Columns

There has been plenty of hand wringing over the past several days as the taxpaying public searches in vain for answers why its popular school superintendent suddenly resigned.
One of those taxpayers, Morrie Pongratz, rightly questioned the school board Tuesday night, saying that the public deserves to know what led to this situation.
That would be the ideal situation but unfortunately, state law allows school boards to review superintendents behind closed doors, allowing board members to say whatever they choose in private and never having to reveal publically their individual opinions or thoughts on the superintendent’s performance.
Oh, following the review, the board will release a milquetoast summary, which purposefully doesn’t capture individual criticisms or concerns and focuses instead on blanket, unattributed statements that rarely if ever give taxpayers a true assessment of what each board member truly thinks.
To further complicate the issue, because that process occurs in secret, board members are then forbidden to discuss with taxpayers exactly what was said and by whom.

Sen. Clemente Sanchez wanted to do something about child abuse and its watchdogs in the Children, Youth and Families Department. From his wife, a former social worker, he heard two words: case load. Our underpaid, overextended social workers can’t monitor each kid in a way that might have saved Omaree Varela from the allegedly brutal treatment of his mother.
Five bills in the recently completed legislative session focused on CYFD, but only one passed, an indicator of both complexity and the distance to consensus.
Sanchez wanted a limit of 15 cases, which might require another 22 hires. The Child Welfare League of America recommends 12 to 15 children per social worker; the average in CYFD is 12 to 20.
His fellow Grants Democrat, House Speaker Ken Martinez, introduced “Omaree’s Law,” which would have required CYFD to immediately take custody of a child with injuries consistent with abuse. If abuse was proven, the child would stay in custody until the parent received professional counseling.
CYFD argued that in fiscal 2013 it received more than 21,000 reports alleging physical abuse. The bill would have the unintended consequence of overwhelming not only CYFD, but the courts.

The Economic Times of India this week reports that Dr. Devi Shetty, the “Indian cardiac surgeon renown for making cutting-edge medical care affordable to the masses,” is creating a new $70 million startup, deliberately designed by its nearby location, to skate the United States regulatory nightmare, while delivering reduced cost, and advanced healthcare to American citizens.
Located in the Cayman Islands in a British protectorate, “Health City Cayman” just became operational with a 104-bed, multi-specialty hospital and a team of some 70 Indian doctors, technicians and nurses. Shetty said the facility will begin with costs some 30 percent-plus, lower than U.S. rates on healthcare services, while shooting for a 2000-bed facility, a 50 percent cost reduction, and an additional $2 billion invested within 10 years. A web search shows dozens of U.S. flights daily to the Caymans, many from originating airports, as well as the 90 minute puddle-jumpers from Miami.
Shetty’s corporate global enterprise, Narayana Health, already controls some 6,300 beds in several countries, including a state-of-the-art facility I used when we lived in Abu Dhabi.

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Slippery slope” is an all-purpose image. People use it to damn the havoc that others might set in motion.
Or it might depict the kind of “slippery slope” that lets the Earth’s tectonic plates slip along fault lines to start earthquakes.
Either image fits a public rift that is in the news out of Oklahoma. A current snarl in the quest for oil involves earthquake risk.
For many years, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) has helped produce more oil and gas in Oklahoma. More and more fracking produces more and more oil and gas.
In recent years, more small earthquakes also have occurred in Oklahoma.
Does the fracking trigger the small earthquakes? Statistically speaking, the answer appears to be yes.
Oklahoma always had Earth tremors, averaging about 50 per year, almost all of them minor. In the past three years, the state has had thousands of quakes, with more than 2,600 in 2013.
Most of the quakes were too slight to be felt, but a few damaged a few houses and one injured two people.
Actually, the data say that wells for disposing of wastewater from fracking may relate to quakes more than fracking itself. Lands around disposal wells have had jiggles following strong, distant earthquakes.