news – Carol A. Spencer

The Emporer Has No Clothes

Today, Mel Cooper who serves as chairman, treasurer, and person calling the shots at Bastrop County Conservatives, sent out an email to his list asking people to show up at the Bastrop City Council meeting tonight.

Emperor has no clothes Why? He says it’s to “demonstrate what kind of leaders and citizens we want in our public offices”. Is it that, or is there more to the story?

Among the list of alleged accomplishments of the city manager was that she “Maintained flat tax rates, the only jurisdiction in the county to do so, while other areas raised theirs.”

Tax Rates. Politicians point to tax rates all the time saying they lowered them or kept them stable. Pointless. Of course the tax rate will be stable or lower in a city growing like Bastrop. More and more dollars pour in as more and more buildings are built and taxed.

SPENDING is the key. I note that Cooper didn’t comment about spending. It doesn’t fit his narrative.

So what about double-digit raises? Paying a temporary employee the equivalent of a 6 figure salary. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a witch hunt against a duly-elected city official. Having the authority to spend up to $50,000 on any given item without Council oversight and approval. Accepting waivers from the City Council to buy a house outside the city limits when the City Charter demands living within those limits (a charter provision just reinforced by a public vote in November).

I note Cooper’s email mentions none of those.

It makes sense, though, that he comes to his Council buddies and Carillo’s, defense. After all, they voted to donate $25,000 to Cooper’s pet project last year, the “Festival de la Cultura”. And, it seems Carillo and crew went out of their way to make that happen. Here’s the timeline:

October 19, 2023: Texas Secretary of State records show the non-profit was formed effective October 20, 2023 with Mel Cooper as one of 3 directors.
The staff report is undated, however the supporting census information was created 10/19/2023.
October 19, 2023: Sylvia Carillo’s staff report says “Festival de la Cultura” is a 501(c)(3) under Federal IRS guidelines. The application for 501(c)(3) status had not even been filed with the IRS on this date.
October 20, 2023: City Council agendas go live the Friday before a meeting, meaning the $25,000 donation was already on the agenda on this date, the date the Texas non-profit was formed.
October 24, 2023: The agenda item itself, and the agenda item presentation at the meeting, were by Sylvia Carillo, the same City Manager now so strongly supported by Mel Cooper.
October 24, 2023: The $25,000 taxpayer funded donation was approved by the Bastrop City Council. Cynthia Meyer made the motion. John Kirkland seconded it. It was unanimously approved. (Mayor Nelson does not have a vote.)
April 27 & 28, 2024: Festival de la Cultura was held at Mayfest Park in the City of Bastrop
July 1, 2024: The IRS approval letter was issued and posted online a full two months after the April 2024 event. Approval was retroactive to October 23, 2023.
The organization is required to file 990s with the IRS. They are due 5 1/2 months after the fiscal year end date. If Festival de la Cultura has a fiscal year that ends on December 31, 990s were due on May 15, 2024. No 990s have been filed. They’re late.
Minutes on subsequent agendas at the City of Bastrop show no discussion items regarding the Festival or the expenditure of these tax monies.
March 5, 2024 – Cultural Arts Commission meeting – no minutes online
April 2, 2024 – Cultural Arts Commission meeting – no minutes online
May 7, 2024 – Cultural Arts Commission meeting – “Approximately 5,000 attendees. Attendance was lower due to weather.”
These are the only comments in City minutes. No financial accounting anywhere.

Councilwoman Cynthia Meyer very pointedly stated at a Council meeting that she would watch every single dollar of taxpayer monies spent by the City. And, that is, after all, the job of City Manager Carillo.

The emperor has no clothes.

Sloppy Government

I’m shocked at the sloppiness in how the City of Bastrop conducts business. And, sloppy government = closed government. Is the sloppiness just incompetence or is it purposefully being used to confuse the public and deter their participation?

I started watching the City of Bastrop Council machinations when three of them (a voting majority) started down the path of demanding the mayor’s resignation, accusing him of all manner of wrong-doing.

Though more than 20 years ago, I remember very vividly when my political opponents manipulated people, angry about a state-mandated housing development, to demand my resignation. In my case, it made good press, but they couldn’t even muster the signatures on a petition. And, the woman who so vociferously pontificated at that meeting ended up the one in trouble. She was a Board of Education member and failed to note that she was not representing them when she spoke. She was formally reprimanded.

So this attack on Lyle really piqued my interest. For the most part, I know the players and who is connected with whom in the political world. I have a pretty good idea who is seeking power and control. Most people don’t see the back story so they’re easy to sway with twisted allegations of misuse of funds.

I have read every investigative report. I’ve done my own research into the organization involved. I attended hearings and Council meetings about the massive Gateway development and rezoning requested. I’ve read agenda packets, including the details of ordinances and contracts. I was at the Ethics hearing. I watched the Charter Commission meetings. I’ve watched Council meetings online, sometimes multiple times. I’ve written a couple of letters to the Council and testified at public hearings.

