Travis County Commissioners Court
May 19, 2009,
Item 43
Item number 43 is a delicate little item and what happened, I tried to indicate here circumstances, I think I did a pretty good job on these three or four points here.
when we introduced the ap -- three applicants that came over to the city for the joint appointment to the Travis County healthcare district board of managers, our thinking, my thinking was we would select one of those three, send it back and that would be the final selection.
>> judge, that was a shot, wasn't it, judge.
>> yes, that they did send us when we determined selection for the purpose of on the that short list?
>> right.
those three.
>> all right.
>> when we communicated to them our selection, though, they indicated that they had not interviewed those three they sent over and they thought the process was for them to then conduct the interview.
and now to be honest and -- I sent out a memo that outlined that as one of the options.
basically two subcommittees and we would each interview their subcommittee, our subcommittee, somewhere along the way I guess I got frustrated because I guess not enough was being done.
so my position was send us the three over, we will interview them and choose one.
that's what we ended up doing.
but when we chose our one and sent it back, they interviewed all three and came up with a different prospect, and so I chattered with ms.
-- with council member shade, who seemed to be a spokesperson for the city's subcommittee of three, and what was clear was that we would not be able to compromise on any one of those two ourselves, so counsel member shay cameout and discussed and p with all kinds of options and landed one in our e-mail and basically we came up with a new committee, one member from the mayor's court and the challenge was to try to come up with somebody that had not been as actively provided in the process as counsel member shey and me so from the Commissioner's court perspective that would leave four people.
and from her perspective that would leave four also, because she and counsel member martinez and counsel leffigwell were active and she said let's get to a group of people, I thinkkiget city council to him in this and I said Eckhardt did not participate in the interviews maybe she can help.
>> this is my punishment for not doing that.
>> and to be fair I did discuss with Commissioner Eckhardt before this before I put the e-mail together.
she didn't comment one way or another and she saw it as arrange opportunity, I think and I said rather than have two people, I think I need three.
>> I had continuing legal education, I was not lying buy the pool.
>> so both counsel member mar has and Eckhardt are in the community resource council and vanessa seria, who is executive director of can is interested in health issues and in my view can be fair and we said okay, last time we were using different notions, my notes and I thank y'all had notes about what kind of member we need to complement current members on the current council and I can tell you others had different ideas and I said why don't we contact the board of managers and ceo and see what they think they need and give that information to the three subcommittee members.
i also said, now, at Commissioner's court, the court has to sign off on this compromise process in order for us to go in this direction and she believe that is her subcommittee has the authority to do it.
the other thing was, whatever name if any -- and they, by the way, would only interview those two.
if there is a consistent candidate, whatever name comes from the group of three we will bring back and get everybody to agree.
she thinks the council would have to agree and the council would and I said the Commissioner's court would have to agree, too.
i think I can say that if they sign off on this process, the implication would be, if they think the result is fair, then they will sign off on the selected person, too.
>> judge, I -- my concern is probably in several directions.
but in my -- in my view, there needs to be a way whereby this will never occur again.
that's what I would like to see the city council and the Commissioner's court to agree, how do we prevent impasse from occurring when we take the time out to do intense interviews and spend a lot of time in these things, we come up with a selection and that selection isn't endorsed by the other entity.
the process, in my opinion, has to be binding, bone fide, I guess to -- to -- so we don't have to go through this again.
and number two is that when we received a short list from the city of Austin, it was my understanding that they had, you know, they have no problem with whomever we select on this.
I thought they had already interviewed themselves and these were the persons that they were sending forward.
that's what I thought when we received the list.
but apparently that may not have been the case.
but I thought that that's what the short list was all about.
anybody you choose from this short list, you know, it appeared that the short list was one of the persons we selected.
and so it looked like it fell within the realm of who they sent over here for us to consider.
and then for it to go back and say -- , well, you know, we -- we have chosen someone else other than who you -- who the Commissioner's court selected kind of -- in my opinion, is not appropriate.
but, anyway, it happened.
now the question is how do you fix it.
that may be an alternative, I don't know, but how can we prevent impasse situation from ever happening in the future.
>> the thing is we need to call the process that we -- that we reduce to writing, discuss at our respective bodies, we do you see the lack of memoranda of understanding in a written document and basically execute it, that way it will be clear and apparently they had not interviewed these three people when they sent them over.
like the rest of the court, I thought they had.
their interview came after we sent back one game.
>> but hasn't they done this in the past?
in other words this is the first joint deal we have had since being on the court?
>> no, what we did -- what happened the time before is we had our four plus the one.
we sent over five, and we said choose one of these as the joint appointee.
>> yeah, yeah.
>> any one of those five will due for us.
q.
exactly.
>> because at that time we had the luxury of appointing the other four as just county appointments so we had four and a half and we said, okay, you choose any one of these and that will be our half and the other four will be our appointments because that was the first time that we did it.
>> right.
>> this time unfortunately, we were only looking for one to serve as joint appointee.
