Sunday, May 27, 2007

Texas Public Education Watchdog Authority: Dear Chuy Hinojosa, Florence Shapiro and distinguished Education Committee Members

Texas Public Education Watchdog Authority: Dear Chuy Hinojosa, Florence Shapiro and distinguished Education Committee Members


Just give us (Education) the Lottery Proceeds as per original bill of sale. The Lottery was sold to us (the voters of the great State of Texas) as 100% of the proceeds were for Educating our youth.

What percentage of the Lottery proceeds (currently) are dedicated to the education of our youth?

Why is it, the wealth always steals from our children after acting like they were creating, “doing it for th kids” huge reservoirs of Avarice to siphon off.

Like the Lottery originally was ratified by the people of the Great State of Texas with the belief ot was a moneymaker for our Children’s Education. And now how much of the Lottery revenue makes it to Public Education?



Perry Craddick & Corporate Welfare in the name of WIA, ED Byrne Grant, and under the guise of helping the poor.


With the Education funding we should demand that the dedication of lottery money to the Education of our Children be adhered to as it was sold to Texas. The Lottery when legislated was for the Education of Texas Students. Finally, the Private Sector is funded under the WIA slush fund for Corporate Welfare Recipients under the Guise of a Welfare Reform or Welfare to Work / JOB generating program to help the poor. The rich are getting richer in the name of helping the poor. And one needs to always remember it is both parties dippin into the creative crony contractualism. Give it a title, write a grant and set up a front office with a computer and a sign; then get some brochures and a few token clients and funnel the Avarice in a shell game like manner and voila a new ranch or a new house maybe an agency hummer or King Ranch Pickup Truck with a magnetic sign. Give a few JOBS to your network affiliates and send the clients to perform community based work and get rich and richer doing it. Ask Mary Cano or Oscar Martinez to explain it in detail. Charmed I'm sure.



TFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE--FRIDAY, MAY 25, 2007
>(copyright 2007 Texas Federation of Teachers)
>
>Proposed State Budget Shortchanges Schools and Educators; Keep Up the Fight
>For House TRS Plan; House at a Standstill as Speaker Clings to Power
>
>Proposed Budget Shortchanges Public Schools, Education Employees: TFT
>President Linda Bridges put out a press statement today deploring the
>results of the House-Senate conference committee on the 2008-2009 budget.
>The state budget plan in House Bill 1 still must win the approval of
>majorities in both the House and Senate. As President Bridges' statement
>below explains, HB 1 in its current form does not deserve that approval:
>
>"Education and educators would be shortchanged badly in the budget proposed
>by House-Senate conferees this afternoon. Based on the information
>currently
>available, school funding would remain static, not even getting back to the
>level of state and local funding school districts had in 2002 in real
>terms, after you take inflation into account. The $850-a-year
>cost-of-living pay raise for teachers passed by the House last month would
>shrivel to about $425, according to the legislative budget staff. If paid
>out to all teachers across the board, this would amount to less than $25 a
>month after taxes and deductions--not even enough to cover the cost of
>rising average health-care premiums. And the conferees took pains today to
>say the money would not even have to be paid out across the board to all
>teachers.
>
>"Worst of all is what this budget proposal would do regarding TRS pension
>benefits. The bill would withhold an eminently affordable and exceedingly
>modest pension boost--a 13th check for TRS retirees--unless other
>legislation passes
>to impose new levies on all current school employees. The only way retirees
>would get a 13th check, under this scheme devised by Sen. Robert Duncan,
>would be if active school employees pay a higher contribution rate, taking
>roughly $50 million a year out of their pockets. This plan totally
>contradicts the House legislation passed unanimously on Wednesday that
>would provide a 13th check for retirees fully funded by the state, without
>imposing any new levies on active employees.
>
>"In short, school districts under this budget would regain none of the
>ground they have lost financially, teachers would get at best a measly pay
>raise of less than $25 a month that wouldn't even keep up with inflation,
>and 300,000 school support personnel would suffer an actual pay cut, as a
>result of the higher levies imposed on them for TRS with no compensating
>increase in pay. You have to give the
>conferees credit--it takes a certain ingenuity to come up with a plan this
>bad at a time when the state is sitting on a record-high budget surplus."
>
>Keep Up the Fight for House TRS Plan! At this writing members of the Texas
>House are standing firm in support of their unanimously approved plan for a
>13th check for TRS retirees, funded by an increase in the state
>contribution rate to 6.7 percent, with no new costs imposed on active
>school employees. Several Senate offices reported to us today that they are
>receiving a high volume of calls in support of this House version of SB
>1846--as well they should be. The Senate alternative proposed by Sen.
>Robert Duncan, Republican of Lubbock, is a thinly veiled attempt to shift
>state costs for TRS pensions onto active employees and their school
>districts.
>
>Duncan let slip the real agenda during floor debate on his plan,
>noting that increasing the TRS levy on active employees and requiring a
>contribution from school districts could "free up general revenue for other
>purposes." In other words, this scheme would allow the state to save money
>by shifting costs onto education employees and local taxpayers.
>
>Duncan's staff in response to callers today reportedly was claiming that
>the freshly hatched budget deal (see above) means that there's no money and
>no time left to provide this session for the 6.7-percent state contribution
>rate that the House proposes. But that's not so. The legislature has
>billions of dollars left to allocate right now, and it would take only a
>tiny fraction of that treasure--less than 1 percent of it, in fact--for the
>state to get to the 6.7-percent TRS contribution rate from the 6.58 percent
>already built into the budget. Even if the budget bill passes in its
>current form, the
>House plan for a fully state-paid 13th check with no new costs imposed on
>active employees could also still pass and become law with full force and
>effect, delivering a 13th check in September.
>
>The upshot is that you have an opportunity right now to shape the outcome
>of this TRS benefit fight in the critical remaining days before adjournment
>of the legislative session on Monday. Just send the letter on this issue to
>your state senator from the TFT Web site. If you don't know your state
>senator, you can find out quickly when you go to that Web letter.
>
>Speaker's Grip on Gavel Threatened: The Texas House came to a standstill at
>8 PM this evening, as Speaker of the House Tom Craddick shut off House
>members' microphones and called a three-hour recess to head off a
>rank-and-file revolt
>threatening to oust him from the speaker's chair. The Midland Republican is
>under heavy fire from both fellow Republicans and Democrats for what many
>consider his tyrannical rule of the House. Tonight he gave them new grist
>for their argument, by ruling that there is no appeal to the membership as
>a whole if he blocks the parliamentary procedure needed to oust him. His
>ruling, epitomizing the arbitrary, one-man rule of which Speaker Craddick
>stands accused, apparently has led to the resignation of the House
>parliamentarian in protest this evening. Like everyone else at the capitol,
>we are now waiting to see if the House will actually reconvene tonight.
>Keep an eye out for news of the latest developments in the daily TFT
>hotlines that will be published each of the next three days as the
>legislative session hurtles toward final adjournment.


Senate Committee on Education
Committee Information
Chair Vice-Chair Members:

Friday, May 25, 2007

Texas State Representative House District 33: Keep Your Promises Solly. Remember Miller? Why are CCISD Students still running at large during school d

Texas State Representative House District 33: Keep Your Promises Solly. Remember Miller? Why are CCISD Students still running at large during school day hours?

Friday, May 25, 2007

Keep Your Promises Solly. Remember Miller? Why are CCISD Students still running at large during school day hours?



CCISD: Why are CCISD Students allowed to run at large during school day hours?



Education is for our Children, our Youth, our Future. Children and Youth need constant redirection and set boundaries at home and at school as well. When a minor is allowed to run at large during the school day hours whether it is in the halls, leaving or returning a closed campus or simply unaccounted for is irresponsible of the caretaker whose custody in which he / she is placed.
Kenedeno



An absent student is one who does not arrive at school in the morning and is absent for the WHOLE Day. The student was never on campus. The Parent is responsible for the student getting to school (requiring the student to attend school). If the student does not get to school it is the Parent’s responsibility not necessarily the Parent’s fault. There are circumstances where the student will walk in the front door and out the back door without attending a single class. This is where the attendance officers need to improve their due diligence like the old days.

Once the student is counted present in the morning; the Parent has required the student (child) to attend school. Once the student is verified in attendance at the beginning of the school day the student is in the custody of the School.

If the student is tardy or skips class (on campus or off campus) this happens on the watch of the school. The Parent if informed should cooperate and communicate with the School Counselors Administrators and the Attendance Officer to correct the behavior. The Security and Attendance officer should take notice and tighten the belt. This is a security issue as well; there is no excuse for students coming and going outside of the lunch period and it is imperative that attendance irregularities be dealt with within 24 hours. This is easily done with our modern technology.

Instead, what we are seeing is the Attendance Officers documenting the absences as they accumulate and filing on the Parent and student when the number of absences are achieved.

Solly, did you forget about the issues and the kids at Miller and CCISD as a whole?

South Texas Chisme: Chisme roundup

Posted on May 15, 2006 at 06:55:18 PM by Jaime Kenedeno ... sources at ccisd downtown have said that a miller hs asst. principal has become a whistleblower. ...
stxc.blogspot.com/2006/05/chisme-roundup.html - 48k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

South Texas Chisme: Solomon Ortiz Jr. on the ballot for State Rep D33!

I am Jaime Kenedeno of South Texas. A simple Google search will inform you more of WHO I Am. ... The credentials of Noyola and the CCISD / Miller fiasco was ...
stxc.blogspot.com/2006/08/solomon-ortiz-jr-on-ballot-for-state.html - 31k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

South Texas Chisme: Truth? you cant handle the truth!

