Reaction to Town Meeting
On June 23rd, I attended the Board’s Austin town meeting. Present were three Board staff members, including Mari Robinson, the soon-to-be interim Executive Director of the Board. There was one Board member, Dr. McMichel and one public District review member, Ms. Sharon Barnes.
Essentially, Ms. Robinson asked if there were any questions or concerns and opened the floor. There were only 38 people present. I do not believe there were any representatives from TMA or TOMA present.
All told, Ms. Robinson did a find job explaining the Board’s position on several issues and weathered some amount of hostility from some members of the audience. Overall, it was good PR, but not much substance from my perspective. There were a few times I wanted to chime in and give an alternative view to the Board’s position, but I keep my mouth shut for a change.
The few things that I did find interesting were:
This fiscal year they are estimating 6900 complaints. Of those, the Board will open more than 2500 full blown investigation.
The Board views complaints like crime stoppers.
The Board views the fast track procedure similar to a traffic ticket. I will write in the near future why this is a BAD analogy.
The Board plans more town meeting in the future, and the “feed back” from these meetings will be presented at the August Board meeting for review and possible future action.
The Board is thinking about seeking a change in the law that will require the Board to provide more notice for the ISC, but also require the doctor to respond sooner too. For example, currently the Board only must given 30 days notice to an ISC and the doctor must provide records 5 business days prior to an ISC. The Board wants 45 days notice and 20 days for the doctor. I would like this, but I would like 10 more days, for 55 days, and 20 days for the doctor. The rationale is the Board has much time as it needs to make its case, we don’t have a lot of time to rebut the Board case.
I left after about a 1hr 45min. I had enough.
