City Council abandons controversial “consensus” method

The city’s government will abandon an evaluating method to score companies looking to do business with the city as a result of the aborted and controversial search for a new financial adviser.

El Paso City Council on Monday voted to completely get rid of the so-called “consensus method,” the evaluating technique used by the city committee that evaluate the latest companies competing for the financial adviser contract.

The committee, led by the city’s chief financial officer, strayed from the conventional method of individual scoring by committee members and instead only filed one scoring sheet using the consensus method. The city had never used that evaluation method before, even though it is legal.

City representatives have repeatedly said the sudden change raised eyebrows and created an air of suspicious over the search. “If somebody protests you can’t justify why that vendor that got the award. Because it’s just consensus. You can’t say well they based it on ten points qualifications, twenty points on price. There’s no such thing. Consensus is just ‘we all agree,'” said City Rep. Emma Acosta.

In a special meeting on Monday, council heard a detailed presentation from Purchasing Director Bruce Collins on the city’s procedures. “This entire discussion is a result of the financial adviser search,” said City Rep. Claudia Ordaz during the presentation.

City Manager Tommy Gonzalez last year authorized the search for a new financial adviser at the suggestion of City Rep. Larry Romero during a public meeting but without a vote from City Council.

The process stopped when City Attorney Sylvia Firth learned about the search and suggested it be halted because it had not stemmed from a council vote.

Firth also said she learned Noe Hinojosa, the owner of Estrada Hinojosa, the top-scored company, had been “telling people he had won the contract.”

Hinojosa and Romero worked together briefly in the early 90’s and Romero had before suggested Hinojosa’s company to former City Manager Joyce Wilson.

Romero has said he only did it because of the “work they do as the third largest firm in Texas” and didn’t disclose his prior work relationship with Hinojosa because it didn’t seem relevant, though now he admits he probably erred in not doing so.

“We had the right processes in place which was the city attorney. When it got to the city attorney, it stopped the process and didn’t let it move forward and so nothing illegal happened because it was stopped. But we want to know why it started to begin with,” said Mayor Oscar Lesser in an interview after the meeting.

City Representatives on Monday also decided to hire a company to rewrite its entire purchasing manual to include only best practices after learning of other processes.

Until City manager Tommy Gonzalez recently stopped it, the engineering department for years had been managing it’s bids rather than doing it under purchasing. “I had never seen anything like this before and projects were late or staff wasn’t properly evaluating the companies.” said Gonzalez.

Gonzalez, who has come under scrutiny for authorizing the financial adviser search without council approval, said he did not know the city could use the consensus method nor that it had used it when scoring financial advisers.

The Council on Monday also learned some experienced city employees had more leeway in collecting their own quotes from vendors for purchases under $50,000, a revelation that Gonzalez said he also was not aware of. “I don’t know of a lot of things you all think I get informed on,” Gonzalez told Council. Collins said purchases under $50,000 do not require council approval and are usually for “routine purchases.”

The City Council in December hired ethics attorney Ross Fischer to evaluate the financial adviser search and determine if the actions taken were ethical and appropriate. Fischer’s investigation is due by the end of January, according to city officials.

“To me, the greatest damage is $22 million the city lost. That’s worst than the processes were talking about now,” said City Rep. Carl Robinson, referring to the millions the city lost in an unfavorable ballpark financing deal.

Wilson, in 2013, decided to delay the issuance of the bonds until after the May 2013 Mayoral election between then ballpark supporter Steve Ortega and Leeser.

Wilson delayed the issuance despite warnings from financial adviser First Southwest and Gonzalez has before said he would not have authorized the search for a new financial adviser had he known that because it would have proved council’s concerns that First Southwest had landed the city a bad ballpark financial deal were unfounded.

Initially, the City had voted to have Fishcer investigate if Wilson acted appropriately. But City Rep. Lily Limon on Monday said that detail had been left out of Fishcer’s draft contract. “I hope that will be revisited,” Limon said.