TONY JUAREZ WILL GET HIS DAY IN FEDERAL COURT

By Juan Montoya

The federal lawsuit filed against four Brownsville Independent School District board of trustees members - Rolando Aguilar, Joe Colunga, Ruben Cortez and Rick Zayas - by former BISD Chief Financial Officer Tony Juarez is still alive.
In a memorandum opinion and order filed April 23 in United States District Court, Judge Andrew S. Hansen adopted in part and rejected in part the report and recommendations of a federal magistrate judge in regards to the petition for summary judgement by the defendants against Juarez's claims.
Only Mike Saldana, the board's legal counsel, was granted a summary judgement because Hansen found that he could not be proven to have breached a contract as claimed in the original Juarez lawsuit.
At the heart of the dispute was Juarez's claim that he was demoted and ultimately terminated from employment by the BISD and the defendants personally because he recommend that the board award Health Smart (AGG) the district's $40 million Stop Loss Insurance policy instead of to Oklahoma-based Mutual Assurance Administrators, Inc. .
On Aug. 12, trustees awarded that contract for the 2009-2010 to MAA for $181,275 per month.
At the time of the award, HealthSmart complained that its contract renewal efforts did not receive fair consideration by the district’s Employee Insurance Committee or the Board of Trustees.
Sources also said that the four votes on the majority – board President Aguilar and trustees Colunga, Cortez, Zayas – were acting in concert to award the lucrative contract to the company brokered by local insurance mogul Johnny Cavazos.
Trustees Enrique Escobedo, Catalina Presas-Garcia and Minerva Peña voted against it.
As a result of awarding the contract to MAA, Cavazos' commission at 10 percent will total between$3 to $4 million.
Juarez claimed that as a result of his recommendation that the board hire AGG, board members and administrators retaliated against him and charged that he had "misinformed" them because they wanted to award the contract to MAA. That same "misinformation" led to an "illegal inquiry" and to a grievance filed against him by Kent Whittenmore, allegedly at the behest of the defendants according to a tactic of "setting one employee against another" so as to give the board an excuse to remove employees.
Before Whittenmore's grievance reached the Level III stage, Juarez claimed he was asked to resign as CFO (after only three months) and take reassignment as Grants Administrator or face termination.
Juarez agreed to the demotion, but later changed his mind and rescinded his resignation and filed a grievance himself. At that point, Juarez said former superintendent Hector Gonzales allegedly told him he was being forced by the board's majority to seek his resignation or face termination himself.
At that point, he said several administrators and trustees approached him and sought his aid in ousting Gonzales, who they believed was really behind his Stop-Loss Insurance recommendation.
According to the lawsuit, Rick Zayas allegedly enlisted Elizabeth Brito-Hatcher to file a grievance against Gonzales. Former trustee Otis Powers and Colunga allegedly sought Juarez's aid in ousting Gonzales.
Instead of cooperating, Juarez said he went to the FBI January 15, 2009 to report what had been going on at BISD.
The Magistrate Judge recommended dismissal of six of the eight claims made by Juarez against the defendants. However, Hansen voided some of the findings, including a ruling that recordings between Brito-Hatcher, Powers and Juarez could be introduced as evidence, as could an affidavit by former trustee Pat Lehman.
"To the extent the tape recordings contain relevant statements and that the recordings have been authenticated, they are admissible...," Hansen ruled.
In those recordings, Brito-Hatcher told Juarez that defendants Saldana and Zayas "want to hear from him' in a grievance that they want him to file against defendant Gonzales. Hansen said when she told Juarez that "Rick and Saldana were partners...they were buds" are relevant to the issue of whether or not a conspiracy existed.
Likewise, Powers' recorded statements that "Your grievance against Hector Gonzales and the board is gonna love you for that. My sister-in-law filed a grievance...Elizabeth Hatcher filed a grievance," Powers then tells Juarez that "you need to protect your job, bottom line...They (the board) might say, you know what, yeah we'll do it because you burned Hector...Dude I give you some good advice. Here you have it. Can you hurt Hector to protect you."
The court finds that the statements are relevant so long as they make it more or less likely that the defendants were involved in a conspiracy to coerce employees int filing grievances against each other..."
Hansen also fund that the nonrenewal of Juarez's contract "is a viable adverse employment action on which (Juarez's) First Amendment retaliation claim may rest."
Additionally, Hansen found that the defendants were "not entitled" to summary judgment in the retaliation claim against them in their personal capacities for his nonrenewal. Further, the court also refused to grant the defendants summary judgment in their petition for qualified immunity.
This case will undoubtedly linger in the courts for months, if not years, but for the meanwhile, it is enlightening to see the depth and extent of some of the board members' penchant for corruption and guile. As the case works its way through the courts, more of the same should be expected.