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Blast From the Past Indy continues look back at top stories of 2007 The Amarillo Independent staff voted on the Top 10 stoties the newspaper covered in 2007, reprising the top five in the Dec. 27 issue. Here are the final five that topped the staff's list of important stories for the past year. Visit our Web site at amarilloindy.com to see the first five stories.
No. 6 — Why is health care so expensive? After a long study of Internal Revenue Service documents, the Indy showed that for every $304 that Baptist St. Anthony's Health System took in during 2005, one dollar went into the pocket of John Hicks, the system's president and chief executive, making him the second-highest paid hospital CEO in Texas. By contrast, the CEO of Scott & White Hospital in Temple, a prestigious full-fledged teaching hospital, received a dollar in pay for each $6,004 in revenue. The compensation for Hicks included $2,136,861 in pay, $284,308 in benefits, and $16,696 in expenses. That total placed him in the top brcket in a statewide survey of federal filings by The Amarillo Independent. Billie Blair, a management consultant who heads Los Angeles-based Leading and Learning Inc., said hospital executive compensation typically is based on a number of factors, including past track record; industry standards; how much an individual received in previous positions; special talents that meet a specific need of the organization, such as fundraising; and the size of the hospital. Dr. Tom Nichols, a member of the BSA Board of Trustees, said each year a compensation consultant meets with the board's compensation committee and recommends a pay package that it believes is equitable and competitive with similar hospitals. Nichols said he accepts the recommendation of the compensation committee because he has other concerns as a board member. "It comes to a point where you say, 'I trust that person,' and I do, so I let it go at that," Nichols said. Mary Barlow, BSA's director for corporate communications, declined comment. No. 7 — Did you wash your hands? Although the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce sponsors an annual BBQ Cook-off, it doesn't run the individual food stands. Nevertheless, city of Amarillo health inspectors found a greater number of food handling problems at this year's cook-off despite training to prepare cooks in proper food handling and the provision of guidelines on Aug. 30 by the city's Environmental Health Department. According to city records, the number of demerits almost doubled from last year to this year, going from 10 to 18. Those deficiencies included several instances in which booths had bleach found to be too strong and toxic, booths with non-food-grade hoses used for food service, booths at which there were no screens or the screens were too short for food preparation areas, and three instances that lacked a way to keep food properly heated. Deree Duke, the city's director of Environmental Health, said that some of the booth's problems were corrected before the event opened. "Those ones that were listed that didn't have any means of keeping the food hot, we required them to get that corrected," she said. But Gary Molberg, chamber president, signed the inspection report and temporary permit for the barbecue cook-off. He acknowledged the need for improvements. "Next year will have to be addressed," he said. "Every team will have to be enclosed in a netted area and also contain chafing dishes for the food." Standards for events like the chamber's used to skirt state law but have gotten stiffer over the years, the result of decisions by the City Commission and manager, Duke said. "There used to be a policy the chamber and other cook-offs were exempt from inspections," she added. "With the change of managers and commissioners, and now we have been working very diligently in the last two years of getting these cook-offs in compliance with the state law." No. 8 — It depends on what the definition of "count" is. Questions about the Amarillo Globe-News circulation figures arose after the Indy learned that after James Hoskins lost an alternator belt one morning while delivering his route for the local daily, he lost his routes in Pampa. Hoskins and others asserted the Globe-News used several practices to keep up circulation numbers, including: • Shipping newspapers to carriers for subscribers who have canceled and billing the carriers for those papers. • Refusing to stop delivery when someone moved or simply didn't want to subscribe anymore. Hoskins said his contract allowed for a percentage of returns from the papers ordered for news racks, but not for home delivery. Like other carriers for most daily newspapers, Hoskins purchased newspapers at a discount for his routes and pocketed the difference from subscription fees. What happened to Hoskins was hardly unusual, according to former Globe-News circulation department employees. Carriers, who are not fulltime employees of the newspaper but are independent contractors, started having trouble with cutting off unwanted papers as far back as 2002, according to former circulation supervisors who wished to remain anonymous. Cancellations were no longer taken care of by the front-line managers in the department but had to be approved by Jim Adkins, circulation director, or by Publisher Les Simpson. Adkins is no longer with the Georgia-owned daily. Simpson is. One former circulation department employee willing to speak publicly about the inability to cancel subscriptions and other matters was Edgar Fry, who took a series of complaints up the corporate ladder, talking with a corporate circulation auditor and with Simpson about problems. Fry never got satisfaction from the Globe-News. Repeated calls to Simpson weren't