Imagine this. You run a company, or at least are put in place to manage that company and report to a board. You are asked what you pay each person who works for your company, by the year. That would, of necessity, be the salary or wages, perhaps with bonuses, or other monies. But you, the manager, have no idea what you actually pay people by the year. Instead of sending yearly salary per person, you send a rate sheet that has no further explanation, and nothing that indicates, if this is rate per hour, whether these employees are full time, part time, etc. When you are asked why you didn't send yearly salary information, you indicate that it would be long and laborious to figure it out.  Meaning that you, as head of a company, have no apparent budget by department heads that has a breakdown, and cannot verify for yourself who is getting what salary.

That's what I have asked and you, dear reader, will be amazed to see the hoops I am STILL going through to find out something that, for example, Somervell County sent quickly. Let's start with a premise that when an entity is public and paid for by public taxpayer money, the taxpayers can know HOW their money is being spent.

• March 10, 2010-I requested to know the yearly salaries of what GRMC employees are paid. I would assume that the Somervell County Hospital Authority would have to include this in their budget to TELL Somervell County which supplies the money FOR GRMC which is a dba for Somervell County Hospital Authority board. GRMC didn't contact me at all to clarify but instead, because they did NOT want to fufill the open records request, sent it on to their attorneys.
• March 2010-Wrote about how Glen Rose Medical Center was trying to hide the salaries/wages being spent.
• March 2010. Town Hall meeting where the Somervell County Hospital Authority Board was asked about the salaries of all Glen Rose Medical Center Employees.
• May 28, 2010-The Texas Attorney General's office ruled that GRMC cannot keep salary information private.
• June 9, 2010- I received back information from GRMC that showed a *rate* for each employee but no other information. I asked what it meant and got back reply that it was a rate per hour.  Let me say this again- the information as first sent had NO explanation about what it even was.  (I have not posted these rates at this point) I then said that without other information such as whether the employee is part time or full time, etc, the rate was not meaningfull and besides I had asked for yearly salary information. Over the course of the day I got a little frustrated and....
• June 10, 2010  I complained to the Attorney General's Office about  the reply given back to me. Here's what I said, in part.

What I received back yesterday was a *rate* (see the attached page on this fax) which is
meaningless unless I also know a number of other facts, such as whether the employees
are hourly or part time or full time, how many hours they worked, how much vacation did
they take, etc. In other words, although I asked for yearly salary, the information I got
back is not only not what I asked for but is meaningless without a whole lot of other
information. I assume that this rate was not sent back intentionally to obfuscate yearly
salary information. I have requested that I receive yearly salary information but have not
gotten any reply regarding this.
I would like my request to be fulfilled the way I asked it to be.

• June 23, 2010- In response to my questions about the rates versus yearly salaries, this was Gary Marks response to me. (Note that the AG had still not replied.) You'll notice in his reply that he is dicing the word *salaries* by saying that employees do not get salaries. I believe this is disingenous, but am willing to pull out my thesaurus and call it yearly wages if it makes it more comprehensible to Mr Marks. He also doesn't seem to understand my question regarding the 501a doctors, but he was in the audience at the Somervell County Commissioners Court in December 2009 when this was discussed, re the Glen Rose Healthcare Inc. (listen in at about 4:11 in video-gentleman says that this is something the Hospital Authority will address-management agreement between authority and 501a corporation)

Notice too in this reply for Mr Marks that he seems to  believe that being able to supply a list of what each person made for salary is a long, laborious process that would cost $154.00 to do.

• June 28 2010-received a cc reply from the AG's office regarding my complaint
• July 6, 2010-sent email again requesting reply for clarification from Gary Marks. Note that I wrote him back that if necessary, I would come in to look at the records myself. However, I find it hard to believe that the operaton is THIS disorganized that this information is not available more easily!

Is it really too difficult for GRMC to figure out what they paid their employees for, say 2009? Or to know what they will budget for payment in 2010? When I used to work, at the end of every year, the company had to create W-2 forms that showed what people made. I'm sure that my company didn't pull those numbers out of a hat, but that SOMEBODY had to do those numbers for each and every person. I'm equally sure that, when accounting functions are computerized and the company has some kind of accounting personnel/employee module, that the numbers don't have to be worked over laboriously, but can be exported to, say, a spreadsheet. Drilling down, when each department head figured out what they needed to budget for the next year, they included salaries FOR EACH PERSON. So SOMEBODY knows what people are being paid.. BY THE YEAR. Otherwise, how the fool does GRMC work within a budget AT ALL? (That includes, incidentally, the doctors from the 501a that are either being or potentially being subsidized by Somervell County taxpayers by a one-off management agreement  if there is a shortfall).

Frankly, I really dislike thinking this, but based on the actions so far from GRMC, it appears that Mr Marks is doing everything he can to drag out letting the taxpayers of Somervell County KNOW what employees are being paid by the year, which would be 2009 if last year or in a budget. I know that he does not want to let that information out, but the AG's office has ruled that he must; this is PUBLIC information. IF truly GRMC isn't capable of providing a list that would be at least somewhat similar to what Somervell County quickly and easily did (and I'm willing to bet that the other public entities could do that as well), then one has to wonder about the management.

UPDATE: I received a message yesterday that the records will be available after July 15th.

UPDATE #2- I went in and looked at the records a couple of weeks ago and have compiled a list of salaries, here. (No names are included). Mr Reynolds was very professional and I appreciate his work in this.