HYPOCRISY OF BISD BOARD MINORITY KNOWS NO BOUNDS

By Juan Montoya
Still smarting from having the voters of the Brownsville Independent School District resoundingly reject their candidates and clean house in the last board election, the losers and their vocal supporters have initiated the campaign to influence the election of 2012.
Misery loves company, and now, through thinly-veiled alliances, the followers and supporters of losers Rick Zayas and Ruben Cotez have unleashed a campaign of vitriol that seeks to intimidate the new board members and dissuade them from enacting their campaign promise to clean house and remove the self-serving consultants and administrators that have steered the district down a path from recognition of national academic excellence to a chaos of financial disaster and bureaucratic mayhem.
This was evidenced during the last meeting when the trustees voted 4-3 to  immediately terminate Gary Looney of Alamo Insurance Group as the district’s insurance consultant and put out requests for qualifications for a new consultant.
At stake is the BISD's lucrative $40 million self-funded employee health plan. On a standard 10 percent commission, it coud result in some serious money in Cavazos' pocket – and in the coffers of his favorite politicians.
Looney's removal was at once denounced by trustee Joe Colunga, who is widely known to have a lifelong close association with local insurance mogul Johnny Cavazos, and apparently fears that the consultant's termination will bode ill for his benefactor and he came out firing from the hip.
"This is an illegal act as well as a waste of taxpayer money," Colunga, who was chairman of the board’s insurance committee at the time Looney was hired, told the Herald. "No case has been made of any wrongdoing. This makes no business sense."
While Colunga may have struck a high note in his protest, it is curious to not that when the board majority –of which he was a part with Zayas, Cortez, and Aguilar – voted to terminate former superintendent Hector Gonzales and suspend Special Needs Department director Art Rendon, he wasn't as particular about proof of wrongdoing.
"In fact," said a Rendon supporter, "the majority then had to hire the Harlingen law firm of Rick Navarro to find the justifications after they took action against Art and Hector. Why is Colunga worried about having proof now? He wouldn't have a double standard, would he?"
Looney was responsible for providing analysis of proposals from firms wanting to be the third-party administrator for the district’s health insurance plan. He recommended that the board award the contract to Oklahoma-based Mutual Assurance Administrators, brokered by Cavazos.
During the past elections, Zayas and Cortez claimed the move saved saved BISD about $9 million in lower claim costs over the previous third-party administrator, AAG HealthSmart Inc. A few weeks prior to the Nov. 2 election, Zayas and Cortez were featured prominently in coverage of a lawsuit initiated by the majority claiming the district would sue and recover millions for the district.
Unfortunately for them, as documentation surfaced, it became evident that the majority had dipped into district fund balance reserves to offset a $68 million shortfall in the 2009-2010 budget. Also, some insurance brokers say the projected millions claimed by the failed candidates was mere speculation meant for the consumption of the voting public.
Despite the full-blown front-page coverage of the duo's claims, the voters didn't bite and soundly rejected their candidacy.
The target of the losing side is now the majority made up of board president Catalina Presas-Garcia, Luci Longoria, Enrique Escobedo and Christine Saavedra.
There have even been suggestions made by some of the more rabid opponents that the trustees elected into office by the majority of the voters be removed by the courts.
Longoria, who handily defeated Zayas in November, said that the board moved to terminate Looney because they didn’t like the job he was doing.
"Even (previous board attorney Mike) Saldaña said we can terminate someone for good cause," Longoria told the Herald. "Our good cause is lack of trust and confidence."
Aguilar lamely said that Looney had saved the district $9 million through lower claims costs.
But when questioned to specify where the savings were on the BISD balance sheet, he did not specify.
It has become obvious that after losing their credibility before the voters, the losing side has now resorted to  a campaign of sabotage and innuendo to discredit the new board as they carefully plan a strategy to overturn the wishes of the BISD voters. The BISD bureacracy, notorious for protecting the interests of a few sacred cows and feathering its own nest, has meticulously laid out a minefield for the new trustees of legalese and nasty pitfalls.
"It took the bureaucracy and the past board members years to craft the district to the point where they rewarded their supporters with good-paying positions and contracts," said a former board member. "Voters should be aware that Rome wasn't built in a day and that straightening out this mess isn't going to happen overnight. We need to support our board as they untangle this web of deceit. Nobody is born knowing how to be a board president or a board member. It's highly unfair to judge the performance of our trustees based on one or two meetings. Let's be fair and give them a chance."