A certificate of obligation is a form of debt that is issued without voter authorization, unlike a general obligation bond, which goes on a ballot.
Previously we reported that the City of El Paso owes $851,565,991 in principle and interest on 10 certificates of obligation that have been issued since 2013, representing 37.7% of the City’s total bonded indebtedness of $2,257,059,694.
The 2022 Local Government Annual Report of the Texas Bond Review Board shows that El Paso has the highest per-capita CO debt of the state’s six largest cities, $861 per person — more than Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio combined!
CARBAJAL CLAIMS CERTIFICATES OF OBLIGATION ARE ONLY FOR EMERGENCIES
At the District 2 Candidates Forum, hosted by the El Paso Chamber and El Paso Matters on November 14, Bob Moore asked Veronica Carbajal “Under what circumstances, if any, would you support the issuance of certificates of obligation?”
At the 33:19 mark she replied that she would only do so in an “emergency situation,” such as the 2006 El Paso flood. She was emphatic. An emergency situation “would be the only one that I would vote to approve a CO.” (Many thanks to Martin Paredes for catching this statement).
CARBAJAL VOTED FOR A $400 MILLION CERTIFICATE OF OBLIGATION FOR UMC
While on the UMC Board of Managers, Carbajal voted for a certificate of obligation in the amount of $400 million, on June 14, 2022, the largest issuance of its kind in the history of El Paso. Paredes obtained a recording of the meeting and published the information on El Paso News the next day.
That vote set in motion a chain of events that sparked a major voter rebellion against the CO issuance, which was shot down in flames by citizen petition the following September, thanks to the efforts of the Libre Initiative.
PROGRESSIVES SUPPORT CARBAJAL IN SPITE OF HER RECORD
Veronica Carbajal claims she only supports COs for emergencies but she voted to issue a $400M non-emergency CO to expand a hospital, and in a manner that was completely devoid of transparency.
She strongly supported the climate initiative Proposition K even though it would have destroyed a significant portion of El Paso’s economy and was rejected by 82% of voters.
Most recently, instead of lamenting the brutal slaughter of 1,200 Jews and the kidnapping of 240 others, she shared a meme on her campaign Instagram page declaring: “If you pay taxes, your money is funding genocide happening in G*za right now. It’s time to offset that sh*t.”
These actions do not concern progressives, for they generally believe that taxpayers should be forced to pay for anything that serves the public good, no matter what the price; that climate initiatives should be supported merely because they are climate initiatives, no matter how destructive financially; and that Israel is a genocidal, colonialist, apartheid state that should be replaced with Palestine.
We beg to differ.