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<\/p>\nBoard members question transparency after only one qualifying bid surfaced.<\/p>\n
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 A rainy-day meeting at the Regional Transportation Authority turned into a debate over transparency, public trust and political optics after board members delayed a controversial insurance consulting contract tied to a Corpus Christi city councilman.<\/p>\n
The contract helps oversee the RTA\u2019s self-funded insurance program by reviewing claims, auditing costs and making recommendations aimed at controlling risk and expenses.<\/p>\n
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But concerns surfaced after board members learned that out of 52 companies notified about the bidding opportunity, only two proposals were submitted and just one qualified for consideration. That proposal came from Barrera Insurance, owned by Corpus Christi City Councilman Roland Barrera.<\/p>\n
\u201c I wanna make sure that we are transparent and I have a concern of just having one and it\u2019s our City Council person,\u201d RTA board member Susie Luna Saldana said during the discussion.<\/p>\n
Board member Eloy Salazar also questioned whether enough outreach had been done to attract more competition.<\/p>\n
\u201c My issue is that the procurement process should have at least one more, especially when you have 52 bidders that were notified and of those we need to do a little more outreach,\u201d Salazar said.<\/p>\n
Barrera Insurance has handled the consulting work for roughly a decade. The proposed contract would have paid the company $180,000 over three years.<\/p>\n
Instead of approving the agreement, the board voted to delay the process for three months and reopen bidding in hopes of attracting more proposals.<\/p>\n
Board member David Berlanga said the issue came down to public perception and accountability.<\/p>\n
\u201c The optics are not good, not with public money,\u201d Berlanga said. \u201c Roland Barrera has been my insurance agent for many many years. But, that\u2019s a private business, my choice, my money. This is public money.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the meeting, Barrera told 3News he understood the board\u2019s concerns and said his company would consider whether to submit another proposal.<\/p>\n
\u201c We will definitely consider whether or not we are going to participate,\u201d Barrera said. \u201c I don\u2019t wanna put the board members in a precarious position where they feel uncomfortable simply because there\u2019s an elected official participating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Board members also discussed whether the insurance consulting work could eventually be brought in-house. However, RTA leadership said finding someone with the same level of expertise for the same cost could be difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Board members question transparency after only one qualifying bid surfaced. CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 A rainy-day meeting at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-312488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}