As many of you know, the El Paso Children’s Hospital filed its “Debtor’s Chapter 11 Plan of Reorganization” late Wednesday night, the filing deadline. The news media has both reported the gist of the plan and has used former bankruptcy trustee and attorney, Andy Krafsur, to opine on the plan for the news media. Many of us in the blogosphere have shared our opinions on the whole debacle as well. The news media has also given the politicians, like Veronica Escobar, the opportunity to express their opinion about the issue.
I find it fascinating that Veronica Escobar flutters about the issue in terms of how damaging it is to the community while ignoring that the whole fiasco is built on a faulty premise, the one where the children’s hospital is not viable without the support of the taxpayers of the community. Andy Krafsur, for his part, has focused on the costs associated with the bankruptcy pointing out that the money would best be spent on the success of the children’s hospital.
In other words, you have heard the opinions of others.
Today, I’d like to do something different. I want to give you the opportunity to read the actual source document for yourselves.
Click here to read the document.
The unfortunately thing about following courts cases is that everyone is in it for the money. As a result, the documents cost money to download from the PACER site, the government’s court system. In this case, the entire document set regarding the reorganization plan cost me about $12.00USD.
It is not that much money in the grand scheme of things, but it quickly adds up as you try to follow a court case as it meanders through the court system. Making the cost more difficult is that the court system lists documents with generic titles forcing you to download, and pay, for routine documents that all court cases have.
Some of you may remember that I originally posted source documents with my articles but I stopped doing that when I realized that other bloggers, and sometimes the news media, were taking them as their own without giving me credit. In other words, I was paying for others to ignore my blog’s existence.
I have been thinking of creating a document repository where I would make all of my documents available to you to read and download. I have toyed with a subscription type of service where users pay a small fee to offset the costs of the documents and the storage space. I have also thought about creating an online place where you have to register with a valid email address to access the documents, with me paying the fees out of my own pocket.
However, I want to know your thoughts.
Would you like me to post selected documents, as I did today, for you to review without requiring you to pay fees or to track who reads them by requiring you to register?
Alternatively, would you be willing to pay a small monthly nominal fee to have access to all of the documents in my archive?
Or, would you be willing to register to have access to a larger set of selected documents without having to pay any fees? The only requirement would be that you would be required to give me credit when using the documents in any publication, whether digital or print, even if they were only referenced.
I hope that after you have an opportunity to review the El Paso Children’s Hospital’s plan, you share your opinion with the rest of us.
I look forward to your comments and to your answers to the questions I posted to you today.
Martin, most won’t pay. Conserve your funds and gives us the minimum.
If they’re like me, they make George scream when they spend a dollar