That hadn't happened in years, that is why Miller was facing sanctions from the feds (before noyola's time). And Kenedeno is right, we can't support the ...
stxc.blogspot.com/2006/07/truth-you-cant-handle-truth.html - 35k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

South Texas Chisme: New block walking program in Corpu$

Posted on May 29, 2006 at 01:28:04 AM by Jaime Kenedeno ... Roy Miller’s political skills, vision brought Corpus Christi into the modern era ...
stxc.blogspot.com/2006/05/new-block-walking-program-in-corpu.html - 42k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

South Texas Chisme: Lets see how you dance to this tune

All the Talk Radio stations will be talking about the Miller HS issue as well as ... From: Jaime Kenedeno [mailto:kingalonzoalvarezdepinedaxiii@gmail.com] ...
stxc.blogspot.com/2006/07/lets-see-how-you-dance-to-this-tune.html - 46k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

South Texas Chisme: Race for State Rep. District 33 gets HOT

It said that the whistleblowers name at Miller was former assistant ... Jamie Kenedeno, no I just thought it would be fun to do something like that poem. ...
stxc.blogspot.com/2006/07/race-for-state-rep-district-33-gets.html - 43k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

South Texas Chisme: Who's the REAL enemy?

... Sr. attempts to manipulate the vote and his performance at Miller HS last year. ... Jaime Kenedeno/Haley, Who Knows why he writes anything that he does. ...
stxc.blogspot.com/2006/09/whos-real-enemy.html - 53k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

South Texas Chisme: PULP FICTION & The Award Winning Caller-Times

... an article on July 23rd entitled PAPER WON’T REPORT RUMORS AT MILLER HIGH, ... Thanks for watching my back, Kenedeno. At 4:19 AM, Jaime Kenedeño said. ...
stxc.blogspot.com/2006/07/pulp-fiction-award-winning-caller.html - 22k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

South Texas Chisme: Dangerous chisme?

When we write something us here at Kenedeno & Associates believe it to be true. ... in example will be the one that Danny Noyola was removed from Miller. ...
stxc.blogspot.com/2006/06/dangerous-chisme.html - 27k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

South Texas Chisme: HD 33 shuffle

Danny Noyola, Sr., recently reassigned from Miller HS principal to Moody assistant principal, ... Posted on July 3, 2006 at 09:51:17 PM by Jaime Kenedeno ...
stxc.blogspot.com/2006/07/hd-33-shuffle.html - 37k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

South Texas Chisme: Once again the Caller times tells only half truth

-Jane Wall – Current teacher and former Miller HS journalism instructor “As a Precinct chair, ... Political Pulse: Kenedeno’s Political Pulse ...
stxc.blogspot.com/2006/08/once-again-caller-times-tells-only.html - 32k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Sunday, May 20, 2007

CCISD: Freedom of Information Request: The process the CCISD Board used is unethical and unfair.

CCISD: Freedom of Information Request: The process the CCISD Board used is unethical and unfair.

CCISD: Freedom of Information Request: The process the CCISD Board used is unethical and unfair.


Freedom of Information Request

This Publication request any and all communications including email and written correspondence from one week before Trustee Harry Williams resigned.

Must I formalize it on Monday?

Think I am bluffing?

You gotta ask yourself

Do you feel lucky?

Well Do ya?

Go ahead.........


You guys get the idea?

Now, don't go and seek the OAG's opinion as it will delay our children.

Just fess up and conduct business with honor and integrity and at least give us an appearance of due process. Not one black appointment. You guys are definitely walking on thin ice or maybe already fallen through but just don't know it. Such inadequacy is unacceptable.

CORPUS CHRISTI - CCISD school board members interviewed five candidates Friday to fill the board position vacated by Reverend Harry Williams.

The school board said it will set another meeting to discuss the finalists, and will possibly make a decision then, but still no word on when that would be.

Williams served the school board for more than seven years before resigning last month.






Nick Adame
"Do not be a disservice to our community and choose because this guy is my friend or this guy is my business associate," Dr. Nick Adame said. "I don't want to hear that. I want to hear that we're going to choose somebody because they're going to do right for the community."




Last week, the board narrowed the list of 20 candidates to five
Kenedeno:

Where is the criteria the process for "narrowing the list"?

The process the CCISD Board used is unethical and unfair. Every single applicant took the time to fill out an application, and the thought process for the letter of interest and update of their resume and references. For all intensive purposes this CCISD Board just threw that work product into the trash can while opting for business partners, friends cronies and industry allies.

It is not about the 5 selected it is about how the 5 were selected. It is not about Barrera or Prezas or Bill Clark or Lucy Rubio.

It is about a change of policy where policy is defined by processes of the past. Lucy is the only one with the guts to make the motion, "for the board to scrap the current process and start over. There was no second to the motion." Are there others in that room who agree with her, but politically, they are bound & gagged. The current process is in conflict with current policy. The current process is now a civil rights issue. Is that what CCISD wanted, another Cisneros v CCISD?






We have 19 Candidates who deserve Equal Opportunity and fair consideration. It is called due process.


1. Herbert Cromwell Arbuckle, III Retired Teacher
2. Rolando G. Barrera Insurance Agent
3. Tony C. Diaz, Ed.D. Retired CCISD Administrator
4. Victor Frazier, Ed.D. Minister and University Instructor
5. Cezar Galindo Business Owner and College Instructor
6. Marsha Lynn Grace Professor of Education
7. Coretta Graham Lawyer
8. Helen Gurley, Ph.D. Educator, Director of Academics
9. Patricia Harris Educator
10. Robert Elliott Jones Pastor and Business Manager
11. Deborah W. Johnson Retired Firefighter
12. Bradford Lee Kisner Director of Music and Fine Arts
13. Verna Faye Portis Retired CCISD Administrator
14. Raul R. Prezas, Ed.D. College Professor
15. Norman Haden Ransleben Certified Public Accountant
16. Woodrow Mac Sanders Medical Social Worker
17. Ronald G. Sepulveda Athletic Aquatic Superintendent
18. George Wetzel Retired Public School Administrator/Consultant
19. Goldie Lamarr Wooten Retired Educator

Rubio has said she disagrees with the selection process and would have preferred to use a scoring system instead.

Trustees selected the five candidates to be interviewed by each nominating one from a pool of 20 applicants.

We elect you guys to represent the district with honor & integrity

But before trustees interviewed the first candidate, trustee Lucy Rubio motioned for the board to scrap the current process and start over. There was no second to the motion.

Rubio has said she disagrees with the selection process and would have preferred to use a scoring system instead.


CCCT Editorial

The trustees' refusal to lay out the cards is beyond irritating; it borders on the outrageous.

Particularly disturbing is the fact that three new trustees elected last year - Carol Scott, John Longoria and Dwayne Hargis, all of whom emphasized their intent to bring new openness to the board - appear to have bought into the mum's-the-word ethos that has dominated this exercise.

To be sure, they (and their colleagues) could, and should, reverse their field.




CCISD Trustees: Pick and choose Policy Making with malice. Shame on YOU.

CORPUS CHRISTI - CCISD school board members have decided not to change their policy which forbids seniors who fail the TAKS from graduating.

One parent we spoke with Thursday said the policy didn't make sense, because while students who fail the TAKS test during the school year aren't allowed to take part in graduation ceremonies. The same doesn't hold true for summer school grads. They're allowed to participate in summer graduation ceremonies without knowing whether they passed the test.

The decision didn't sit well with some parents and students.

School board member Lucy Rubio had hoped to amend the policy, and allow seniors who failed the TAKS to at least walk in with their class during may commencement. But other school board members didn't agree.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Parkdale Bank: According to Gambi Gamboa, "John Longoria, Carol Scott and Dwayne Hargis already have chosen and will officially choose Roland Barrera

Parkdale Bank: According to Gambi Gamboa, "John Longoria, Carol Scott and Dwayne Hargis already have chosen and will officially choose Roland Barrera as soon as Fri



After analyzing the recent events surrounding the resignation of CCISD Board Trustee Harry Williams (1 of 3 at large district positions); one thing IS clear. That one thing is Due Process (or lack of it). Immediately one's memory of search firm fiascos and the CCISD Board tool of choice, the Interim Superintendent buffer / scapegoat. The process was elaborate and ethical reasons or rule were claimed as the reason for the process.

Well, why such a rush fellas?

Why is the CCISD board in such a hurry to fill this position?

A Superintendent position and a Trustee position; one we wine, dine and lodge and the other we announce for applications for a month or so and "narrow the list down" from 20 to 5 in most expedient fashion. Now, making a long story short we have 20 candidates who invested their creative, intellectual and professional abilities into a work product they hope will be scrutinized by the Board and be successfully competitive. A good letter of interest comes only from the heart. The application is at times tedious but at least it is more objective than the TAKS. Updating one's resume and with a list of references most meaningful to the position and all of this for 15 to get thrown in the trash can and the 5 resumes remaining are to place on public display

full story here

"I'll be as hardy of mind as I am of body. I'll be a straight-shooter and a square-dealer. My family name will be sacred My word will be as good as any contract. I'll remember the Alamo. I'll stick by my friends. And I'll eat more chicken-fried steak."

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

THOSE WHO LOOK TO THE LONE STAR STATE for political intrigue have had a good year.

