The Victoria Advocate filed a lawsuit to dispute the secretive hiring of former U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, citing the Texas Open Meetings Act.
News organizations prefer to fight the good fight for open government by reporting the news. Unfortunately, sometimes they have to go to court.
The Victoria Advocate has filed a lawsuit to dispute the Calhoun Port Authority's highly secretive hiring of former U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold as a lobbyist on the grounds that it violated the Texas Open Meetings Act. The Advocate asserts that the port authority was vague in its agenda item about Farenthold's hiring.
That's the item pertaining to Farenthold on the port's May 9 meeting. For all anyone not in the know would have known, the port could have been planning to fire a janitor. There is no way to glean from that language that the Calhoun Port Authority planned to hire Farenthold for $160,000 a year to lobby for the port.
To anticipate the port's intentions, one would have to know that the position existed and that the port was seeking someone to fill it. This position appears to have been created for Farenthold with no warning. Neither the Caller-Times nor the Advocate has been able to ascertain whether the position had been advertised. Port officials have been asked and no answer has been forthcoming. At least the Advocate, the nearest daily newspaper of record, knows it didn't publish an advertisement or public notice of the job opening and salary range.
There was no way for the public to know what the port authority intended to do, and therefore no way to evaluate it in advance.
Specifically, there was no way to know that the port intended to hire an ex-congressman who has achieved national infamy for settling a sexual harassment complaint with $84,000 in tax money, promised to reimburse taxpayers after he was outed, and reneged.
There was no way for the public to consider ahead of Farenthold's hiring that he never did much good for his hometown Corpus Christi's port while he was in office, yet apparently port officials expect him to be useful to them minus the clout but with his sullied reputation fully intact.
We admit it would be asking a bit much for the agenda to have pointed out that the port's new hire quit the House only a month earlier, that he did it to dodge what was expected to be a harsh comeuppance from the House Ethics Committee, and that the comeuppance was expected to be about both the sexual harassment complaint and additional allegations that he used staff for political campaign work. But a job description and the lone candidate's name and resume would have been nice. The news reporting ahead of time could have taken care of the rest.
It's clear why port officials would want to hide this. It's embarrassing. It calls their judgment into question. It looks like they spent the public's money to take care of Farenthold. It doesn't look like they were looking for the best lobbyist they could find for their $160,000.
It would be interesting, and in the public's best interest, to see if the port authority sticks with its decision if forced to try again, this time with adequate lawful public notice.
One of Farenthold's broken promises as an officeholder was that he would be transparent. He was not. He kept the sexual harassment complaint, the settlement amount and its funding source under wraps for as long as he could. Now, barely out of Congress, his new job is a botched cover-up. He and this port authority appear made for each other. But he and they are not made for public service or for the public trust that goes along with it.
"Few rights of the public are as important as the right to knowledge about how their government spends taxpayer funds and manages the public's business," according to the Advocate's petition. Hear hear!
The Advocate deserves the gratitude of all who live in Texas Congressional District 27 and especially the residents of Calhoun County. But not just them. The Advocate deserves the gratitude of everyone everywhere who believes in the right to know what government does.