I could write an entire chapter of a book, full of examples of sloppy government. But, let’s take the most recent one: getting Charter changes to the November ballot for public vote.

To get something to the ballot, the final step is the Council passing an ordinance calling for an election, including the specific verbiage and details of when and where the election will be held. If the Council wishes for the County to run the election in conjunction with the other elections it runs, the City Council must sign a contract with the County.

For the November election, the statutory deadline for all of that to be approved was August 19, 2024. The Council called a Special meeting that very day. Nothing like waiting to the last minute. Sloppy.

Ordinances must have a first reading and a second reading before adoption. Agendas must be published online no later than 72 hours before a meeting. The public must be given the opportunity to speak on ordinances.

How can the public do that if the ordinance isn’t presented until the meeting itself? See August 19 agenda, item 3B staff report, “Ordinance language will be presented at the meeting on Monday.” Sloppy.

Not the first time I’ve seen this language on a staff report included in a City of Bastrop Council agenda.

Sloppy or purposeful? How can the public comment on an ordinance for FINAL adoption that it hasn’t seen? Why doesn’t the Council demand that agenda items are ready for Friday presentation to the public? And, shouldn’t the Council want time to read through that which it’s voting on a few days later?

Item 3A on August 19 was about putting Charter changes on the November 5 ballot. The dates/times/locations for the election were all wrong. What’s to say the language in the 3B ordinance, not yet written, wouldn’t also be wrong? Turns out, it was.

I pointed this out to a Council member. Not one word about it from the dais during the meeting. In fact, a review of the video and minutes from the August 19 meeting show that the Council never actually took a vote to call an election for the work of the Charter commission. They never even discussed the ordinance. They only discussed each Charter change. Thus, they missed the statutory deadline for calling an election. Sloppy.

But, who cares about a silly ordinance being correct and passed on time? Fast forward to the August 28 meeting.

The Council “ratified” a re-written ordinance, one completely different from the August 19 ordinance. And, guess what? Yes, again the dates/times/locations of early voting were wrong. And, again, I notified them of the errors, this time, in writing to the entire Council.

Yet, no discussion from the dais of correcting that information. If they fixed it before the vote, how would the public know? We wouldn’t, and we don’t. If they didn’t fix it before the vote, so what? Who cares what an ordinance says?

The City Secretary’s excuse? Locations change so we’re adding a note that they change. While that’s true, the correct data had been on BastropVotes.org for weeks. Whoever wrote this ordinance took the 15 election day polling places and erroneously put them in the ordinance as the early voting locations. Sloppy.

Did any official review the ordinance, any Council member, the City attorney, the City Manager, the City Secretary? Anyone? No, it took a member of the public to point it out. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

This Council needs to get its act together. It needs to pay more attention to detail. It needs to acknowledge that members of the public aren’t there to watch a movie, but are there to participate in their government.

This Council needs to remember that the point of the Texas Open Meetings Act is so government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” functions in favor of citizens, not highly-paid managers and their cronies. It’s their job to protect and enforce open government, not allow it through accidental or intended sloppiness to function in darkness.

Power and Control

Let’s be clear. I don’t live in the City of Bastrop. I can’t vote on City matters. City elections are non-partisan so there aren’t primaries where my positions in Republican politics would come into play.

But, I did spend ten years in elected office: six on a Town Council and four as the Mayor of a town of 16,000 people under a strong mayor, weak council form of government. So, I know how the game is played.

People who live in the City of Bastrop should rise up in anger at what’s happening in their City. A voting majority of the City Council can meet in private according to their current charter.

That voting majority is trying its hardest to keep that power, to be able to decide issues away from the public view, to run government in private. This is completely opposite of government “of the people, for the people and by the people”.

Frankly, who do they think they are? Do they think that they are smarter or more privileged than any other resident of the City of Bastrop? Who said they had all the ideas? How did they learn what they could and couldn’t do as Council members? Were they born with this knowledge and others weren’t?

First, they came after Mayor Nelson. He had an affair. Not good, but not illegal, and not a rationale for overturning the will of the voters. John Kirkland said citizens asked him if there was a way to recall the mayor, yet the petition submitted has 96% of the signatures collected by 3 Council members, a former Council member, and their families. No one has any idea what people were told at the door when asked to sign this petition, but my guess is it wasn’t that an audit and investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of the Mayor. I’ll bet they didn’t tell people that the mayor had the legal right to keep his private cell phone data private. Did they tell people that there was no subpoena for that cell phone data? One would think if there was a criminal investigation into the Mayor that his private cell phone would have been subpoenaed.

From this former mayor’s perspective, this is an attempt to get rid of Mayor Nelson and install a mayor of their choice and one they can control.

Now, they’re going after the City attorney. Monday night’s Special meeting now includes an Executive Session “to discuss the duties of the City Attorney.” My guess is he won’t play ball with them, won’t support their shenanigans, won’t muddy the legal waters to give them the power they so desperately desire.

I’ve seen this movie before. If the citizens of the City of Bastrop don’t pay attention, get involved and stop this, they’ll end up living in a city they don’t like and they don’t recognize.