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September|October 2003
Mock Trial's Big Dance By Brian Montopoli
Pete Rose's Mock Trial By Joshua David Mann
Sue Yourself By Dashka Slater
To Be Continued By Sam Goodstein
No Boundaries By Tyler Maroney
The Prudent Jurist By Susan Koniak
Cases & Controversies

To Be Continued

By Sam Goodstein

THOSE WHO LOOK TO THE LONE STAR STATE for political intrigue have had a good year. In one of his final acts as House majority leader, Dick Armey tried to insert a media ownership rule into an arms bill that seemed to single out The Dallas Morning News for punishment, reportedly because of the paper's decision not to endorse his son's failed Congressional bid in Denton County. Then, last spring, Democrats in the Texas state legislature fled to neighboring Oklahoma to avoid giving Republicans the quorum they needed to pass a partisan redistricting plan. Both moves are fine examples of the bipartisan wile of Texas politicians. But when it comes to unsavory politicking, some of the most adroit manipulation happens on the local level. Consider the political favors done for Wyeth, a $60 billion pharmaceutical company based in Madison, N.J.

In the mid-1990s, American Home Products (as Wyeth was then called) marketed a weight-loss cocktail known as fen-phen. After research demonstrated in 1997 that fen-phen increased the risk of failing heart valves, causing blood that was supposed to be pumped into the body to dribble back into the heart, the manufacturer quickly pulled it off the shelves. But the damage had already been done. The ensuing federal class-action lawsuit brought by fen-phen users resulted in a $3.75 billion settlement with the company. A number of plaintiffs, dissatisfied with the settlement, opted out and pursued separate litigation against Wyeth in Texas state court.

Wyeth was represented by an outstanding legal team, including the Washington, D.C., powerhouse firm Arnold & Porter. Faced with the prospect of another massive payout, however, Wyeth took no chances. It sought additional counsel in the form of Gabi Canales, a solo practitioner from Alice, Tex., a sleepy town about 120 miles south of San Antonio. Canales, a 1998 graduate of nearby St. Mary's University Law School, had a diverse practice, doing plaintiffs work, estates, wills, and the like. But she had never worked on a major product liability case or one involving complex scientific evidence. Like many fresh-faced young attorneys, she was eager to tackle a big case. "I haven't been practicing for very many years," she explained, "so I wanted whatever experience I could get to diversify my practice."

NOT EVERYONE APPROVED OF HER DECISION to join the Wyeth team. Canales, as it happened, held down another job—representing the residents of Alice as a Democrat in the state legislature. About to depart to Austin for a four-month legislative session, Canales's first legal maneuver on behalf of Wyeth was to ask the judge on the case—her father, it turned out—for a six-month continuance. When Judge Terry Canales recused himself, citing an obvious (and, one might have imagined, foreseeable) conflict of interest, the matter was left to be decided by Judge Mike Westergren. Except that in reality, it wasn't Westergren's call to make: Texas has a special provision that grants automatic continuances to any lawyer who is also a state legislator. According to the state's legislative continuance rule, which dates back to 1929, state courts must delay proceedings until 30 days after the end of the legislative session—in this case five months from the date of Gabi Canales's request.

The legislative continuance was devised as a way to satisfy the competing demands on a part-time legislator's attention. The Texas legislature meets for a maximum of 140 days every other year, and its members are paid an annual salary of $7,200. To make a living, most legislators must have a career outside politics that also places demands on their time and energy. How could a Texas lawyer hold clients if she couldn't assure them that she could meet her responsibilities while away serving in the legislature?

Nine other states, including California, New York, Michigan, and Massachusetts, operate full-time legislatures along the lines of Congress, but most employ part-time "citizen legislatures," like that of Texas. In the South, where there isn't a single full-time legislature, the part-time legislature is often invoked as a symbol of limited, restrained government. "With a full-time legislature you don't have the knowledge of industry and business that you have with a citizen legislature," argued Richard Saslaw, a Virginia state senator. "Part-time legislatures have more knowledgeable members, so they don't have to rely on staff or lobbyists."

Others disagree. In the era of the "new federalism" and devolution of power to the states, a part-time legislature, they say, cannot meet the growing demands of 21st-century governance. "With the growing size, importance, and complexity of state governments, full-time legislators are becoming imperative," said Steve Tobocman, a state representative in Michigan's full-time legislature.

ARMED WITH TEXAS CIVIL PRACTICE AND REMEDIES CODE SECTION 30.003, Canales walked into court in December 2002 and postponed one of the fen-phen litigations for over five months, a feat she duplicated in two other fen-phen cases. At a pretrial hearing, the attorneys for Wyeth explained to the court that Canales would make a "significant, important contribution" to the case, noting her "standing in the community"—undoubtedly a good thing, but rarely a prerequisite for defending a product liability case. "You have a case that is barreling up to trial, where the lawyer-legislator is added to the case, where they haven't participated in discovery," Bruce Flemming, a lawyer for the plaintiffs told Texas Lawyer. "I think it is just a sin."

The plaintiffs appealed the continuance, and the Texas Court of Appeals derided Wyeth's maneuvering, citing the company's "questionable conduct" in using legislative continuances for "tactical advantage." Ultimately, however, the plantiffs' appeal failed; since the statute didn't allow judicial discretion, the appellate court's hands were tied. The delay forced the plaintiffs, many of whom have significant medical bills thanks to fen-phen's side effects, to wait months for their day in court.

"That's the system in Texas: One day you're a country lawyer with your shingle out, then you get elected to the legislature and the next day you are a high-priced product liability attorney," said Craig McDonald, the director of Texans for Public Justice. McDonald's group is an Austin-based nonprofit that advocates political reform, consumer protection, and corporate accountability. "This is blatant stuff," he said. "Canales had no experience at all relevant to this case. The relevance was that she was a newly elected legislator."

But Canales was not the only legislator to procure legislative continuances for Wyeth. In the spirit of bipartisanship, the company also hired Representative Ruben Hope, a Republican from Conroe, to postpone two other fen-phen trials. And the company wasn't alone in using this tactic. Over the last few years, major product liability cases against breast-implant manufacturers, asbestos companies, and Firestone Tires have been put on hold in Texas. While it is difficult to quantify the effect that delay has on a product liability case, it is often used to put financial pressure on plaintiff's attorneys, who typically work for a percentage of any damages awarded by the court. And though Canales may truly believe in the virtue of Wyeth's cause, she was undoubtedly attracted by her compensation. According to McDonald, "the rumor on the street is that continuances go for somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000 each." Texas law doesn't require disclosure, and how much Canales was paid is not a matter of public record.

Texas is not the only state that allows legislative continuances, nor is it the only state that gives judges no discretion to reject them. More than 20 states allow such continuances. Iowa comes closest to Texas in effectively blocking judges' discretion over them. But abuses of the rule are most egregious in Texas.

THIS SUMMER, HOWEVER, THERE WAS A SMALL STEP FORWARD in the Lone Star State: the passage of an ethics reform bill. The new law requires, among other things, legislators to report their requests for legislative continuances, including the name of the party represented and the date on which the legislator was retained, although not the amount paid for the service. The information must be passed on to the Texas Ethics Commission within three days, a provision that will make it easier to keep track of abuse. But because the bill requires the disclosure of information that is already known—the parties to a case and their lawyers are matters of public record—few observers expect it to have much political force.

Canales's own behavior might have some political fallout, but even that remains uncertain. Her part in the Wyeth case secured her a place on Texas Monthly's Top 10 Worst Legislators list, an impressive distinction for a first-term representative. But Canales is politically well-connected: Her father remains a district judge and her mother is county chairwoman for the Democratic Party. Canales is convinced that her constituents don't care about, or pay much attention to scandals like the continuance issue. "They are not interested," she said. And she might be right: Her father, Terry, was himself ranked among the 10 Worst Legislators while serving as a representative in 1975—and has since been elected four times to serve as judge for the district.

Sam Goodstein is an attorney working in Santa Monica, Calif. His writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times.

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Sunday, February 04, 2007

Many parents just don't know about truancy laws, school officials and judges say.

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Monday, August 23, 1999
Working to help keep kids in school
State laws and truancy center give hope to those helping kids

