Central Health, UT Med School, get the lawsuit they so RICHLY deserve....

"Defend the poor and fatherless;
Do justice to the afflicted and needy."
Psalm 82:3

It's about time, via the Austin Bulldog:

Three Travis County taxpayers filed a lawsuit this morning against the Travis County Healthcare District, dba Central Heath, and its president and CEO Mike Geeslin, complaining that property tax funds are being used for purposes not authorized by the Texas Constitution and state statutes.

If successful the litigation’s biggest impact would be to force Central Health, through its nonprofit Community Care Collaborative, to stop giving $35 million a year to the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School. That would make vastly more funds available to provide direct healthcare services available for indigent, uninsured, and underinsured residents of Travis County.

Under an Affiliation Agreement, that yearly allocation has already yielded $105 million for the medical school through FY 2017 and the $35 million annual payments are scheduled continue in perpetuity. Stopping that flow of money would undermine the financial foundation upon which the medical school was built. In June 2012 the UT Board of Regents committed $25 million a year to operate the medical school and $5 million a year for eight years to equip laboratories, but made those funds contingent upon the community providing $35 million a year. Otherwise there would be no medical school.

The lawsuit petition tackles that premise head on: “The issue in this case is not whether it would be cool or wonderful to have a medical school in Austin (or whether defendants consider other goals cool or wonderful). This suit is necessary because defendants are not complying with Texas law and are expending funds on items unrelated to its statutory authorization of providing health care to our poor and vulnerable residents.”

Read the whole thing here.

Reconfigured UT Board given heck over Central Health's improper subsidies for Dell Medical School....

"Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord,
But a just weight is His delight."
Proverbs 11:1

As a glutton for punishment, we briefly stopped by today's UT Regent meeting to hear UTIMCO's annual report.  Nothing interesting there.  But there was something else modestly fun.

As we highlighted last November, Central Health (the Travis County hospital district) has been improperly subsidizing operating expenses at the UT Medical school.  This flows from a shady as all heck arrangement that arose from the 2012 tax increase to allow Central Health to partner with UT Austin on the Med school.  Technically, their collaboration was supposed to be limited to helping Travis County cover "indigent health."

Today, activist Fred Lewis presented findings to the Board over the degree to which Central Health has instead been funding the payroll for the UT Med school; as it turns out 84% of total compensation for the Dell Medical school has been coming from Central Health.

It gets better: Apparently, the Dell Medical school has no records of Central Health funds being used for indigent health.

Of course, it's UT; they don't care.

That being said, it was fun to watch Steve Hicks act all butthurt over this: "I take exception."

Bottom Line: Considering the degree to which  UT is protected by the Governor these days, they'll get away with everything, but it was still fun to watch them squirm.

Kent State Massacre: UT Politburo's Chickens Coming Home to Roost....

Look over our right shoulder.

"For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself."
Galatians 6:3

We attended last night's painfully pathetic UT Men's basketball game.  During the second half, we sat almost directly in front of Chancellor McRaven.  It was unplanned, but considering our (unintentional) choice of attire for the evening, it was amusing.

But that doesn't excuse what happened in the game, and what happened in the game illustrates how the corrupt institutional mismanagement that has plagued the past decade has finally bled into the athletic department.

LOSS.  TO KENT STATE.  AT HOME.

The Statesman attempts to spin it positively:

The excitement of Christmas has given way to the drudgery of exchanges.

Texas followed one of its best all-around games with one of its worst in a 63-58 clunker against Kent State on Tuesday at the Erwin Center.

Texas set all kinds of offensive season highs in a 36-point blowout over Alabama-Birmingham last Wednesday. Players and coaches then went their separate ways for the holiday break. They returned looking worse for wear.

The Horns had 18 turnovers and shot 36.2 percent and fell to 6-6 heading into Friday’s Big 12 opener at Kansas State. Jarrett Allen was the leading scorer with 17 points and had 10 rebounds. But Kent State’s Jaylin Walker poured in 24 points and the Flashes got 15 more from Deon Edwin.

