http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------
CAMPIRANO GETS X-MAS GIFT IN FEBRUARY, AND LUMP OF COAL: 2 YR-CONTRACT EXTENSION, BUT SAME PAY, NO $5K BONUS OR COST OF LIVING ADJUSTMENT
---------------------------------------------------------------
By <strong>Juan Montoya</strong><br />Just a few short weeks ago, the board of directors of the Brownsville Navigation District turned down a proposal by Port Director and CEO Eddie Campirano for an across-the-board 3.9 percent raise for all port employees.<br /><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The board turned that down and instead gave a 2 percent raise for all hourly employees, leaving those with the bloated salaries at the same level.</div>We've listed the salaries of the top honchos here before, so it's no use beating a dead horse by listing them all again.<br /><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKOI7IIlOLQDLt_WT4z1dP4jWf6bS1fFc74au8UO5szUjFMRABStwzvyWon2c9jd9pH7lieRzW5Lj7o80QOSYcl4TwFyUnrnsMi-FFSsaT2xkq0OGxT95rhgjjy1LvMxd4yFbhDNkqjqQ/s1600/edc.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKOI7IIlOLQDLt_WT4z1dP4jWf6bS1fFc74au8UO5szUjFMRABStwzvyWon2c9jd9pH7lieRzW5Lj7o80QOSYcl4TwFyUnrnsMi-FFSsaT2xkq0OGxT95rhgjjy1LvMxd4yFbhDNkqjqQ/s400/edc.png" width="400" /></a>Well, last week Campirano's performance came up before the board for an evaluation and guess what? With only board member Tito Lopez absent, the other four commissioners â€" John Reed, Ralph Cowen, Martin Arambula and Carlos Masso â€" voted to grant him a two-year contract extension instead of three-years, no automatic $5,000 bonus or coast-of-living adjustments.<br /> Now, when you're doing a good job, the contracts normally come with a nice pay bonus.</div>Not so in this case, we're told. A request for information to the port indicates that the contract extension into 1214 will be at the same pay level that Eddie had before.<br />"They're sending him a strong message about his performance there," said a port insider. "Usually, those perks are expected. Not in his case."<br />In other words, those in the Campirano household will have to tighten their belts and make do with his paltry $175,000 annual salary and his $8,400 in auto allowance. That's only about seven times the average annual income of a Cameron County resident.<br />For Eddie, it's Christmas in February, a sort of Dia de la Candelaria compliments of the BND board.<br />This means that the majority of the board is satisfied with Eddie's performance up to a point.<br />So far, Campirano's track record is not one with which to pad his resume. At least two TIGER applications to the federal government (one for which the port paid $90,000 to Shiner-Mosely) have been turned down under his watch. If rolled steel cargo is going up it is because Mexico industry requires it and the closest geographical point for shipping is the Port of Brownsville. No one at the port, not Eddie anyway, can claim credit for the upturn in the market.<br />So far, the high-priced (and extravagant) junkets to Shanghai, China have been for naught except to provide a taste of the good life for Eddie and a few commissioners.<br />Personnel wise, the move is on at the port under Eddie to pack the staff with politically-acceptable candidates such as former Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia who went from overseeing 250 cops in the city to seven at the port at virtually the same salary, about $85,000. <br />His marketing director is none other than German Rico, son-in-law of UTB-TSC President Juliet Garcia whom Campirano served as TSC trustee. Rico has been wining and dining on the port's credit card up and down the western hemisphere with very little (except a few extra pounds) to show for his excesses.<br />An assistant harbormaster was hired at $56,000 before she even served her probationary period with the only qualifications she had on her application was that she had been in the Coast Guard.<br />Then, when a harbormaster was hired, it turned out to be someone who had sued his former employer and won hundreds of thousands of dollars on a whistleblower lawsuit. <br />And a recent study ordered by Eddie on the port's accounting department was filled with faux-pas galore including recommendations that certain employees (specifically supervisor Debbie Duke) be replaced and someone else be hired more to the liking of chairman Reed, his brother-in-law Mark Hoskins of Gulf Stream Marine, and a few disgruntled stevedores.<br />Talk about the inmates runing the asylum.<br />So now, unless a new crew is elected to the board this May, the port is stuck with Eddie for at least another two years. With the district well on its way to becoming the equivalent of a ropa usada outlet with its five or six shipbreaking companies gutting surplus U.S. Navy ships, it is now pegging its hopes on an application before the U.S. Energy Dept. for a liquefied gas plant that won't be operational until at least 1218 if the application goes through without a hitch.<br />But, with a salary seven times the median income of Cameron County residents, Campirano won't see the board's retaining him at $175,000 as a vote of non-confidence. <br />As long as the gravy the trips and banquets coming keep on coming, he's here to stay, folks. <em>Donde quedo el monito</em>?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6016803033174468094-8717348111801201191?l=rrunrrun.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