By Novelda Sommers
Caller-Times


Truant officer Gary Ganschow rumbles into driveways on his three-wheel custom motorcycle, court summons in hand.
Ganschow takes students who skip school, and sometimes their parents, to court.
"He's like their worst nightmare over in the King district," said Mariah Boone, director of the Truancy Reduction Impact Program, which serves juveniles who violate the city's daytime curfew.
Ganschow, Boone and local juvenile authorities say they hope to see a decrease in truancy with the opening of a new 24-hour curfew center next month and with new state truancy laws.
Two new laws aim to combat truancy among 16- to 18-year-old students. One law gives school districts the option of expelling 18-year-olds if they accrue more than five unexcused absences. And starting Sept. 1, judges may order 16-year-olds accused of skipping school to take the high school equivalency exam.
"I think what the Legislature is saying is they're serious about kids going to school," said Art Delgado, CCISD director of administrative and student services. "If they are not going to school, following the rules, and they are being disruptive, they shouldn't be there."
Sanctions against students who miss school aren't meant to punish, but to get students back in school and keep them there, he said. A special committee this fall is expected to work on ways to improve attendance.
Many parents just don't know about truancy laws, school officials and judges say.
Justice of the Peace Larry Cox said parents often seem surprised when they appear in his court and learn that they could be fined thousands of dollars or jailed because they didn't make their children attend school.
Cox said he saw about 600 truancy cases in his courtroom last year, compared with about 50 cases when he first took office five years ago. He attributes the increase to more diligent enforcement by police, constables' deputies and school truancy officers.
Penalties can range from fines up to $500 for each unexcused absence, to court orders for parents to attend school with their children for a day or two, Cox said.
State law says it's a crime if any child age six to 18 misses three days or parts of days within four weeks without an excuse or if they have 10 unexcused absences within six months.
Straight talk
Ganschow, a Vietnam veteran with a pierced ear and a ponytail, checks school attendance reports at 12 Corpus Christi Independent School District schools and serves court summons to select students, and sometimes parents.
Last week, he spoke to a classroom of King students whose teacher said he had noticed too many absences in the first week of school.
"You may say, 'What can you do to me, because I'm a kid,' '' he said.
Lots of things. A judge can assess a 6 p.m. curfew. Or the judge could suspend the offender's driver's license.
On the second offense, Ganschow told them, "you're going to jail."
"You're going to be put in the police car and taken to the juvenile center where you will be held for violating a court order," he tells them. Those who are 17 or older can be taken to the county jail.
Hope for center
Whom he takes to court depends on parents' and students' willingness to change their behavior, Ganschow later said.
"We don't file on all of them. It's a tool that we can use," he said.
Last year, CCISD filed 938 complaints against students and parents. CCISD employs five truant officers whose coverage areas center around the high schools and their feeder schools.
Boone said she hopes a planned 24-hour curfew center, funded with the Crime Control District tax, will drive down truancy numbers down.
Set to open on Sept. 13, the center will offer counseling to students and their parents. Staff at the center will call offenders' schools to learn their grades and absentee rates, she said. The counselors will follow up with the families in the weeks after the first session.
Parents, she said, can help keep their kids in school by knowing school staff and calling to check if they suspect there is a problem.
Counseling often needed
Often, truancy is a symptom of a larger problem in the offender's family, said Penny Grochow, assistant chief probation officer for the Nueces County Juvenile Department.
Counselors who work with truants and runaways at the center often learn of sexual abuse, drug use and neglect in truants' homes, she said.
The department has seen the number of truancies level off since 1993, when truancies peaked at 613 cases. Last year, the department handled 354 cases, and in 1997, it saw 316. Juvenile crime overall hit a five-year low last year, with 4,311 offenses.
Parents can call the department between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. for free counseling, Grochow said. Most who come in complain that they have difficulty getting their children to go to school.
"If they've called us at 8 a.m. and they can't get the kid out of bed for school, we tell them to get the kid in the car and come talk to us," she said.
Kids difficult to handle
In a recent counseling session, a defiant girl with close-cropped hair began to let down her guard with Priscilla Boyd-Apah, a juvenile probation caseworker.
She doesn't want to go to school because other kids make fun of her, she told Boyd-Apah.
"You need to straighten out your act today," Boyd-Apah said. "How are you going to support yourself if you're not educated?"
The session was arranged by the girl's mother, who was desperate for help and called the department.
"She's like the bad apple out of all of them," the mother said, telling the counselor that the 12-year-old has three younger siblings.
Boyd-Apah said she frequently counsels children whose parents say they can no longer control them. This girl will be taken on a tour of the juvenile boot camp to see where she could end up if she keeps offending, Boyd-Apah said.
But during the session, it became apparent, Boyd-Apah said, that the mother needs help, too.
The mother said she doesn't work, and lives on about $200 in monthly government aid. The girl's father, she said, is in prison.
A school counselor who called during the session said the children come to school dirty, Boyd-Apah said.
"They need to come clean and dressed nice for school or else kids will pick at them," Boyd-Apah told the mother, before making a follow-up appointment for the next week.
Justice of the Peace Henry Santana said that when he assesses punishment in truancy cases, he orders the families to get counseling. Some parents just don't know how to communicate with their children without fighting.
"Punishment is not the answer," he said. "They need a lot of counseling, a lot of help to put them on track again."




Staff writer Novelda Sommers can be reached at 886-3774 or by e-mail at sommersn@caller.com


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Friday, December 01, 2006

Correctional Corporation of America Co-founders Tom Beasley, Don Hutto and Doctor Crants getting rich off of the legal taxpaying immigrant

Two Decades of Service to the Public Sector

CCA’s industry benchmarks include many operational and programmatic firsts. We are proud to have pioneered the way for public/private partnerships in corrections.

CCA Incorporated
CCA was incorporated on January 29, 1983, by three businessmen with a progressive vision: the provision of corrections, a traditionally government-administered service by private business. Co-founders Tom Beasley, Don Hutto and Doctor Crants brought a diverse group of skills to apply to their new business venture: public policy and knowledge of the legislative process, public corrections, and financial expertise.

Houston Processing Center (1984)
Houston Processing Center was CCA’s first design, build and manage contract from the U.S. Department of Justice for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service) in Texas. Construction was underway on the Houston Processing Center in Texas when the INS notified CCA that it needed housing for detainees earlier than expected – in January. Co-founders Tom Beasley and Don Hutto went to Houston to find a motel to temporarily house detainees. The owner of the local Olympic Motel agreed to a 90-day lease. After a team of contractors cleaned and secured the facility, an INS inspection team approved the facility for use by 86 detainees, scheduled to arrive at 11:00 p.m. on Super Bowl Sunday. Hutto bought toiletries at Wal-Mart with his American Express card, produced photo ID cards and rolled fingerprints, while other corporate officers distributed sandwiches and helped security staff escort detainees to their living quarters. CCA’s Houston Processing Center opened a few months later, in March 1984, and remains in operation for BICE today.

Tall Trees, Memphis, Tennessee (1984)
CCA assumed management of its first facility, Tall Trees, a 63-bed, non-secure juvenile facility, for the Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County, in 1984.

Shelby Training Center, Memphis, Tennessee (1986)
CCA’s 200-bed Shelby Training Center in Memphis, Tennessee was the first design, build and manage secure juvenile training school, housing male offenders for the Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County.

New Mexico Women’s Correctional Facility (1989)
CCA contracted with the New Mexico Department of Corrections to design, build and manage the New Mexico Women’ s Correctional Facility in Grants. The 204-bed facility was the first women’s prison in the United States to be privately built and operated.

Winn Correctional Center (1990)
CCA’s Winn Correctional Center was the first medium-security private prison in the United States. Located in Winn Parish, Louisiana, the center was designed, financed and built by the state.

Leavenworth Detention Center (1992)
CCA designed and built the 256-bed Leavenworth Detention Center, which the company operates for the U.S. Marshals Service. The center was the first maximum-security private prison under direct contract with a federal agency.

Excellence in Accreditation: New Mexico Women’s Correctional Facility (1991)
CCA’s New Mexico Women’s Correctional Facility became the company’s first facility to achieve a perfect score from the American Correctional Association on its initial ACA audit in 1991. Since that time, six more CCA facilities have achieved this distinction – Lee Adjustment Center, Lake City Correctional Facility, Bent County Correctional Facility, Otter Creek Correctional Center, Gadsden Correctional Facility, and California City Correctional Facility -- and 85% of CCA facilities are ACA accredited.

LifeLine (1993)
CCA’s LifeLine substance abuse treatment program is founded at Metro-Davidson County Detention Facility in Nashville, Tennessee. Since that time, 23 CCA facilities utilize the therapeutic community model, and the program has drawn the interest of officials from the public sector and other countries, including Russia, South Africa and Korea.

Transportation services (1995)
CCA acquires TransCor America, Inc., the nation’s largest long-distance inmate transportation company.

Correctional Treatment Facility (1997)
CCA assumes management of the Correctional Treatment Facility in Washington, D.C., a medium-security facility specializing in substance abuse treatment for adult males and females. CTF represented many firsts for CCA: the first facility in the nation’s capital, the company’s first contract for a purchase and lease-back agreement with local government, and the first partnership between CCA and organized labor unions.

David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center (1999)
CCA opened the 1,714-bed David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the largest county jail ever to become a private jail.

New Leadership, New Organization (2001)
To enhance the company’s service to our customers and support long-term goals, CCA implements a new corporate structure. Highlights of the new structure include a realigned Business Development division with greater coverage for each of CCA’s markets and the creation of a Human Resources department, to enhance internal performance monitoring and establish a formal support network for CCA employees.

CCA Celebrates its 20th Anniversary (2003)
At this point in company history, CCA is the nation’s sixth largest corrections system, with 59 facilities in 20 states and the District of Columbia. The company maintains a security record that compares well to our industry colleagues, with an escape rate more than 10 times lower than public corrections systems. Our commitment to quality performance-driven educational, vocational, substance abuse and re-entry programs for inmates continues to be at the forefront of our efforts.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Did Omega forget about the Alpha?