Texas’ final possession summed up the whole night. Trailing by three, Eric Davis Jr. tried to get loose on the baseline but got stuffed by Jimmy Hall. Kent State (8-5) got the loose ball, went the other way and just ran out the clock.

Tevin Mack, the Longhorns’ leading scorer, was shutout of the scoring column until a layup with 2:29 left made it a one-point game. He followed that with another score as the two teams traded buckets down the stretch, bringing a decent-sized crowd to its feet.

With Texas down by three, Kerwin Roach Jr. went in for an off-balance layup attempt and missed. The Flashes went the other way, and Jaylin Walker threw down a vicious dunk with 33 seconds left for a five-point lead.

But there's no way to spin this positively; forget elite, even a modestly competent program should be able to beat Kent State at home.

Let's face some facts about the UT Athletic department:

• The Football program is coming off back-to-back 5-7 seasons...and hasn't done anything interesting in seven years.

• The Men's Basketball program is in last place in the Big-12 and had a .500 run through non-conference play...and conference play is going to be very ugly.

• Let's not forget the Steve Patterson fiasco.

THAT'S what the good-ol'-boy network that runs the institution has produced.

First it was the "forgivable loan" slush fund at the law school.  Then it was the $215 million accounting scandal.  Then it was the tax hike for their Med School.  Then it was the secret admissions program.  Then it was the land grab in Houston.  Then it was the tuition hike.  Just last month, they spent $17 million to purchase a toxic waste dump in El Paso.

Throughout all of the misdeeds listed above (Author's Note: And that's only a partial list of the nonsense they've pulled over the past 5 years) we've been predicting that eventually their arrogant corruption would bleed into the athletic department.  Guess what gang...that day is here.  In case you forgot: Back-to-back 5-7 football seasons and a basketball team that just lost to Kent State at home.

Bottom Line: The University of Texas brand name retains tremendous value, which wouldn't be difficult to restore under genuinely new management genuinely committed to change.  That day will eventually come.  The only question is how much pain they want to put themselves (and the rest of us) through in the interim.

Bill for UT Medical School keeps growing....

"There is desirable treasure,
And oil in the dwelling of the wise,
But a foolish man squanders it."
Proverbs 21:20

SIGH, and we just got through saying something nice about the Board of Regents:

UT medical school’s cost hits $436 million, a $100 million increase

The price tag for building the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas has gone up by more than $100 million — in large part because the original figure didn’t include completing much of the interior of a building that will house various clinical areas and a same-day surgery center.

The UT System Board of Regents is expected to approve a $436.4 million budget for the Dell school Thursday, nearly all of that sum underwritten by bonds. That is $101.9 million, or 30 percent, more than the $334.5 million cost originally approved by the board in May 2013. Since then, senior UT System officials approved three separate increases that stepped up the price to $367.4 million, thus putting Thursday’s expected increase at $69 million.

The regents’ Facilities Planning and Construction Committee approved the plan unanimously Wednesday, but not before Regent Alex Cranberg questioned the increases. Michael O’Donnell, associate vice chancellor for facilities planning and construction, said the increases weren’t cost overruns but anticipated expenses because some interior spaces were left as shells until the medical school dean was hired to guide decision-making.

Read the whole thing here.

Addressing Texas' EXPLOSION of Special Taxing Districts....

"But the former governors who were before me laid burdens on the people, and took from them bread and wine, besides forty shekels of silver. Yes, even their servants bore rule over the people, but I did not do so, because of the fear of God."
Nehemiah 5:15

Watchdog outlines a subtle, but important, issue:

When former Texas Comptroller Susan Combs issued a report in 2012 on special purpose districts — largely invisible layers of government with the power to charge property and sales taxes — there were 1,675 of the suckers.

She sounded the alarm, waived the flag and irritated a few people in the process. But the special purpose districts continued to sprout up all over the state, now growing to about 2,000.

Combs is still beating the drum about the issue, even though she’s since left public office.