>> but the point is they recognized that initial request that we made when we sent those names over.
they did choose from that --
>> you know, I had never dealt with council member shey and I don't think she dealt with me seriously and that makes a little difference.
>> the city has, in all fairness, the city and the county still have four -- four appointments each and this one is joint.
so essentially we were, at least my understanding was, we were attempting to implement the same procedure we had utilized last time except just the shoe being on the other not.
>> yes.
as close as possible was my thinking.
now, I don't know -- I don't think either one of these three was on the court before, were they?
not the court but the council?
i know counsel member shey was not and I don't think martinez was because he was only there two years and leffingwell was.
clearly it was kind of muff this time and the way to prevent that is to come up with a written documents that clearly as close an agreement as possible, if not one, and then we know how to conduct business, but when we branched on -- and I think -- brainstormed and we did it there good faith, that this is the best compromise process we could achieve.
>> I agree it is the best compromise.
i wouldn't be in favor of it as an ongoing policy, but in this particular circumstance.
>> yes.
>> as a compromise, it -- I am disappointed that it put mrs.
hailey and ms.
daniels and ms.
cortez in the position of having been interviewed twice by two different bodies only for two of them to be interviewed yet again for a joint body.
>> yes.
>> but I am a game.
>> but the last time I chatted with one of them and from what I know with Commissioner shey about the other, they are both keenly interested in curving and I thought, well, what about the next appointment, and the problem is that so far our appointees have been incredibly active, have attended all of the meetings -- or virtually all of them and it looks like the ones that have an opportunity to serve are also keenly interested in being reappointed at the next opportunity so it's not like we can truthfully, say, hey we expect one of these to come up every year.
>> judge, what I am afraid of is that we may lose that person that I supported.
that was mr.
hailey, anthony hailey, and I am just not going to go there.
i voted -- you know, supported him and we sent that over there and I think the city dropped the ball, so --
>> but I -- it's not that you agree with what you are saying.
>> I understand.
>> but I am not going to go there, because I am going to stay with the person I voted for.
we have a chance to lose that -- that person that we supported in court here.
there is a good chance of that.
>> so...
>> I believe that this is a good solution to the current problem which just needs to be dealt with, but I also want to say that I have some serious concerns about the appointment process being the new kid on the street, in that a board is important of healthcare district needs to maintain an important balance of representation so I was already of the mind that and encouraged that we look at process of appointments to ensure we have a balance of all types of representtation, whether it is professional or ethnic or whatever, that it's on there, so I just would say I would like to throw out now that the sooner the better to start that process so we have it refined by the time we need it next go around.
>> and mou would be important with what the judge suggested, because again, I don't want to have to revisit this again.
i don't think no one else does, either.
>> may I ask -- for one thing, over the short time I have been here I have -- I have frankly been quite impressed with our open process for making appointments that are just ours.
they're always in open meetings.
we interview publicly and I am really proud to be part of that and I reviewed the video prior to my vote of the process that we had and it was -- I was proud of what we did but even more proud of the unbelievable candidates that we got and I want to encourage them to continue applying and I am afraid, as you are, that they won't apply if the process becomes full of this kind of stuff and I also want to explore and I don't think we are posted for this, but hopefully it might be good for us to explore -- opportunities to serve.
there is so much work to go around in regard to indigent healthcare so that we do have this incredible stable of people who applied and when we consider the fqhc board for community care, also the high likelihood of campaign to increase the healthcare district's tax rate -- yes, I said it.
someone -- my e-mail will be full when I get back to the office -- but I think no matter who is selected, my hope is that we can encourage the other candidates, not just the one other that we interviewed, but also the other three that were in our top rankings, as well as some of the others that didn't make the top six, to continue to be engaged either in community care or in the effort to adequately fund our indigent healthcare.
would that be something appropriate to explore?
to kind of ramp up in advance a recruiting effort for those?
i guess that qhc wouldn't be appropriate but --
>> for the ones for which we have an appointment.
>>
>> [multiple voices]
>> it does seem to me, though, that if you have residents volunteering to serve on different boards, if you don't select them for the one that they applied for but others later become available, then we would try to share the news of that opportunity with them.
>> uh-huh and hmr is another board that is closely related on -- on indigent healthcare issues.
i just hate to see sweet talent.
>> and we had outstanding candidates and my thought is if we start from scratch there would be no guarantee we end up at the same same displace with the same applicants and I didn't think it would be fair to ask mr.
hailey and ms.
daniels just to forget about it and look at the ores, because they were the original and my view is we chose a person that we thought should serve as the city's position and it chose the person so both of them are qualified, it is just we didn't have two opportunities.
we only have one.
>> move approval of your compromised solution.
>> second.
any more discussion?
all those in favor?
show Commissioners, Eckhardt, mutant and Davis.
>> I abstain.
i support, my decision on that.
>> and also we will tell counsel member shey and inform hailey, he was supposed to go to the subcommittee so we will keep everybody posted on that.
okay.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, May 19, 2009 2:00 PM