LINK: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2012/02/campirano-gets-christmas-in-february.html
---------------------------------------------------------------
AT UTB: LOWER ENROLLMENTS, LESS LOCAL MONEY, FINGER-POINTING AND CIRCLING OF THE WAGONS
---------------------------------------------------------------
By <strong>Juan Montoya</strong><br />Why are enrollments "unfortunately" going down at Juliet Garcia's UTB?<br />Why are professors' and instructors' heads on the chopping block and trepidation hangs like a miasma over the Ft. Brown Resaca?<br /><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Why is the hand-wringing audible all the way up to Austin so that Chancellor Francisco Figeroa has to come down and soothe the alarmed feelings of the natives?</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Psst. It's that fault of that dammed majority on the Texas Southmost College board that is going to stop the UT System from continuing to milk the college district like a prize-winning Jersey cow. If only they had listened to Juliet and her henchman Michael Putegant, both of who now carry so many handles that it's getting to be like asking the name of a member of the Spanish Royal Court for his or her name.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><em>Su Serena Majestad y Defensora de Todo Lo Bueno y Puro, y la Grandesa Del Reino Universitario que Camina Sobre las Aguas de la Resaca de Ft. Brown.</em> That's Juliet.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHbNMSpLsqITw2K-2OKhRWg3hEnVlmmDsLZsloehc9UuFDWhFy_wQ4CgEEZQRN4ae87K80YN6_NTGDEOp-0hw38PUAJ-e7f7eotL747N4DcZUjcpjrrM_7PviAAmMQvKBSOiO72koSURM/s1600/juliet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHbNMSpLsqITw2K-2OKhRWg3hEnVlmmDsLZsloehc9UuFDWhFy_wQ4CgEEZQRN4ae87K80YN6_NTGDEOp-0hw38PUAJ-e7f7eotL747N4DcZUjcpjrrM_7PviAAmMQvKBSOiO72koSURM/s400/juliet.jpg" width="253" /></a><em>El Senor y Majestead de la Puresa e Inteligencia y Provedor de Sabiduria y Jefe Lambiscon de los Pueblos.</em> That's Putegnat.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The campaign is obvious. When the $42 million in cost overruns were made public by the Spire Group after the tally for the $68 million construction bond issue went over $109 million, a barrage of letters from former board members who had been hoodwinked by this duo were issued and made properly available to the local daily who only too uncritically made them public for mass consumption.</div>The likes of Mary Rose Cardenas, Dolly Zimmerman, Chester Gonzalez, David Oiveira and Robert Robles all stepped forward like good soldiers in hobnail boots marching in lockstep and defended the chicanery and sleight-of-hand manufactured at the Gorgas Building where Garcia has her lair.<br />They attacked the messenger, the Spire Group.<br />They denied they had hoodwinked the public even though the report clearly stated that the boards were never presented with a full scope on the entire construction projects.<br />Then they said that the money they used to enhance the $68 million did not come from TSC, students or the local population. Well, let's see. They say they used millions from the interest on the TSC bonds. They say they used mone after they refinanced the TSC debt. They say they used some more millions from the TSC maintence fund.<br />Why is it that that name (TSC) keeps reappearing on the debit sheet?<br />Out of the entire $109 million, less than $5 million came from UT System sources. So guess who will end up paying for those "leveraged" funds?<br />This entire campaign seems like a warm-up toward the TSC trustee elections coming up in May. They are hoping that the voters of the district will forget that Garcia and her cadre of overpaid underachievers (a 17 percent student graduation rate over six years) will be forgotten by the taxpayers and that the vote for separation from the parasitic UT System (that was the recipient of more than $1 billion over 20 years in TSC [again] transfers) will be rescinded by a new, more pliable board.<br />Dream on.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6016803033174468094-5608507636047859401?l=rrunrrun.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
LINK: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2012/02/at-utb-lower-enrollments-less-local.html
RSS URL: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
This email sponsored by:
1&1 Internet - 6 Months Free on new Hosting packages
http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=7538907
This email is a service of QuickThreads.com.
To manage your subscriptions, login here:
http://www.quickthreads.com/myaccount.php
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment