Home of Today's Common Sense

 Published in The Brownsville Herald June 10, 2007

The news in the last two weeks has been full of stories of public officials not following their own rules and violating their oath of faithful service to the people they represent. This just not those instances where criminal activity has been discovered but instances where individuals have done things that look like conflicts of interest such as using job appointments to ensure political support or have benefited from a  business  relationship that can be influenced by the public office. In the case of the Port of Brownsville the report of the bridge examination indicated that employees and / or one of the Commissioners had signed checks for payments that were not approved by the “Board” and even though they were not even authorized to sign. Perhaps there were extenuating circumstances but still a violation of the rules in place and served to diminish the confidence in the management. The loss of confidence as a result of the apparent horrendous port mismanagement has been again been aggravated by some of the same players disregarding their own rules to appoint another Port CEO, that does not meet the requirements of the position. Mr. Campirano may turn out to be an excellent manager, but when there were no applicants that met the published requirements those requirements should have been publicly revised and the position re-announced.  More »