted due
to perjury or false accusation.This happens due to lack of
evidence, witnesses were manipulated, threaten or coerced
and probable cause of evidence on the defense side was not
allowed.
Long before the grand jury is held the descriptive alleged
crime is presented in the newspaper and on social media
and the defendant has now been tried, found guilty and
prosecuted months before the case will even go to trial. Before
the grand jurors step in the court room they have already seen
the descriptive alleged crime on the news or social media and
have come to their own conclusions.
I believe in justice where the law is fair and balance. When
a prosecutor does not present the diversity of the case to the
jurors they neither serve the community nor the defendant
that they indict. When the local newspaper presents the
descriptive alleged case in the paper and/or social media it also
does not serve their community or the defendant.
The prosecutor, the jurors and the paper have a sacred and
ethical duty to present both sides of the case with an unbiased
opinion to their community and not try a case before there is
a trial. If it is not fair and balance it is discrimination giving into
corruption.
Hospital board responds
I write in response to the recent letter from regarding
Gainesville Hospital District.
As has been reported previously, the board made the
difficult decision to file Chapter 9 primarily to ensure our
employees and former employee's pensions are paid.This was
done in close consultation with the Attorney General's office
to ensure state law was fol lowed. Those pension obligations
represents promises made in years past and not ongoing or
new costs. There was no other way to ensure the district could
get access to funds to keep the pension solvent.
The district's financial problems are a combination of
multiple factors, including a large indigent care burden,
declining federal reimbursements, the failure ofTexas to
expand the Medicaid program, the fact many residents travel
to Dallas or Denton for specialty care and other factors. It has
become difficult if not impossible to operate in the current
environment as a standalone independent facility.
The board is currently working with JP Morgan, one of the
most reputable firms in the financial markets.The district
asked for a two-year rate because a long-term rate would be
higher due to the Chapter 9 status. The district will still save the
taxpayers more than $1 million even having to do a permanent
refinancing after Chapter 9.
The board reviewed many possible options to Chapter 9 and
the bond process, but the only other real choice was to lock the
doors and leave the community without a hospital.
The district board are all volunteers who spend countless
hours away from their businesses and families on hospital
business. Our goal has been to preserve our community
hospital, to protect our employees, and protect our taxpayers.
We will continue to do that until we can resolve the Chapter 9.
Washington, D.C. 20510,
Main: 202-224-2934
Fax: 202-228-2856
www.cornyn.senate.gov
U.S. Senator
Ted Cruz
404 Russell, Washington,
D.C. 20510, Main: 202-224-5922
Fax: 202-228-3398 www.cruz.senate.gov
U.S. Representative
Mac M. Thornberry
2525 Kell Blvd., Wichita Falls, TX, 76308
Main: 202-225-3706
State Senator
Craig Estes
P.O. Box 12068, Capitol Station
Austin, TX 78711, (512) 463-0124
Cooke County Judge
Jason Brinkley
Cooke County Courthouse, Gainesville,
TX, 76240, 940-668-5435,
jason.brinkley@co.cooke.tx.us
P.O. Box 2910, Austin, TX 78769
512-463-0526,
Gainesville: 940-580-1770
www.house.state.tx.us/ members/
A
AUSTIN — There’s no question that Americans —
particularly Texans — are increasingly suspicious of
government. Trust in government is at a dangerously low
level.
That’s why virtually every candidate who runs for the
Texas Legislature loudly proclaims that he or she is all for
transparency and accountability. Unfortunately, campaign
season is a distant memory at this point in Texas’ legislative
session. Lawmakers have spent four full months in the
company of lobbyists who are paid nicely to convince
them that the interests of their clients are threatened by
transparency.
Today, with only a month remaining, a Legislature that
began as a tabernacle-sized choir singing the chorus of
transparency has dwindled to a small combo that could
rehearse in a two-car garage. With time running out
and important pro-transparency bills hanging in
the balance, it’s time for those who sang in the choir
during campaign season to remember the music.
Six transparency bills must pass to restore Texas to
what it once was — a state with some of the strongest
transparency laws in the nation. For that to happen, i
citizens must tell their legislators they expect them
to come down on the side of the folks who voted
them into office.
By asking where they stand and then watching how they
vote on these bills, you can judge for yourself whether your
lawmakers are walking the walk on transparency. Then you
can hold them accountable at the primary ballot box next
spring.
The first three bills are extremely important. Last year the
speaker’s office urged transparency advocates, governmental
groups and other stakeholders to hammer out transparency
measures they could unite behind. The groups met for 11
months, and these three bills were among the measures they
all agreed to support:
• HB 2670 by Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, would
close a loophole that enables officials who use their private
electronic devices for public business to hide records that
should be public. That’s illegal, but because of the loophole,
the law goes largely unenforced. The bill puts teeth in the
law by establishing a process for the attorney general to use
against scofflaws.
