Thursday, May 28, 2009
From today's Statesman: Nine more testify in Pedernales co-op inquiry
Send your comments to online.editor@valleyspringcomm.net
or to Ms. Grisales, cgrisales@statesman.com
See the full story here: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/05/28/0528pec.html
Austin American-Statesman, http://www.statesman.com/
By Claudia Grisales
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, May 28, 2009
JOHNSON CITY — Nine people with ties to Pedernales Electric Cooperative, including a state Capitol lobbyist, appeared Wednesday before a special Blanco County grand jury looking into possible criminal violations by former co-op officials.
Curtis Fuelberg, a lobbyist and brother of former longtime co-op General Manager Bennie Fuelberg, entered the Blanco County Courthouse room where the grand jury was meeting and exited about eight minutes later.
A review of Pedernales' books last year uncovered $510,000 in unexplained payments to Austin law firm Clark, Thomas & Winters. The firm has said the payments were linked at least in part to money paid to Curtis Fuelberg and William Price, son of former co-op Director E.B. Price.
The elder Price also appeared before the grand jury Wednesday; his son met with the panel previously.
"I'm cooperating fully with the investigation and can't really discuss it more than that," E.B. Price said before entering the grand jury room. He served a brief term as president of the board after the resignation of W.W. "Bud" Burnett in early 2008.
Wednesday's session — the fourth since the special grand jury was impaneled in February — was the busiest yet.
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6 comments:
How long does it take to hold accountable the former CEO and Board Directors? Why does big money always march to different laws than the rest of us?
These former 'varmints' should be forced to return all the money they pilfered from coop members with interest and that money should be placed into a fund that provides all coop members with cheaper monthly costs of electricity for however long the money lasts.
All that money taken and still the coop is going to raise its costs to consumers.
All those vacations and perks and still the former leaders are free citizens, forced to stay at home.
It is unethical and it stinks like week-old fish. But the beat goes on and on...
Yeah, and what's it going to take to get this news organization to wake up and see the corruption that goes on day in and day out in the DS Water Supply Coop? I mean come on guys, $100,000 salaries for the general manager of a "non-profit", with a retirement package that will be of a lump sum value of $750,000 (or more) when this guy retires? Hello, remember Bennie Fuelberg?
The guys at the Water Supply must have all the dirt on the local politicians, and the newspaper people as well. No one, including that self-righteous hypocrite, Charles O'Dell - supposed watchdog of the people - won't tackle this issue. He supposedly even told someone that he just didn't think people cared about the Water Supply issue, and so he wasn't going to pursue it. Funny, I thought Charles didn't care what the public sentiment was - corruption is corruption.
If Charles won't write about it, or blog about it, why don't you Rocky?
Mr. A #2: I can tell you this. O'Dell knows more about the DS Water Supply than you think. You are terribly mistaken in your false allegation. I have alerted O'Dell that you'd like some insight into the DSWC. It will take more space than there is to 'splain it to you.
And you accuse the newspaper of being complicit. These small town papers don't do any investigative reporting; contact Claudia Grisales at the Statesman; she's a fine reporter.
And lay off Rocky, too. If you could write 1/10 as well as Rocky--you wouldn't be submitting comments, you'd be submitting essays to Mr. Ochoa.
Dripping Springs City officials want desperately to control Dripping Springs Water Supply Corporation, the member-owned public water system in Dripping Springs, and have made outlandish and unsupported comparisons to PEC they know are false. There appear to be two primary reasons why City officials want control of DSWSC and will do most anything to achieve that control: To bolster out of control City finances and to resolve a personality conflict between City officials and the DSWSC general manager.
The DSWSC general manager runs a well operated and well maintained public water supply, while City officials rely on expensive outside consultants who have jeopardized City finances by relying on fees received from years of development in its huge extraterritorial jurisdiction. Those fees have fallen to a trickle with the economic downturn, and now the City of 1,600 is left with cost overhead it can’t sustain without raising property taxes, engaging in special municipal management districts and other legislative support from the tax tag team of Rose and Wentworth. This is the duo who introduced HB 2166 and SB 1960, both designed to circumvent free and open member elections for DSWSC board seats.
Here’s what I have documented about the DSWSC City officials covet.
Dripping Springs homeboy and state representative Patrick Rose filed an open records request with the DSWSC and obtained all the records requested, including financial records, financial and TCEQ system audits, bylaws, board election records, member list and other documents.
Rose didn’t report any irregularities. TCEQ recently conducted an all day system inspection and found an exemplary operated and maintained public water supply.
City officials have the same documents as Rose and know claims of corruption and irregularities are unfounded. I was recently told by a high City official that DSWSC didn’t have outside financial audits and that only DSWSC supported candidate names were on the ballot. Neither of these claims is true. Just as Rose and City officials, I have a copy of the most recent of many outside financial audits and a copy of the most recent ballot. All candidate names are on the ballot, including the City backed candidate who held public meetings, and who mailed his candidate information to the 1,066 DSWSC member-customers, using the list he obtained from the DSWSC. He received 40 votes.
The DSWSC has for many years achieved the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s Superior Public Water System rating. The current general manager has been employed by DSWSC for over twenty three years and despite all efforts to discredit his efforts the customer-membership continues to support his operations that deliver superior and reliable water service at responsible rates.
As for the GM salary and retirement, I commend the members who pay for quality and high performance rather than trying to get off on the cheap. Retirement compensation of $25,000 annually after 30 years of delivering high performance water service seems a bargain in these days of slipshod operations and excessive compensation. The real DSWSC comparison is with Aqua Texas. I know which I would choose.
Charles - As always with you the truth is always just a little shaded. When one compares the PEC and DSWSC elections it is a matter of the proxy ballots that the two are similar. The proxy ballots did not have the third candidates name. Why? Because the committee that determines whose names get put on the proxy ballot was the Water Supply. Guess who they put on the proxy ballot? The incumbents. Not the third candidate? Why? For the same reason PEC's proxy ballots never had anyone else's name on it either.
So, if as normal, you lie about this, what else have you lied about? If these documents that you purport to have are available, why don't you turn that information over to the Century News for publication? Can you support your claims? Will the DSWSC let their clients see a copy of the proxy ballot and the ballot used if you came to the voting event? (Which I understand was delayed while the board decided that they wanted to count the proxies first, which then delayed the election by the better part of an hour. Guess their concern for people's time is nonexistent. They would rather play their little games to get people to leave because they don't want the vote to go any other way, besides the way they want it to.)
So Charles, since you are so in the know, put up or shut up. If you are holding the cards that you say are magically available, then release what you have to the general public - just like the investigation on PEC did - turn it loose.
Anonymous, the co-op is not going to raise rates.
As for the AG investigation, it's on-going and from all inside accounts he's looking for criminal activity that can be prosecute. But until he finds it, there's not much that can be done. Unfortunately, just being a jerk isn't illegal.
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