County pays triple
State probes two firms championed by Shamsie; he says it's sour grapes; county engineer says he could've done job
By Jaime Powell Caller-TimesJune 19, 2005


From an engineer's perspective, Nueces County's $58 million road rehabilitation project is a simple job. Yet, the county is paying three times the customary rate for engineering and inspection services, according to engineers in government and private practice.
Instead of assigning the county's staff engineer to handle the project, Nueces County Judge Terry Shamsie negotiated $7.6 million for engineering with Omega Contracting Inc. and $7.95 million for inspection with DOS Logistics, as the county revamps 280 miles of mostly flat, straight, narrow, non-shouldered rural roadway.
The engineering and inspection fees amount to 34 percent of the $47 million construction portion of the project. Engineering professionals say those fees normally would be in the 10 percent range - or less for a job such as this one because it is not an engineering challenge.
Shamsie was able to negotiate contract proposals with the two out-of-town firms, and then submit the proposals to the Commissioners Court for approval, rather than submit the contracts to competitive bidding, because they are contracts for professional services. Local governments can select a professional services contractor to their liking after receiving statements of qualifications from those interested in the job.
Shamsie says County Engineer Glenn Sullivan was too busy to take on the project - an assertion Sullivan denies.
Shamsie also said the two companies are worth what they're being paid. He says he expected the project to be costly because he wanted it completed quickly. He did not want it to drag on for years, he said, as have some of the state and municipal road projects under way in this area. He successfully sought to fund the project with certificates of obligation, a way to bypass voter approval, which he said would have taken valuable time.
"That's a negotiated contract," Shamsie said. "They (Omega and DOS Logistics) wanted a lot more than that. Everybody thinks it's a 'gimme.' Are they paid well? Yes. Are they going to do the job? Yeah. Are a lot of other people jealous? Yeah."
The Texas Board of Professional Engineers is now investigating whether either of the firms was licensed to provide engineering services when they signed their contracts, Texas Board of Professional Engineers spokesman Paul Cook said.
The county's request for qualifications for the engineering portion of the project states that Nueces County was seeking an engineering firm, registered to practice in the State of Texas, with experience in roadway rehabilitation, bridge design and large-scale road and bridge projects.
For the inspection portion of the project, the request for qualifications solicited inspection for capital construction projects and other special services such as presentations to the Commissioners Court on progress.
Fees viewed as high
The engineering and inspection fees aren't the only ones in the contracts that have been described by engineers in government and private practice as exorbitant. A review of proposed rate schedules from six other companies that sought the contract shows that the winners are receiving significant markups for the following:
-- DOS Logistics' $95-an-hour fee for senior inspectors. The local average is $70 an hour, according to the local companies' rate schedules.
-- Omega's $161-an-hour fee for a program manager, totaling $593,889 during the 18-month contract period. The local average is $110 an hour, according to the rate schedules and interviews with officials from some local companies. Kurt Diedrich, Omega's program manager, is not a state-licensed engineer, according to the Texas Board of Professional Engineers - unusual, engineers say, for a firm offering engineering services. Attempts to reach Diedrich were unsuccessful.
-- Omega's $82 an hour for each of two administrative assistants, or $494,582. The local average is $50 an hour, according to the rate schedules.
-- DOS Logistics' $120 an hour or $374,400 for public relations coordinator Celina Garza. The six other companies' rate schedules do not include public relations as a service, but typically they would charge three times the labor cost for a contract employee to account for overhead, profit and office expenses - meaning private industry would bill $45 to $96 an hour for a spokesperson.
The Texas Department of Transportation pays its beginning public information officers $14.95 an hour. The agency's top spokespeople make $31.83 an hour and handle sensitive and complex issues, serving as a liaison to the print and broadcast media, the agency's public information office in Austin and the public, said Texas Department of Transportation planning and development director Paula Sales Evans.
Handling inquiries
Garza's job is to handle inquiries from the public and the media. Garza did not return phone calls or e-mails, and declined to answer questions when contacted in person by a Caller-Times reporter.
Garza's experience and qualifications were unavailable. On a previous occasion before declining to answer questions for this article, she disclosed that her most recent previous employment was as a secretary to Hidalgo County Commissioner Sylvia Handy.
Shamsie said DOS Logistics and Omega Contracting are qualified and complaints are coming from local companies that submitted their qualifications and wanted the job.
Critics of the contracts include engineering professionals who would not have been in a position to bid on the job. Among those saying the county is overpaying are Steve Stagner, the Austin-based president of the Texas Council of Engineering Companies, and engineering professionals in government jobs with the City of Corpus Christi, the Port of Corpus Christi and the Texas Department of Transportation.
"It's a considerably higher percentage of fees than you would expect to see for those services as a part of the overall project," Stagner said.
By comparison, engineering and inspection for 10 miles of high-traffic city streets included in the City of Corpus Christi's 2004 bond project is averaging 8.3 percent for engineering/design and 3.5 percent for inspection. And the project is much more challenging, said City Engineer Angel Escobar.
"We have waterline work, waste-line work, drainage, road construction, curb and gutter, sidewalks and traffic signals to deal with. And it's in built-up areas, not in the middle of nowhere," he said. "It's quite a difference, isn't it? The other big difference is we are dealing with a complex system in the city, versus caliche and asphalt."
Qualifications issue
And then there is the question of qualifications.
County Attorney Laura Garza Jimenez has appealed a Caller-Times public information request for documents including the qualifications submitted by the two companies. Jimenez's appeal to Attorney General Greg Abbott, which is pending, claims the documents including the two companies' qualifications contain confidential information, some of which is proprietary.
Shamsie said he could not recall projects either company had worked on, and he could not cite either company's qualifications. DOS Logistics and Omega Contracting officials did not respond to phone or email inquiries.
Once the contracts were awarded, Stagner filed a complaint alleging that Omega Contracting violated state law by not having an engineer on staff when the contract was awarded.
The complaint alleges that when Omega responded to Nueces County's June 2004 request for qualifications, and when the county awarded the contract in October 2004, Omega was not registered as an engineering firm in Texas. The complaint also alleges the company did not have a licensed engineer on staff.
According to Texas Board of Professional Engineers licensing records, Omega was licensed as an engineering firm 21 days after Nueces County awarded the company the engineering contract on Oct. 25.
Omega declined to comment, referring questions to Garza of DOS Logistics, who also would not answer questions.
In DOS Logistics' contract there also is nearly $1 million in charges to the county for a resident engineer and an assistant resident engineer. The company is not licensed to offer those services, according to records from the Texas Board of Professional Engineers.
Looking into project
"We are going to look into everything and anything that has anything to do with engineering on this project," said Cook, the board's spokesman.
Garza, the spokeswoman for DOS Logistics, declined to answer whether the company employs an engineer and said written questions from the Caller-Times about the project had been turned over to an attorney. She declined to identify the attorney and the Caller-Times has not received a written response to the questions.
In October, Omega hired Dallas-based Parsons Brinckerhoff Construction Services to do the actual engineering on the project after the Nueces County Commissioners Court voted unanimously to act on Shamsie's recommendation that the contracts be awarded to the two companies.
Gary Hodges, an engineer with Parsons Brinckerhoff, said the company has supplied a registered engineer to the project and that the company, which has an international reputation, will make between $1.5 million and $2 million for engineering on the project.
Parsons Brinckerhoff is not supplying an engineer to DOS Logistics, Hodges said.
That leaves Omega to do oversight on the project and DOS Logistics to conduct the inspections.
County Commissioner Betty Jean Longoria said Shamsie was "the driving force" behind the two contracts. Shamsie recommended the two firms to the commissioners, she said.
She said she was anxious to get the project moving because a majority of the roads in need of work are in her precinct and at the time she did not notice that she was never shown any qualifications for either firm, she said.
Complaints voiced
Once the contracts were awarded, she immediately started hearing complaints from local engineers who told her that Omega was not an engineering company, and questions about the ownership of DOS Logistics.
"I didn't know they didn't have an engineer. I heard all of that after the fact," Longoria said.
Carl Crull, president of the local Council of Engineering Companies and an engineer at HDR Engineering, one of the firms originally vying for the job said, "We were disappointed that more of the work was not being done by local firms."
Maverick Engineering, Naismith Engineering, RVE Engineering, Goldston Engineering, HDR Engineering and the Anderson Group are the local companies that submitted qualifications for the engineering and inspection work.
Texas Secretary of State records indicate that Omega Contracting is based in Dallas and belongs to Luis Spinola. Spinola also owns Azteca Enterprises. Both firms are described on their Web site as contractors that seek government contracts set aside for minorities. Spinola did not return phone calls. His secretary referred inquiries to Garza, the Dos Logistics public relations specialist, who has refused comment.
DOS Logistics' registered agent is Eric Chin and the company is based in Weslaco, according to records from the Texas Secretary of State. Corpus Christi businessman George Finley said he started the company in 1999 to pursue minority contracts and that he no longer owns it.
DeLay did legal work
Randy DeLay, a Houston lawyer and lobbyist, whose brother is U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, was the company's registered agent when it was incorporated in 1999. Finley said Randy DeLay's only role with DOS Logistics was handling the legal work of incorporating the company for Finley.
Last year, Shamsie and County Commissioner Oscar Ortiz unsuccessfully sought to award DeLay a $1.2 million contract to lobby on behalf of local military installations.
Chin, the stepson of Gumecindo "Gume" Ybarraa business associate of Finley's, has since taken over operations, Finley said.
"I have known Gume for 10 or 15 years," he said. "I have businesses in the Valley."
There also are questions about why County Engineer Glenn Sullivan didn't handle the project. Normally Sullivan would have been responsible for a project such as this, Shamsie, Longoria, Ortiz and Commissioner Chuck Cazalas said.
Sullivan said he had nothing to do with hiring the two companies, which would normally have been a part of his duties, he said.
Shamsie and Ortizsaid Sullivan was stretched too thin, taking care of his regular duties and did not have time to oversee the rehabilitation project.
Unsure of reason
Sullivan denied that assertion, saying he is qualified for such a project and that he was not too busy.
Typically he and Cora Goding, the county purchasing agent, would have played a key role. This time they didn't. He said he does not know why.
Cazalas and Longoria said they do not know why Sullivan was bypassed and agreed that he should have played a big part in the project.
Shamsie and Ortiz said it's a big, aggressive project being turned around quickly - 18 months - and that they both wanted professionals doing the job.
"People pay taxes, and they want the job done," Shamsie said.
Sullivan joined the county five years ago after a 27-year career with the Texas Department of Transportation, part of which was spent as Assistant District Engineer, the No. 2 man, over a 10-county area that includes Nueces County. Evans, the TxDOT planning and development director, describes Sullivan as a highly qualified professional with the experience and skills to have handled the project.
Ortiz said the county's roads have been in disrepair for a long time and they needed to be rehabilitated quickly.
Asked about the price tag for the services Omega Contracting and DOS Logistics are providing and the staffing costs associated with those contracts, Ortiz answered: "I really don't know what to say about it."
Contact Jaime Powell at 996-3716 or powellj@caller.com

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Utility Disconnections punishing (squeezing) the poor or elderly is a flawed policy

Corpus Christi, TX – The social costs are high due to the lack of job creation in the city and in the county. Not too long ago Guy Watts penned the most significant letter to the editor of a local publication seen in years. He described what he called the city’s brain drain problem.