“There has been no effort to rein any of this in,” she said Friday.

Indeed, these ghost-like governments have continued to proliferate, according to data from the comptroller’s office. According to U.S. Census data, as of 2012, Texas has the third most special districts in the nation, trailing only California and Illinois.

....

Although a legislative committee was set up in 2013 to oversee the districts, Combs said, “They won’t do anything.” The lobby supporting the districts, from law firms that make a lot of money off the districts to mayors to judges to school superintendents, has been too powerful. Combs tried to get a transparency bill passed in 2013, but it was killed twice on the House floor on points of order.

“There’s a lot of interests that have a huge financial stake in the districts,” said John Colyandro, executive director of the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute in Austin. “Particularly those with not just taxing authority, but with bonding authority and that’s quite a lucrative area to be in.”

If you're a conservative, eliminating most (if not all) of these districts is a no-brainer; it's a testament to the entrenched power of taxpayer funded lobbyists that the number of these entities is exploding when it should be collapsing.

Here in Travis County, we're actually somewhat lucky.  While there are some small MUD's and water districts in outlying areas, for most of the County Central Health (our hospital district) is the only special district to which we're subjected.  Of course, their record is bad enough.

Enter Jay Wiley.

Last September, following their most recent abomination, Jay Wiley endorsed ABOLISHING Central Health.  To our knowledge, Jay Wiley is the first candidate to explicitly campaign on eliminating a specific local entity.  That stands in contrast with an incumbent who filed a bill last session to create a NEW special purpose district in Western Travis County.

Bottom Line: To curtail these unaccountable sources of taxation, legislators need to eliminate them within their districts. Unfortunately, the taxpayer funded lobbyist industrial complex loves these entities.  Kudos to Jay Wiley for endorsing the elimination of Travis' County's "Central Health" hospital district....

Robert Thomas and tax hiking Six-Figure U.T. Executives

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves."
Matthew 7:15

While working on an unrelated post about poor financial stewardship at U.T., we noticed an interesting detail:

Pay soaring for some UT System executives, records show

....

Meanwhile, at the University of Texas System, which oversees the Austin flagship and 14 other campuses, the Board of Regents has awarded handsome raises to some executives, and a bit of a hiring spree is under way after years of declining employee rolls.

....

Other system executives have seen their pay soar in recent years, the records show. Amy Shaw Thomas, vice chancellor for health affairs, is drawing $343,000, 52.4 percent more than she made when she was promoted to the position in 2009.

[Author's Note: Emphasis added]

 And who, pray tell, is Amy Thomas?!?

Of course, that "world class academic medical school and teaching hospital" was financed by a tax hike on Travis County residents in 2012.

And that same U.T. Medical school is the anchor of the current urban rail boondoggle.

Furthermore, the U.T. Athletic department is already preparing the way to ask taxpayers to finance a new basketball arena.

Which begs the real question: How can we trust Robert Thomas to fight for taxpayers instead of U.T. boondoggles that would benefit his household income?!?

On Texas Democrats favorite Abortion Talking Point

One of the Democrats favorite talking points during the current abortion debate is that the proposed legislation is opposed by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Texas Hospital Association, and the Texas Medical Association.

At first, it sounds important.  These are groups with 'credentials.'    The real story requires digging.

First up, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists supported Obamacare:

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has long been a proponent of comprehensive health care reform and this weeks' enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care for America Act extends health insurance coverage to an additional 32 million Americans. "Ob-gyns see first-hand the devastating effects that the lack of health insurance or underinsurance has on our patients," noted ACOG President Gerald F. Joseph, Jr, MD.

ACOG credits the President and House and Senate Democratic leaders for including many critical elements of ACOG's Health Care for Women, Health Care for All campaign that will greatly improve women's health, including guaranteed maternity coverage; eliminating pre-existing coverage exclusions for women who are pregnant, have had a previous cesarean, or are the victims of domestic violence; eliminating gender rating that causes women to pay more than men for the same insurance coverage; creating coordinated care centers for women and ensuring direct access to ob-gyns; expanding family planning services for low-income women; and providing access to vital preventive screenings including mammography and Pap tests.