Stolen Valor

I’m frankly surprised that this video hasn’t been scrubbed by YouTube. Until then, it’s well worth watching. Command Sergeant Major Thomas Behrends, the Command Sergeant Major who took Tim Walz’ place when he abruptly retired, tells the story how that happened.

And, he shows the actual military record showing Walz did not retire as a Command Sergeant Major, but rather an E8 Master Sergeant. Claiming otherwise is “Stolen Valor”.

Heck, why not just claim he retired as head of the Joint Chiefs? He quit when it came time to serve in Iraq. No matter how many years he put in prior to that, when the chips were down, he ran and hid.

Government Behind Closed Doors

In 1989, I ran for Township Council on a platform that included Open Government. We elect representatives, and other than those items allowed to be discussed in executive session by law, majorities of governing bodies should ALWAYS discuss government business in public.

I was shocked to learn that the City of Bastrop Charter allows a voting majority to meet in private because of its definition of a quorum. Currently set at 4, that means 3 City Council members can meet in private. The voting majority is 3. So any and all public business could be discussed in private.

Mayor Nelson supports changing this to a quorum of 3 so no more than 2 (less than a voting majority) can meet in private. Those trying to recall him want it to stay the way it is. No wonder they want Nelson recalled.

Please read this article on indytexans.org. If you signed the recall petition and now realize why its happening and no longer want to support it, you can have your signature removed. This article explains how to do it.

Remember: WE THE PEOPLE are the government. WE THE PEOPLE have the right to know what our representatives are doing and discussing. WE THE PEOPLE will be kept in the dark if a voting majority can meet in private, contrary to the principles on which this country was founded.

The Court System is Rigged

No surprise here. It has been for years.

Deliberations in the NY Trump trial lasted a total of 9.5 hours on 34 felony counts over the course of two days: 4.5 hours the first day and 5 hours the second day.

Do the math.

(9.5 hours X 60 minutes) / 34 counts = 16.76 minutes per count

With time for readbacks of the judge’s instructions twice, plus some other testimony, that’s barely 15 minutes per count.

This can’t be called deliberations. Fifteen minutes per count isn’t enough time to discuss anything, and barely enough time to actually conduct a vote of the jurors.

This is just another example of how this trial was rigged. The time calculation says these jurors discussed the counts as a group and voted on them as a group when they should have considered them one at a time. Had they done that, they’d still be deliberating.

I’ve done jury duty. I have first-hand knowledge of how deliberations are done.

This was a rigged trial, start to finish. It will be overturned on appeal, but that will take years.

Imagine if this were you. Are you a billionaire? How much money do you have available to defend yourself against charges like this in a rigged system? You’d settle because you can’t afford the bleed of money to lawyers and experts, with the possibility that you won’t win anyway.

How do I know? I fought a politically motivated traffic ticket where clearly I had not violated the law. When the legal bills climbed higher than what I could possibly justify spending, I caved. I stood in front of a judge and pled out. I wanted to throw up after I did that, basically lying to the court because I was not guilty. But when I balanced my innocence and depleting my kids’ college funds, I couldn’t bring myself to spend their futures on my lawyers and court costs.

So yes, it can happen to you. When Trump says he’d doing this for you, yes he is. It’s why anyone who has experience with the broken court system will vote for Trump. He has exposed this rigged system. He has now lived this rigged system. I’m sad for his family and what they’re going through, but so proud to have cast my vote for him twice already. And, in November, I’ll proudly cast my vote for patriot Donald Trump once again.

Are you a voter or a lemming?

Is a list of endorsements from an organization an end point for you or a starting point? Do you vote in a primary from a list provided by one organization or do you research endorsements from several organizations and see where they overlap? Do you do your own research?

Bunni Pounds from Christians Engaged has great advice. Read below or watch this clip.

“In 20 minutes you can research your ballot and go in much more prepared than anybody else. Look at the races. Look at their Facebook pages. Look at their website. Read out of their own mouth what they say about their qualifications. Check out their resumes. Google their names. See who else is supporting them in your community. See if they answer some of the questions that are important to you about these non-partisan races. And, then check around people in your communities to see who they are supporting and why. […] Check out public forums and anything they are hosting to get to know the candidates in your city.”

Did the organization print a transcript, or at least a summary, of the interviews with the candidates on which they based their recommendations?
Did they ask the candidates for written answers to a common set of questions and publish those answers?
If they didn’t interview a candidate, did they tell you that?
If they have an affiliation or prior business relationship with a candidate, were they transparent enough to tell you that?
If one candidate is a member of their organization and the other is not, do they reveal that?
Did they provide any rationale at all for why they chose one candidate over the others?

Never be a lemming. Just because this group or that says “vote for our list of candidates” or worse yet, “take our list to the polls with you”, that’s not what you should do in a primary, runoff, or uniform (May non-partisan) election.

Expect information. Better yet, demand information or refuse to be a lemming. Your vote is yours, not theirs.