According to Watts, the lack of local employment opportunities cause the best and brightest graduates to flee the city in order to seek meaningful work else-where. He rightly acknow-ledges new economic development initiatives are long overdue.

The old paradigms are not working and have been broken for quite a while. Rather than real job creation, community lea-ders have traditionally believed the big develop-ments and tourism would be the panacea.

Text Box: Chronic lackluster job creation has caused the city and county to exceed both state and national levels of poverty…


They are not the cure. They play a part, but they alone cannot sustain a viable and diverse economy. They contribute to higher rates of underemployment and a sorry labor market. They cannot provide that community wide level of prosperity necessary for residents to enjoy a meaningful quality of life.

Chronic lackluster job creation has caused the city and county to exceed both state and national levels of poverty and working poor. Naturally, poverty is rough on the poor, but everybody pays the related social costs.

Those costs include indigent healthcare, in-creases in violent crime, and chaos caused by substance abuse. It is suspected most occupants of the county jail are not well-to-do.Substance abuse or violent behavior probably helped get them incarcerated.

The Center for Social Science Research at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi deter-mined in a 2004 report that “extreme economic depri-vation” might be the driving force behind family breakdowns.

Hence, local poverty contributes directly to the deterioration of family composition. A lack of family management ef-fectuates problem be-havior, including domestic violence, gang activity and other serious offenses.

The traditional moral compass associated with a healthy family structure is no longer here. Completing an eduction loses its priority and importance. No wonder the area suffers from a stubbornly per-sistent school dropout rate.

UTILITY DISCONNECTIONS:

In the past, local economic indicators included utility connections as a sign of economic growth. An Open Records act request provided an economic corollary. Utility dis-conneciton rates for nonpayment are for residences and that may include any number of occupants, including infants and the aged.

Last year, 14,518 houselhold were dis-connected for nonpayment. There were 16,507 reconnects. The higher reconnect number suggests some of those residential reconnections were carry-overs from 2004 shutoffs.

The city has a reconnect fee of $30. If they were collected, reconnect fees for 2005 brought the city $495.210. Some of those delinquencies deserve the penalty, but punishing the poor or elderly is a flawed policy. The five percent of overdue balance late fees should be adequate in most cases.

The disconnections for 2006 will surpass 2005 if they have not already. Unlike other years where reconnections out number-ed disconnections, city records through July of 2006 confirm 3,873 residences have yet to have their utilities reconnected. The latter is troubling.

Until families can escape the working poor trap, the poverty cycle will continue. Their kids will continue to be the collateral damage of misguided economic policies. The rest of the community will continue to pay the inevitable social costs. Economic charges can be made. Fresh thought and innovation can achieve a turnaround. This com-munity can become prosperous; however, the same old swill will not cut it anymore. [Note: Claude D’Unger of Corpus Christi is an environmental scientist.]

Friday, June 30, 2006

RIGHT TO DUE PROCESS EQUALLY

Equal Protection of the Laws.
If the courts stretched Fourteenth Amendment “due process” to apply the Bill of Rights to the states, they stretched Fifth Amendment “due process” to require the federal government to afford equal protection of the laws. The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the states from establishing segregated schools or otherwise discriminating invidiously against some of their citizens. There is no equal protection clause in the Bill of Rights. In a case involving segregation in the schools of Washington, D.C., which as the nation’s capital is a federal enclave governed by federal law, the Supreme Court found that the Due Process Clause operates against the federal government just as the Equal Protection Clause does against the states.

Substantive due process
The words “due process” suggest a concern with procedure, and that is how the Due Process Clause is usually understood. We have just seen, however, that the clause has been taken as a kind of proxy for other rights. In those cases, the rights were actually expressed somewhere in the Constitution, but only as rights against federal (or state) action. What about rights the Constitution does not mention — “unnamed rights,” as Charles Black calls them, like the right to work in an ordinary kind of job, or to marry, or to raise one’s children as a parent? The dominant constitutional controversy of the first third of this century, which still echoes in the arguments about abortion and other “privacy” issues like sexual preference, was about an idea called “substantive due process.” The question was whether "due process of law" might put substantive limits on what legislatures could enact, as well as require procedures of judges and administrators. Thus, in 1905, the Supreme Court found unconstitutional a New York law regulating the working hours of bakers, because it thought the public benefit of the law did not justify depriving the bakers of their right to work under whatever terms they liked. For thirty years, conservative judges sometimes used this idea to find legislative judgments about social or economic programs invalid, retarding the emergence of social welfare legislation. In the late 1930's, after years of sharp criticism, the substantive due process approach was repudiated for "economic regulation." Many think the idea is still vital as a barrier to legislation curbing other individual liberties, however – the right to privacy, for example.

The promise of legality and fair procedure
While the text of the due process clause is extremely general, the fact that it appears twice makes clear that it states a central proposition. Historically, the clause reflects the Magna Carta (http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/magna-carta.html) of Great Britain, King John’s thirteenth century promise to his noblemen that he would act only in accordance with law (“legality”) and that all would receive the ordinary processes (procedures) of law. It also echoes that country's Seventeenth Century struggles for political and legal regularity, and the American colonies' strong insistence during the pre-Revolutiona­ry period on observance of regular legal order. The requirement that government function in accordance with law is, in itself, ample basis for understanding the stress given these words. A commitment to legality is at the heart of all advanced legal systems, and the Due Process Clause often thought to embody that commitment.

The clause also promises that before depriving a citizen of life, liberty or property, government must follow fair procedures. Thus, it is not always enough for the government just to act in accordance with whatever law there may happen to be. Citizens may also be entitled to have the government observe or offer fair procedures, whether or not those procedures have been provided for in the law on the basis of which it is acting. Action denying the process that is “due” would be unconstitutional. Suppose, for example, state law gives students a right to a public education, but doesn’t say anything about discipline. Before the state could take that right away from a student, by expelling her for misbehavior, it would have to provide fair procedures – “due process.”

How can we know whether process is due (what counts as a “deprivation” of “life, liberty or property”), when it is due, and what procedures have to be followed (what process is “due” in those cases)? If "due process" refers chiefly to procedural subjects, it says very little about these questions. Courts unwilling just to accept legislative judgments have to find answers somewhere else. The Supreme Court’s struggles over how to find these answers echo its interpretational controversies over the years, and reflect the changes in the general nature of the relationship between citizens and government.

In the Nineteenth Century government was relatively simple, and its actions relatively limited. Most of the time it sought to deprive its citizens of life, liberty or property it did so through criminal law, for which the Bill of Rights explicitly stated quite a few procedures that had to be followed (like the right to a jury trial) – rights that were well understood by lawyers and courts operating in the long traditions of English common law. Occasionally it might act in other ways, for example in assessing taxes. In two decisions at the very beginning of the Twentieth Century the Supreme Court held that only politics (the citizen’s “power, immediate or remote, over those who make the rule”) controlled the state’s action setting the level of taxes, but if the dispute was about a taxpayer’s individual liability, not a general question, the taxpayer had a right to some kind of a hearing (“the right to support his allegations by arguments however brief and, if need be, by proof however informal”). This left the state a lot of room to say what procedures it would provide, but did not permit it to deny them altogether. Another early case suggested flexibility about the timing and nature of a required hearing. When a health inspector decided some chickens in cold storage had rotted, he didn’t have to hold a hearing before he could seize and destroy them, so they could not be sold; but the owner of the chickens could sue the inspector afterwards, and if it convinced the jury that the chickens were not rotten, make the inspector repay their value.

Whether process is due
The cases just mentioned established one important distinction: the Constitution does not require “due process” for establishing laws; the provision applies when the state acts against individuals “in each case upon individual grounds” – when some characteristic unique to the citizen is involved. Of course there may be a lot of citizens affected; the issue is whether assessing the effect depends “in each case upon individual grounds.” Thus, the due process clause doesn’t govern how Ohio sets the rules for student discipline in its high schools; but it does govern how Ohio applies those rules to individual students who are thought to have violated them – even if in some cases (say, cheating on a state-wide examination) a large number of students were allegedly involved.

Even when an individual is unmistakably acted against on individual grounds, there can be a questions whether the state has “deprive[d]” her of “life, liberty or property.” The first thing to notice here is that there must be state action. The Due Process Clause doesn’t apply to a private school taking discipline against one of its students (although that school will probably want to follow similar principles).

Whether state action against an individual was a deprivation of life, liberty or property was initially resolved by a distinction between “rights” and “privileges.” Process was due if rights were involved, but the state could act as it pleased in relation to privileges. But as modern society developed, it became harder to tell the two apart. Was a driver’s license a “right” or a “privilege”? How about a government job? Enrolment on welfare? An initial reaction to the increasing dependence of citizens on their government was to look at the seriousness of the impact of government action on an individual, without asking, as such, about the nature of the relationship affected. Process was due before the government could take an action that affected a citizen in a grave way.