This bill (HR 3590), however, leaves several critical issues unaddressed, including medical liability reform and repeal of the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) used to determine physician payments in the Medicare program. "As ACOG embraces the many positive features of this legislation that will improve the health and well-being of our patients, we will continue to press for national medical liability reform and repeal of the SGR," says Dr. Joseph.

In addition, during the 2009 debate over Obamacare, ACOG recommended rationing of Pap Smears.

Next, we have the Texas Hospital association, who support Medicaid expansion:

“Hospitals agree with the governor that the Medicaid program is flawed. Below-cost reimbursement to providers creates an access-to-care problem for the millions currently enrolled, and there have been legitimate concerns about whether the program can sustain the millions more who would be able to enroll under PPACA,” said Dan Stultz, M.D., FACP, FACHE, THA president chief executive officer. “However, without Medicaid expansion, many will remain uninsured and therefore will seek care in emergency rooms, shifting costs to the privately insured and increasing uncompensated care to health care providers.”

In addition, THA supported last fall's Hospital Tax Increase in Travis County. 

Moving on, Texas Medical Association ALSO supports Medicaid Expansion:

The Texas Medical Association, which represents physicians across the state, announced on Saturday that it would support the Medicaid expansion if lawmakers can devise a way to give Texas “the flexibility to change the plan as our needs and circumstances change.”

“You have the two major entities that represent the delivery of health care in Texas saying this is something that we definitely need to look at,” said Dr. Carlos Cardenas, vice president of the TMA board of trustees, adding the organization recognizes “there are issues within the present Medicaid program and that the Legislature is in a position to come up with some reforms to shore up the system.”

BOTTOM LINE: Three organizations with long histories of supporting progressive legislation are opposed to conservative legislation; sorry Texas Democrats, that's not news.

The Daily Texan's Prop. One Hatchet Job

"Congress shall make no law...abridging ...the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition Government for the redress of grievances."  United States Constitution, First Amendment.

On most issues, I wouldn't dignify the Daily Texan with a response.  Their coverage of national and state issues is liberal, predictable, and tiresome.  Today, however, they need to be held accountable for their corrupt hit piece in a low-turnout Travis County referendum.

Travis County Prop. 1 is a boondoggle that enriches the U.T. bureaucracy at the expense of middle class homeowners.  If passed, Prop. 1 would increase property taxes 63% to finance a medical school that the largest hospital in Travis County says we don't need.  I've already voted no.

Which brings us to the front page of Today's Daily Texan.  Under a (relatively) neutral headline "Prop. 1 fight rages on," the paper then alleges to objectively present the two sides' stories.  To say that there is an editorial thumb on the scale in favor of this 63% tax hike puts things quite mildly.

The first article, "No to tax increase, PAC says," details the 'no' position.  For some reason, the author mentions that the citizens opposing this 63% tax hike have formed a political action committee three times between the headline and first four paragraphs.  I guess there's something nefarious about concerned citizens exercising their first amendment rights.

By contrast, the pro tax-hike article "Powers: Prop. 1 necessary for UT" uncritically echoes a mass e-mail UT President Bill Powers sent to UT students, faculty, and staff.  The article is a glorified press release.  While the article amplifies a number of irrelevant or questionable claims by Powers, my personal favorite is that the article fails to fact check Powers' assertion that "UT is by no means rich."  Really?!?  An institution sitting on $1 billion in Gold and a $300 million television network is "by no means rich"?!?

Normally, I don't care what the Daily Texan says.  Travis county Prop. 1, however, isn't about the Daily Texan or the University of Texas.  This is about protecting middle class families from an arrogant and predatory U.T. bureaucracy.  Travis county Prop. 1 is a corrupt boondoggle.  Media outlets that uncritically amplify claims made by its proponents should be held accountable.

Contact the editor: firingline@dailytexanonline.com