Did you see this story in the El Paso Times?
The mayor and the City Council said Monday they will look into taking over the board of the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority as the city tries to recoup the money it lost to a phishing scam.
The criminal investigation continues.
“If you want to hold the city responsible, allow the city to take control of the board and have oversight so they can see what action is being taken and be responsible for actions taken by the employee,” Mayor Oscar Leeser said during a City Council meeting to review Tuesday’s agenda.
Whoa.
I don’t think we’re going to get the truth here.
According to their website, the CRRMA has seven board members and one Executive Director, the only employee. Seven bosses. Doesn’t that sound like a great job?
I imagine what happened here was the Executive Director just forwarded an email to the City, who accepted the email without giving it a lot of thought. That phisher slipped in through a chink in the bureaucracy.
Leeser said that the city might agree to release the emails that he said show the interactions between the CRRMA employee and the city that might show how the situation unfolded. He also said he wants to go over them with the CRRMA board.
[CRRMA Board Chairman Susan] Melendez said there was a brief meeting with city officials in which they briefly looked at some of the emails, but she would have liked an opportunity to go over them more closely.
A brief meeting in which they briefly looked at some of the emails. That sounds exactly like the way the City does business.
“We were in a meeting where the information was presented, but we had no time to actually look at the information or study it and we were not allowed to keep it,” Melendez said.
The council and CRRMA were set to have a joint meeting Tuesday, but Leeser said he wants to instead propose that the city attend one of the mobility authority’s meetings to be able to discuss in executive session the emails that he said show what might have led to the loss of Texas Department of Transportation funds to the scam.
And Executive Session.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Lemme ask you: Wouldn’t you feel better if the City were running things?
Yeah. Me neither.
Seeing how our City Council has just got too much on their plate these days to give things more than a cursory, oops, I mean “brief”, look at such small matters which after all only involve public funds, perhaps we could farm this task out to an entity with more time on their hands. I’m speaking of the Sunland Park City Council. As long as there is money involved I feel quite sure they would be willing to provide their professional services for some in depth swindling, oops, I mean scrutiny.
Ever get the feeling there is too much money sloshing around?