In the early 1970's, however, this gave way to an analysis that accepted as a threshold question whether “life, liberty or property” was directly affected by state action, but that required these concepts to be very broadly interpreted. Two Supreme Court cases involved teachers at state colleges whose contracts of employment had not been renewed – they thought, because of some political positions they had taken. Were they entitled to a hearing before they could be treated in this way? Previously, a state job was a “privilege” and the answer to this question was an emphatic “No!” Now, the Court decided that whether either of the two teachers had "property" would depend in each instance on whether persons in their position, under state law, held some form of tenure. or rather. One teacher had just been on a short term contract; because he served "at will" – without any state law claim or expectation to continuation – he had no “entitlement” once his contract expired. The other teacher worked under a longer-term arrangement that school officials seemed to have encouraged him to regard as a continuing one. This could create an “entitlement,” the Court said; the expectation need not be based on a statute, and an established custom of treating instructors who had taught for X years as having tenure could be shown. While, thus, some law-based relationship or expectation of continuation had to be shown before a federal court would say that process was "due," constitutional “property” was no longer just what the common law called “property”; it now included any legal relationship with the state that state law regarded as in some sense an “entitlement” of the citizen. Licenses, government jobs protected by civil service, or places on the welfare rolls were all defined by state laws as relations the citizen was entitled to keep until there was some reason to take them away – and therefore process was due before they could be taken away. This restated the formal “right/privilege” idea, but did so in a way that recognized the new dependency of citizens on relations with government, the “new property” as one scholar influentially called it.

The application of this threshold test for whether process is due has presented three problems. The first is called the "positivist trap." Since whether one has an entitlement depends on the prescriptions of state law, legislatures may be able to define important relationships – ones on which citizens in fact come to depend – in ways that preclude the conclusion that an "entitlement" is present. Recent "welfare reform" legislation has been explicit that one its purposes is to end any idea that welfare is an "entitlement"; although largely directed to the question how long one may remain on welfare, the rhetoric seems also aimed at the “new property” idea.

We are not discussing “liberty,” but you can see that similar problems will arise, perhaps even more importantly. What decisions affecting prisoners involve their “liberty” has been a particularly aggravating problem. The courts do not want to engage in close supervision of prison issues, but at the same time must recognize the plain command of the language of the clause.
Moreover, if the provisions of a state law define not only an entitlement but also the procedures by which that relationship can be ended or altered, how can a court separate the two? Mustn't the citizen be prepared to accept the "bitter with the sweet"? This issue was presented when civil servants, enjoying tenure under statutes that provided for the procedures to be followed for removal, challenged the constitutionality of aspects of the removal procedures. The Court rejected the "bitter with the sweet" reasoning, but not without indicating a high level of respect for legislative judgments about what procedures would be fair.

The second problem might be described as a problem about what is a "deprivation." A series of cases involving state harm to citizens led the Court to an almost inexplicable series of "due process" results. For example, an early case held that a state could not post a picture of a person naming him as an habitual drunkard without first providing a chance for a hearing; the posting made it unlawful for that person to be served alcoholic beverages in a bar. Yet when a city circulated the photograph of a person recently arrested (but not convicted) for petty theft under the heading "Active Shoplifters," causing enormous damage to his reputation, the failure first to provide a hearing was not objectionable. Another case established that school officials could not suspend a student for ten days without first giving him some kind of hearing; attendance at public school was an "entitlement." Yet a teacher who physically punished a student so severely that it kept him out of school for several days (but who did not formally exclude him from school) had not deprived her student of liberty or property without due process of law. Where liability was denied, perhaps one could say the challenged official acts did not change the victim's legal status. It was still lawful to shop, or to come to school if health permitted. Yet the harms seem if anything worse than in the cases where procedure was required. Some have thought it important that in these cases (and others), state law appeared to provide a remedy after the fact; the victim could sue the official for slander or for assault. To find "due process" violations in such matters would involve the federal courts in what had traditionally been the business of state law. As a dissenter in the corporal punishment case observed, these considerations appear to explain the results in a technical sense. Yet it seems fair to characterize the justice of the opposing results in these cases as deeply questionable.

Finally, what about cases of potential entitlements for which a citizen is applying, and has not qualified? Does a statute saying that every citizen with characteristics A, B and C shall receive stated benefits or earn a driver's license create an "entitlement," so that "due process" constrains the application procedures the state can chose? Once qualified, the citizen could not be deprived of her "entitlement" without due process. Yet the Supreme Court has not said directly whether the same judgment applies at the application stage, and some Justices apparently believe that it does not. On the one hand, it can be said that the law is always more solicitous of established relationships than expectations. However, the "entitlement" analysis suffers some embarrassment in this argument. The claim of the citizen to state legality seems the same whether he has wrongly been denied access to an entitlement he has not yet enjoyed or has been terminated in one previously recognized.

When process is due
In its early decisions, like the rotten chicken case, the Supreme Court seemed repeatedly to indicate that, where only property rights were at stake (and particularly if there was some demonstrable urgency for public action) necessary hearings could be postponed to follow provisional, even irreversible, government action. This presumption changed in 1970 with the decision in Goldberg v. Kelly (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/search/display.html?terms=Goldberg%20v.%20Kelly&url=/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0397_0254_ZO.html), a case arising out of a state-administered welfare program. New York was seeking to terminate the enrolment of Kelly and others in its welfare program. It conceded that a federal statute required it to provide a full hearing before a hearing officer before finally terminating their enrolment and even – anticipating the new property, “entitlement” approach – that the Due Process Clause required such a hearing. At issue in the case was only its effort to suspend payments pending that full and formal hearing, a question in effect of timing. For this limited purpose New York employed a more informal process. It was willing to give persons like Mrs. Kelly opportunities to confer with responsible social workers and to submit written views before suspension, but it gave no "hearing" in the judicial sense before the suspension was put into effect.

The tremendous need facing a person dependent on welfare, even over a few weeks or months, persuaded the Goldberg Court that a suspension is in itself a deprivation, one that requires a hearing before it could be put into effect. Except for the situations mentioned earlier, where the courts have thought that a tort action could be an adequate remedy against officials who cause harm without affecting legal status, Goldberg in effect created a pre­sump­tion that hearings must come first. The "hearing first" aspect of its holding spread rapidly through a variety of civil judicial remedies – for example, limiting traditional summary procedures lenders had used to repossess cars bought on credit, when payments ceased. This aspect seems reasonably stable in today’s law.

It is interesting that these cases have never made what might seem an obvious comparison. In criminal law, the state often takes very damaging actions against people pending trial, with only limited procedural safeguards. Arrest and search require, at most, that police satisfy a judicial officer, a magistrate, that they have reasonable grounds to act; the person they are going to act against has no right to be present at the time. Detention pending trial requires no more than a showing of “probable cause,” and the person who is going to be detained has no right to present witnesses or ask questions of the persons who present evidence for the state. The result may be time in jail, disrupted families, terrible damage to reputation, the loss of a job. The inquiry New York made about Mrs. Kelley seems easily comparable to these criminal law inquiries, but that comparison was never made.

What procedures are due
Probably the hardest of the analytic questions arising under the procedural aspect of “due process” is this one, just what procedures are constitutionally due. This is a question that has to be answered for criminal trials (where the Bill of Rights provides many explicit answers), for civil trials (where the long history of English practice provides some landmarks), and for administrative proceedings, which did not appear on the legal landscape until a century or so after the Due Process Clause was first adopted. Because there are the fewest landmarks, the administrative cases present the hardest issues, and these are the ones we will discuss.

As we have seen, the earliest expressions were very indefinite. The state had to provide “some kind of a hearing,” giving the citizen “the right to support his allegations by arguments however brief and, if need be, by proof however informal.” The battle over incorporation, however, made this seem a very subjective inquiry, and the reaction to the excesses of substantive due process made that subjectivity suspect. Judicially defining the liberties "indispensable to the dignity and happiness of a free man" case by case seemed a hazardous enterprise. At the same time, developments in the 1950's underscored the importance of fair administrative procedures. This was the time of McCarthy­ism and the red-baiting that went with it. Rumors generated by faceless informers were widely used to deprive government employees of their jobs because of doubts raised about their loyalty and security. The resulting inquiries often left the employees with their honor challenged but no realistic possibility of response. They emphasized the value, in an administrative context, of procedural protections long associated with Anglo-American criminal trials: the right to have the assistance of counsel; the right to know one's accuser and the evidence against one; the right to confront and cross-examine that person; the right to have decision based solely upon a record generated in open proceedings; as well as the right to present argument and evidence on one's own behalf.

Yet, for each case that seemed to demand a detailed procedural prescription, another plainly required flexibility. A legislative investigation of alleged communistic activities could not be undertaken without respecting witness' claims to procedural safeguards; but the Court would not burden a legislative investigation into civil rights issues with rigid procedural requirements, although the investigation's conclusions might harm the reputation of witnesses before it in some parts of the country. An aeronautic engineer could not be threatened with loss of access to military secrets on which his profession depended, on the basis of anonymous accusations about his loyalty, without the opportunity to confront the information and his accuser; but a cook on a military installation threatened with loss of access to the installation (and hence that particular job), apparently on the basis of undisclosed concerns about her security status, had in all the circumstances no similar claim. The Court during this period seemed to agree on little, save the proposition that what the due process clause required could only be determined on the basis of all the circumstances of a given case -- a view not far distant from "the very essence of a scheme of ordered liberty.”

