On July 29, 2015, James N. Valenti, the CEO of the University Medical Center of El Paso (UMC) made public comments about some of his former employees that prove that not only is he a liar but that he is also a serious liability to the taxpayers of the county.
Because bloggers are routinely accused of lying or taking comments out of context, I am including a three-minute video so that you can listen to his actual words.
As you listen to the video, listen to what he has to say about the UMC employees he laid off on July 25, 2014, a little over a year before his latest comments.
With mock tears of despair, Jim Valenti held a press conference announcing the layoffs on July 25, 2014. He told you, the taxpayer, that he laid off the 56 former employees because of “mounting budgetary pressures.” He blamed the budgetary pressures on the El Paso Children’s Hospital.
In the letter Jim Valenti sent to the news media, he stated that the layoffs were not a reflection of the work of the employees affected. He wrote, “Please know that this action is in no way a reflection” of the employees’ work. I am including a copy of the letter for you to review.
When asked recently if he would be re-hiring his former employees he stated that no, because almost a third of them were disciplinary problems.
As a business owner, I understand that employees with disciplinary problems should be removed from the workplace as efficiently as possible. It is not easy to let go of problem employees. The one rule you always follow is that you never let it be known that a former employee was a disciplinary problem if you want to avoid being sued.
In the case of Jim Valenti’s comments, if he was trying to avoid litigation problems by making the statement that the layoffs were not a “reflection” of the employees work, he immediately ruined that by stating that a third of them were employee problems in a public forum.
Now, all of the fifty-six employees that he laid off carry the stigma that they may be one of the 18-19 problem employees that he fired for disciplinary problems. The problem is that we do not know which ones.
In other words, Jim Valenti is the liar he proves himself to be, or he is extremely incompetent or worse, he is both.
Regardless, can you really continue to trust anything Jim Valenti has to say?