The point: Joven and crew are bad for Odessa and his latest rant is full of misinformation and outright lies.
If you’ve been reading the Odessa American’s coverage of the City of Odessa on a regular basis you’ve no doubt been struck by the fact Mayor Javier Joven and sidekicks Mark Matta, Denise Swanner, Chris Hanie and Greg Connell routinely decline to respond to our questions.
Well, this week Joven decided to attack the OA’s coverage of City Hall in the Midland Reporter Telegram, insinuating in an opinion piece this newspaper is part of a liberal effort that is using a “playbook to undermine and take down conservatives.”
We find it comical that he would pen this fiction on the pages of another city’s newspaper, airing his grievances to an audience that really does not even comprise his voting constituency.
That aside, think about his latest claims for a second.
If we wanted to “take down” Joven and his cronies, which also includes Ector County Republican Party Chairwoman Tisha Crow, would we consistently call, text and email them seeking their point of view?
Let’s take it further.
Joven stated one of the plays in the so-called playbook is to pay someone to lie about them or to find someone desperate for attention. Essentially, he insinuates the OA is part of a larger liberal force that pays people to lie about him and his political allies.
Please. If he is accusing this newspaper of paying people to lie about him and his supporters, he is telling a bald face lie himself. We do not pay anyone to be a source in a story. Ever.
If you’re consistently reading the OA, you will already know all of our coverage is based on City Hall meetings and/or public documents received under the Texas Public Information Act.
We didn’t “find” former Downtown Odessa Executive Director Casey Hallmark, who claimed at separate City Council meetings Joven and Hanie bullied her. (And for the record, her story has remained remarkably consistent. Not sure where Joven arrives at the conclusion it has “risen to incredible new heights of fabrication.”)
We didn’t find or pay anyone to tell us the City Council voted 5-2 to fire City Manager Michael Marrero and City Attorney Natasha Brooks without explanation. It happened right in front of all of us — twice. In fact, it happened while being live-streamed to anyone who wanted to watch it.
We didn’t pay anyone to tell us Joven violated the city charter when he hired T2 Professional Consulting for $338,000 within hours of firing Marrero.
It was right there in the city charter and contract to read.
What was also readily available for everyone to read? The so-called credentials of T2’s “mental scientist” — Joven’s term; not ours — Hank Seitz. Go ahead, Google him. Oh, and if you can find a college that offers a mental scientist degree, please let us know.
We also didn’t need anyone to tell us that nearly the entire upper echelon of Odessa Fire Rescue has bailed out on the city, along with Assistant City Manager Cindy Muncy, since Marrero was canned. Also, four of the City’s six attorneys left following the firing of Brooks. All we had to do was file open records requests.
We didn’t pay a clearly frustrated Public Works Director Tom Kerr to suddenly retire in the middle of a City Council meeting because of the undue stress placed upon him by the mayor and some on the council.
It wasn’t us who were concerned the departures were part of a mass “exodus” either. That was Odessa City Councilmember Steve Thompson, the only City Council member who can be counted on to answer the OA’s — and by extension Odessa voters’ — questions.
Joven also insinuated in his opinion piece that the OA was “dispatching social media trolls” to chum the online waters. We almost spit out our morning coffee reading that line. We almost lost it again when he accused us of being a “social gossip rag.” We’re not the ones hiding behind false Facebook people with names like Josiah Vargas or Finnegan Lane.
The OA does not “fabricate” stories or “embellish narratives.”
We write the news of the day, good or bad. We tell readers what’s happening at City Hall, and we reach out to everyone we can who might be able to explain why. We also publish editorials on various issues, which represent our viewpoint. But we take great pains to keep our news coverage separate from our opinion pieces.
We’ve been doing so since 1940, and any loyal reader of the OA knows we do it regardless of who’s sitting on the dais in City Hall or Commissioners Court.
Joven also falsely claims in his opinion piece that he, Matta and Swanner scored “solid victories” over three incumbents in the 2020 election. Funny, we thought there had to be a run-off election for all three. And the actual number of voters who elected Joven is minuscule in comparison to the overall number of registered voters in the city. Hardly a voter mandate.
Oh, and by the way, we agree with Joven the $80,000 Christmas trees he complains about in his article were ugly, but the money used to purchase them was earmarked for tourism. It couldn’t have been put toward firefighter wages even if the council had wanted to do so. Joven is simply trying to push the narrative that he and his crew “gave” local first responders their long-awaited raises. We suspect they are simply looking for allies.
It can’t be said enough: It is our job to report on the news of the day. We categorically deny we’re angry with the city about our ongoing public records lawsuit with them, although it is definitely worth noting Joven consistently lies when he says the city won that case.
The city did not win. The judge in the case dismissed the lawsuit based on the city’s claims that it eventually gave us the documents we sought.
To be clear, the city only turned over the documents after we initiated legal action.
The judge did NOT state the city was right to withhold the records in violation of Texas law or to redact them in the first place. And that is why we appealed the ruling. We want the Texas Court of Appeals to definitively say the city was in the wrong SO THEY CAN’T DO IT AGAIN.
Joven also criticized Texas Monthly for not mentioning local officials held a joint workshop recently.
Should citizens be glad to see the City of Odessa, the Odessa Development Corporation and Ector County working hand-in-hand? Absolutely, but for the record, it was County Judge Dustin Fawcett’s idea.
Again, that’s not a false narrative or an attempt to bring conservatives down.
It’s just the truth.
Speaking of the truth, Joven recently told an OA reporter the reason our massive requests for public information didn’t include many of Joven’s emails.
“The one thing that I was taught, you get an email, you destroy it, you don’t keep anything,” he said. “This is what’s being taught in every faction, destroy this, this, this and this, you just delete. You keep nothing.” By the way, that statement was recorded by the reporter — just in case Joven wants to dispute that he ever said it.
Public officials are required to keep their email dealing with public business regardless of whether the email is from a government-issued email address or a private one.
Folks, we are simply interested in the truth.
It’s what we are passionate about doing, every day.
Nay. It is what we are obligated to tell, every day.
And it’s what we’re going to continue to do, every day.