When the Goldberg Court came to answer the “what” question, it held that the state must provide a hearing before an impartial judicial officer, the right to an attorney's help, the right to present evidence and argument orally, the chance to examine all materials that would be relied on or to confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses, or a decision limited to the record thus made and explained in an opinion. The Court's basis for this elaborate holding has never been clear, although it seems to have some roots in the incorporation debates. Various prior cases were cited for the different ingredients provided for – the naval engineer's case (but not the cook's), for example, on the question of cross-examina­tion – but without attention to the possibility the requirements of due process would vary form setting to setting. The opinion was written as if all would agree that the procedures it was discussing were generally required whenever procedure was “due.” Yet, overall, the collection of procedures it required was atypically demanding even of final government administrative determinations on issues of great importance. A survey of forty federal programs made a few years after Goldberg, for example, found only one other program (also welfare-oriented) in which all the Goldberg rights were respected. For the substantial majority, fewer than half were provided; only notice, the assurance of some degree of impartiality, and an explanation of the basis of decision were observed with any degree of universality.

Perhaps for this reason, an outpouring of cases after Goldberg’s due process “explosion” quickly persuaded the Supreme Court to a more discriminating approach. Process was “due” to the student suspended for ten days, as to the doctor deprived of his license to practice medicine or the person accused of being a security risk; yet the difference in seriousness of the outcomes, of the charges, and of the institutions involved made it clear there could be no list of procedures that were always “due.” What the Constitution required would inevitably be dependent on the situation. What process is “due” is a question to which there cannot be a single answer.

A successor case to Goldberg, Mathews v. Eldridge (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/search/display.html?terms=Mathews%20v.%20Eldridge&url=/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0424_0319_ZO.html), tried instead to define a method by which due process questions could be successfully presented by lawyers and answered by courts. The approach it defined has remained the Court’s preferred method from resolving questions what process is due (although not one that the Court always refers to; sometimes it simply invokes tradition or some other basis for understanding). Mathews arose in a context much like Goldberg; Mr. Eldridge had been receiving disability benefits under a federally supported scheme. Responsible officials came to believe, on the basis of information he had provided and physicians' reports, that he was no longer disabled. They then notified him that they intended to terminate his benefits. Only written procedures were available before the termination was made provisionally effective. Eldridge was entitled to a full oral hearing at a later date, and would have received full benefits for the interim period if he prevailed. His argument, like Kelly's in Goldberg v. Kelly, was that even suspending payments to him pending the full hearing was a deprivation of a property interest that could not be effected without the use of the procedures specified in Goldberg.

Where Goldberg had listed procedures that had to be followed, Mathews attempted to define how judges should ask about constitutionally required procedures. The Court said three factors had to be analyzed:

First, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and finally, the Government's interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail.
Using these factors, the Court first found the private interest here less significant than in Goldberg. A person who is arguably disabled but provisionally denied disability benefits, it said, is more likely to be able to find other "potential sources of temporary income" than a person who is arguably impoverished but provisionally denied welfare assistance. Respecting the second, it found the risk of error in using written procedures for the initial judgment to be low, and unlikely to be significantly reduced by adding oral or confrontational procedures of the Goldberg variety. It reasoned that disputes over eligibility for disability insurance typically concern one's medical condition, which could be decided, at least provisionally, on the basis of documentary submissions.; it was impressed that Eldridge had full access to the agency's files, and the opportunity to submit in writing any further material he wished. Finally, the Court now attached more importance than the Goldberg Court had to the government's claims for efficiency. In particular, the Court assumed (as the Goldberg Court had not) that "resources available for any particular program of social welfare are not unlimited." Thus additional administrative costs for suspension hearings and payments while those hearings were awaiting resolution to persons ultimately found undeserving of benefits would subtract from the amounts available to pay benefits for those undoubtedly eligible to participate in the program. The Court also gave some weight to the "good-faith judgments" of the plan administrators what appropriate consideration of the claims of applicants would entail.

Matthews v. Eldridge thus reorients the inquiry in a number of important respects. First, it emphasizes the variability of procedural requirements. Rather than create a standard list of procedures that, en gross, constitute the procedure that is "due," the opinion emphasizes that each setting or program invites its own assessment. About the only general statement that can be made is that persons holding interests protected by the due process clause are entitled to "some kind of hearing." Just what the elements of that hearing might be, however, depends on the concrete circumstances of the particular program at issue. Second, that assessment is to be made both concretely, and in a holistic manner. It is not a matter of approving this or that particular element of a procedural matrix in isolation, but of assessing the suitability of the ensemble in context.

Third, and particularly important in its implications for litigation seeking procedural change, the assessment is to be made at the level of program operation, rather than in terms of the particular needs of the particular litigants involved in the matter before the Court. Cases thatare pressed to appellate courts often are characterized by individual facts that make an unusually strong appeal for proceduralization. Indeed, one can often say that they are chosen for that appeal by the lawyers, when the lawsuit is supported by one of the many American organizations that seeks to use the courts to help establish their view of sound social policy. Justice William Brennan, the author of Goldberg, wrote about it afterwards in just these terms, and dissented from Mathews in a manner that again drew strongly on the plight of the particular individual threatened with loss of welfare in that case, as distinct from the general situation of disability benefit recipients and the general operation of the program, on which the majority had focused. The approach required by the Mathews majority seems more likely to preserve than to endanger existing procedural arrangements. Finally, and to similar effect, the second of the stated tests places on the party challenging the existing procedures the burden not only of demonstrating their insufficiency, but also of showing that some specific substitute or additional procedure will work a concrete improvement justifying its additional cost. Thus, it is inadequate merely to criticize. The litigant claiming procedural insufficiency must be prepared with a substitute program that can itself be justified.

The Mathews approach is most successful when it is viewed as a set of instructions to attorneys involved in litigation concerning procedural issues. Attorneys now know how to make a persuasive showing on a procedural "due process" claim are, and the probable effect of the approach is to discourage litigation drawing its motive force from the narrow (even if compelling) circumstances of a particular individual's position. The hard problem for the courts in the Mathews approach, which may be unavoidable, is suggested by the absence of fixed doctrine about the content of "due process" and by very breadth of the inquiry required to establish its demands in a particular context. A judge has few reference points to begin with, and must decide on the basis of considerat­ions (such as the nature of a government program or the probable impact of a procedural requirement) that are very hard to develop in a trial. A not-at-all-surpris­ing result is to encourage judges to accept resolution of procedural issues by legislatures or others better placed to make these complex yet general assessments.

Two examples may illustrate the problems judges face. The first arose when one of the federal circuit courts of appeal had to decide a dispute about the procedures to be followed in determining certain low-value claims under the national medical insurance scheme. Initially, the court ruled with confidence that access to some kind of oral procedure was required under some circumstances, for no reported case had ever approved a completely written procedure for a setting in which process was "due." Yet this reference point arose outside the Mathews decision as such; and when the case returned to the court at a later stage, it became clear that the Mathews inquiry did not answer for the court just how tightly access to an oral procedure could be controlled and just how informal that procedure could be. For example, would provision for discussions over the telephone suffice? The detailed outcome of the lawsuit seemed much more likely to be the product of negotiations between the litigants than to be the result of judicial decision.

The second example involved a statute that, by very severely restricting the fees that could be paid, had the effect of denying veterans access to attorneys when they made claims under veterans benefits statutes. The Court was closely attentive to the Mathews formulation, and relied on statistics about the usual outcome of veterans' claims to establish that their need for attorneys' assistance was not high. Most veterans prevailed; veterans' organizations were available to provide substitute representation that seemed effective; and in the few cases in which lawyers had appeared, presumably without fee, veterans were not notably more successful than the general run. Yet these statistics cloaked what several of the Justices regarded as a real need for lawyers` assistance in a smaller group of much more complex cases. This was a focus the attorneys for the veterans groups had not developed. Some of the Justices thought that in a well-developed case the Mathews inquiry might demonstrate that attorneys help was constitutionally required in that sub-group of cases; others would have decided that, like the element of orality, access to an attorney was a necessary element of the process "due," one that could never be denied. What was apparent to both groups of Justices (together, a majority of the Court) was that the Mathews inquiry in this case was distorted by the great number of "easy cases," for which the desired procedural change would make little difference.

It follows from the preceding discussion that one cannot expect to list the elements of "required procedures" under American law. In the case involving a ten-day suspension from public school, a chance to tell the school principal (someone other than the complaining teacher) one's own side of the story was sufficient. Suspension of welfare payments may still be held to require all the elements specified in Goldberg, and actual termination of those payments, somewhat more. Nonetheless, an analysis made by the late Judge Henry Friendly in his well-regarded article, "Some Kind of Hearing," generated a list that remains highly influential, as to both content and relative priority:


An unbiased tribunal.
Notice of the proposed action and the grounds asserted for it.
Opportunity to present reasons why the proposed action should not be taken.
The right to present evidence, including the right to call witnesses.
The right to know opposing evidence.
The right to cross-examine adverse witnesses.
A decision based exclusively on the evidence presented.
Opportunity to be represented by counsel.
Requirement that the tribunal prepare a record of the evidence presented.
Requirement that the tribunal prepare written findings of fact and reasons for its decision.


Again, these are simply the kinds of procedures that might be claimed in a "due process" argument, roughly in order of their perceived importance, and not a list of procedures that will in fact be required.

Author
The original text of this article was written and submitted by Peter Strauss

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