• HB 2710 by Hunter would restore access to dates of birth
in governmental records. A 3rd Court of Appeals ruling
made much of that information off limits. Without dates of
birth, it can be impossible to determine which John Smith
is which. As implementation of this ruling spreads to other
regions, it hamstrings members of the public seeking detailed
child-support information, sex offender lists, even political
candidate applications. It also hinders the work of mortgage
companies, background check companies, data firms such
as LexisNexis, and the media. Without this information,
stories such as the abuses at the Texas Youth Commission
would never come to light. Without date-of-birth information,
businesses, citizens and the media would have no way of
correctly identifying people with common names who have
conviction records and the like.
• HB 3848 by Hunter includes provisions of the previous
two bills, and also would require a governmental entity to
notify a citizen who requested information if there’s nothing
available. If the governmental entity has the information but
believes it’s not required to release it, the entity would have
to explain why. Currently, the entity can choose to simply say
nothing, and the citizen is left to assume that his request was
Send your letter to the editor to editor@
gainesvilleregister.com. All letters are
subject to editing for clarity and length.
One letter per writer will be published
in the same week. All letters must
contain a physical address and daytime
phone number. Only names and
hometown will be published.
/
Donnis Baggett
CANADA HEAVILY TAXES IMPORTED MILK,BUT
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placed in File 13, fostering even more distrust in government.
Bills that are agreed upon by major stakeholder groups
normally sail through their committee hearing. But these
three important bills met stiff opposition at a hearing in the
House Government Transparency and Operation Committee
on Monday, and now their fate is uncertain.
Here are three other bills that need to pass to restore
Texas’ standing as an open-government leader:
• SB 407 by Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, and its companion,
HB 792 by Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, aim to
repair the damage done by a 2015 Texas Supreme Court
ruling. The court ruled that businesses and governmental
entities can withhold information about their contracts with
each other by claiming the information might put them at
a competitive disadvantage in the future. Using this
\ easy cover, city officials in McAllen sealed information
I on the amount they paid singer Enrique Iglesias
to sing in the city’s holiday parade. And the city of
Denton sealed contract details on the largest capital
project in the city’s history — a quarter-billion-dollar
municipal power plant being built with taxpayers’
money. There are hundreds of other examples, and
the list is growing daily. SB 407 has already passed
the Senate. Like the previous bills, it is pending in
the House Government Transparency and Operation
Committee.
• SB 408 by Watson and its companion, HB 793 by
Capriglione, aim to undo another bad 2015 Texas Supreme
Court ruling. Ignoring decades of precedent, the high court
ruled that a non-profit organization paid by the City of
Houston to perform economic development work was not
subject to the public information act. The result: taxpayers
have no way to know how that money was spent. The Houston
situation isn’t unique. Many economic development groups
receive the lion’s share of their funding from governmental
entities, and often the same elected officials who allocated the
money to them serve on the groups’ boards. SB 408 passed
the conservative Texas Senate overwhelmingly, despite
strong opposition from business interests. It too is pending
in the House Government Transparency and Operation
Committee.
• HB 3581 by Capriglione would give a citizen who requests
governmental information the ability to get the information
in the format in which it’s filed. (Some entities produce a PDF
file even when a requestor asks for an existing spreadsheet,
making the information harder for the requestor to analyze.)
The bill would make available much-needed details on how
the data is organized, the computer program that was used
and the heading of each column of information in a document.
(Yes, some entities actually respond to a request by providing
charts with no column headings, leaving the requestor to
guess what the numbers mean.) The bill is also pending in —
you guessed it — the House Government Transparency and
Operation Committee. Like the other bills, it needs to be voted
out of committee and get a House vote immediately.
A democracy without transparency is not a government
run for the people. It is run on the backs of the people. Only
the people themselves can put an end to that.
Please tell your legislator what you think. You’ll find
contact information for legislators and legislative committees
at www.legis.state.tx.us.
And don’t wait until election season to call. Do it now.
Donnis Baggett is executive vice president of the Texas Press Association. He
lobbies for open records, open meetings and public notices by government.
His email address is dbaggett@texaspress.com.
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Armstrong, Mark J. Gainesville Daily Register (Gainesville, Tex.), Vol. 127, No. 172, Ed. 1 Saturday, April 29, 2017, newspaper, April 29, 2017; Gainesville, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1323962/m1/4/: accessed July 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Cooke County Library.