returned, but after efforts to get statements from his bosses at Morris Communications, his assistant, Susie Self, called, saying Simpson was "tied up." "If you would e-mail him the questions that you have, he would be happy to respond," she said. The response to 10 questions he was "happy" to give? "I won't be responding to each individual question," he wrote. "Instead here is a statement you may use in your story: "The Amarillo Globe-News has several layers of internal and external auditing to ensure the procedures we use are legal in all departments, especially the circulation department. In addition to our in-house accounting staff, we are also reviewed by Morris Communications Co. auditors on a regular basis and as needs arise. As a paid publication, the Globe-News circulation numbers and practices are audited annually by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the premiere publication auditing company in the United States. "ABC is an independent organization which audits nearly every major newspaper in the country as well as thousands of magazines and other publications." Simpson also cited compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. No. 9 — What's love got to do with it? After nearly eight years of being part of the BSA provider network, Planned Parenthood received a terse letter in July informing the health service organization that their relationship would end Sept. 18. That "Dear John" letter set in motion a flurry of telephone calls, e-mails and meetings that resulted in the relationship being preserved. And, while the women, who are generally low-paid workers whose health insurance usually does not cover the wellness exams or contraceptives offered at Planned Parenthood's downtown clinic, will still be able to receive services, the exchanges indicate just how tentative, and biased, health-care coverage can be in the Panhandle. The letter informing Planned Parenthood did not outline any reasons for the planned termination of the relationship between the two organizations. It ended with a note that any questions could be addressed by a telephone call. A representative of Planned Parenthood contacted Collin Hays, head of BSA's provider network, and was informed that the BSA board wanted to sever the relationship because Planned Parenthood's "ethics and morals about pregnancy were not consistent with BSA's," according to records provided anonymously to the Independent. Planned Parenthood's Amarillo organization has never provided abortion services, a fact overlooked by the occasional anti-abortion advocates who picket near the clinic. In a written reply to that ethics and morals charge, Planned Parenthood of Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle Chief Executive Claudia Stravato pointed out that state health department rules dictate the services provided by Planned Parenthood. The BSA provider network lists two Amarillo doctors as network providers for Planned Parenthood, Dr. Robert Kauffman, medical director of family planning services, and Dr. Beverly Nixon-Lewis, medical director for pediatric and family practice services. Both are also listed under Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center as network providers. BSA's original letter did not address the status of those doctors, if they would continue to be able to bill network services as physicians at Texas Tech if they continued to serve with Planned Parenthood, or if they would have been required to terminate their relationships with Planned Parenthood. Dr. Arthur Garner, chairman of the BSA board, said he could not recall the details of the decision to cut off the relationship and then reverse that decision. He referred questions to Mary Barlow, head of communications for BSA. Barlow said the matter was simply one in which the contract was reviewed and the board decided not to continue the relationship. However, she said, about three weeks later, that decision was reversed. As to why the original decision was made and later rescinded, Barlow said, "That's no longer important. They're in the network now." But for how long? No. 10 — Jealous love There is a tribute to Jessica on the side of a building on North Fillmore, but the people who live there also mourn Lawyar's fate. In the words of Larry Leon Frazier, 52, known to his friends as Rut Row, it ruined Jessica's life. It ruined Lawyar's life. It ruined the life of everybody associated with the affair. "I liked them both," Floyd Ray White, 56, known as Ray Ray, said of Jessica and Lawyar. Rut Row and Ray Ray live on the streets of Amarillo. At night, they can usually be found in a vacant lot on North Fillmore where Jessica Termain, a month shy of her 30th birthday, died at the hands of Lawyar Ewing, 64, one of her lovers, in the early morning hours of Sept. 16, 2006. On Sept. 15, 2006, Lawyar and his cousin Felicia Mahone began drinking at about 11 a.m. Later, they went to the Wishin Well, a bar on North Fillmore, hooking up with Jessica, a self-described crack whore. Lawyar originally told police officers his relationship with Jessica was sexual, but he didn't love her. This month Lawyar admitted that his relationship with Jessica was much more, at least to him. Eric Coats, Lawyar's attorney, said Lawyar never bought drugs for Jessica, but he would give her money for drugs so she wouldn't go to the truck stops to ply her trade. The night of Jessica's death, Lawyar gave her $20 to buy crack and hours later killed her. A six-man, six-woman jury decided that Lawyar should spend 35 years in prison for his crime. The morning after the trial, Rut Row said he would spend the rest of his life with the vision of Jessica's death embedded in his mind. E-mail
comments about this story Posted: January 3, 2008
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