McAllen Chamber talks the talk; but walking the walk is different

When it comes to its CORE VALUES, which is how it’s written on its website (all letters upper case), the McAllen Chamber talks the talk; but when you (in this case, I) ask the nonprofit for some relatively simple information, its core seems off, and the chamber doesn’t seem to be walking the walk.

Here’s a core section, one of five, printed on its website — mcallen.org — that is listed under CORE VALUES:

>Collaboration: To be an organization that fosters collaboration and shared direction, transparency, and focuses on shared information, no hidden agendas, and experiencing success is a crucial driver for individuals and the organization.”

Transparency? No hidden agendas? Great, but doesn’t the McAllen Chamber first need to be transparent to prove not only that it is transparent, but that it has no hidden agendas?

Granted, former chamber President Steve Ahlenius is no longer at the helm, having abruptly resigned in October, but after 24 years on the job, is the closed door I’m now running into at the chamber the sort of legacy he’s left behind, with regard to transparency? Or the lack thereof?

For example, last Thursday (Dec. 9), I sent the McAllen Chamber two emails that contained 10 public information requests. The documents requested included relatively simple public information: board minutes for the past five fiscal years; the budgets approved by the board for the past five fiscal years; copies of three pay checks paid to Ahlenius (his last two, plus his severance); recordings for the Oct. 19 meeting during which Ahlenius resigned and the meeting at city hall Nov. 9; any and all conflict-of-interest forms filled out for the same time period (board member doing business with the Chamber); fiscal audits for past five years, approved by the board (per bylaws); and some other info along the same lines — public information.

I sent the email with the public info requests attached to the McAllen Chamber’s interim CEO and her administrative assistant. I got nothing back in return, even though I asked for confirmation that my email had been received.

Let’s read that McAllen Chamber core value again. It’s too good for just one goaround:

>Collaboration: “To be an organization that fosters collaboration and shared direction, transparency, and focuses on shared information, no hidden agendas, and experiencing success is a crucial driver for individuals and the organization.”

Now that one actually made me laugh.

By the way, even though the McAllen Chamber didn’t respond to my email, an email (may have been a text) was sent from the Chamber’s main office by the interim CEO to board members the day after (may have been the same day) I sent the interim CEO my requests for public information. The chamber was not going to contact me, the message (text and/or email) read, nor was it going to respond to my requests for public information because it was a nonprofit and not subject to PIRs (Public Information Requests) — or words to that effect.

In other words, this is the McAllen Chamber’s way of being “transparent.”

Committee suspended

According to several sources, at the Nov. 9 Chamber board meeting, a motion was made and seconded to suspend the Executive Committee by a 9-7-2 vote.

As individual board officers, the people who comprise the Executive Committee aren’t suspended from the Board of Directors. Rather, just the Executive Committee as a whole is suspended this fiscal year if that makes sense, which includes past-chair, Sally Guerra; chair-elect, Stephan Wingert; vice-chair, Cris Rivera; and treasurer, McAllen City Commissioner, District 3, Omar Quintanilla.

In other words, when the January Board meeting convenes, Annette Franz will still serve as chairwoman; Rivera will still serve as vice-chair; Omar Quintanilla as treasurer, etc.

Question still is, by that vote of 9-7-2, the Board suspended the Executive Committee in November, but why?

According to the bylaws, the Executive Committee can do nothing on its own without reporting it to the entire Board at the next regularly scheduled meeting.

Now, it’s time to dig some more into this and see which nine board members voted in favor of suspending the Executive Committee; which seven opposed it; and which two board members reportedly abstained from voting.

It’s also time to contact the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, because since the chamber is a nonprofit — based on what I read — because it accepts approximately $1 million from the City of McAllen each year (hotel/motel tax money and some sales tax dollars), it’s subject to open records.

Not only that, but according to the Secretary of State’s website, if a nonprofit accepts money from outside its membership in the amount of more than $10,000, which the McAllen Chamber clearly does, then it is subject to public disclosure (records, documents).

In fact, according to the Secretary of State’s info, any member of the public can gain access to public documents inside the McAllen Chamber, such as board minutes, and copies of them can be made. After all, this isn’t Area 51 territory here. It’s a Chamber of Commerce.

In the end, someone is calling some bad shots, but why?

The question is, who exactly is behind this recent decision not to release public info to a news outlet? Is it just the interim CEO, because she has no Executive Committee to call for a special meeting, which would usually be the play in a situation such as this: “We’ve just been handed more than 10 requests for public information. We need to meet and discuss it, and then take it to the board and let them know about what’s going on.”

With no Executive Committee to fall back on for support, what does an interim CEO do in a situation like this? Just shoot out a text/email to board members, letting them know what’s going on — a news outlet is asking for documents, Ahlenius' annual job evaluations, annual audits, etc.; but we’re not going to respond.

If the interim CEO, Blanca Cardenas, has sought a legal opinion, who approved it, and who is the attorney, and where is his or her written opinion, saying that the chamber can keep its finances hidden from public view, from the press, because the Secretary of State is wrong when its office says (Section 22.352) that a nonprofit’s books should be open to the public.

On the flip side, I keep saying, why attach bad press to your name by acting as if you’re hiding something, which is clearly the case here. As long as the McAllen Chamber says that simple things, such as annual audits, job evaluations, board minutes, etc., are privileged info, no public info is subject to disclosure, then the more likely it is that more and more people will start to wonder:

Why are they shutting the door to media access?

What is there to hide?

Asking for items such as budgets, audits, job evaluations for a CEO who was being paid approximately $156,000 per year is not asking for the moon. The Advance is simply asking for documents that should be readily accessible to the public because the McAllen Chamber in part is being funded with tax dollars.

After all, if you include Ahlenius’ salary and the compensation going to other chamber staff members, that dollar number alone amounted to approximately $1 million per year, according to the chamber’s annual filing with the IRS.

Yet, the McAllen Chamber of Commerce doesn’t have to make its business subject to open disclosure, according to the text (emails) sent to board members last week?

Time will tell.