MOSES SOROLA HOT ON SOSSI'S TRAIL AGAIN

By Juan Montoya

Like a Texas Ranger that keeps on coming when he's in the right, perennial gadfly Moses Sorola is dogging the City of Brownsville administration to let him see the check trail that shows the payments made to contract attorney Mark Sossi and his Good Government Firm.
"I've emailed Pete Gonzalez for the city's check records and I haven't gotten any response, not even an acknowledgement that he had received my request," said the bespectacled Sorola from his ABC office on Barnard Street last Friday. "I guess I'm going to have to go over there in person to see them. You know I will."
When he was hired, City of Brownsville city manager Charlie Cabler (pictured behind Sossi at right)told the local daily and the residents of the city that Sossi, who so impressed a majority of the commissioners with his defeat at the hands of Luis Sorola (Moses's son) over the charter benefits issue, would serve as the commission's counsel at a paltry $10,000 monthly retainer.
At $120,000 annually, it was a plum for any attorney coming as it was at the end of the halcyon days of personal injury and consumer product liability awards.
The contract – at five paragraphs – was a rather straightforward document. The city will pay Sossi or any successor firm to which he belongs $10,000 a month as a retainer. As a contract attorney, he will not be entitled to any employment benefits including insurance or cell phones. There is also no mention of mileage reimbursement or travel.
Furthermore, Sossi "will continue to represent the city on all pending legal matters he was representing the City prior to his being retained...an any work which is performed after his being retained...shall be covered by the monthly retainer..."
The simple document seems to be rather cut and dried, it would appear.
However, Sorola and others have been raised over the payments made to Sossi during the past year. City commissioners and the city manager have been shown check register records that indicate that Sossi has received much more than the $10,000 monthly retainer stipulated in the contract. In August, Argelia Miller showed the commissioners cases where two identical checks were issued on the same day, and in another case, two identical checks issued one day apart. Other entries show much larger payments made to Sossi over the same time period.
Sossi countered that the payments are in compliance with his contract.
The city has been paying Sossi (DBA as Good Government Law Firm) $120,000 a year since March 2009.
That does not include another $5,000 monthly paid to him by the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation (GBIC) a city entity. That totals to $180,000 a year. Not bad for part time work, Miller observed.
In the August letter addressed to Cabler, Miller took issue with the amount of money that the city has paid Sossi over the course of the year.
Miller writes that in the Brownsville Herald, 8-24-10 , you (Cabler) "state that Mr. Sossi is paid $120,000 per year. If we divide $ 120.000.00 by 52 weeks that would make it $2,307.69 per week."
She then goes on to review the city's check register and charges that there appear to be overpayments of money to Sossi.
"For 27 weeks from 01-07-10 to 07-29-10 he is paid $2,307.69 weekly," Miller states. "However, on some weeks he is paid twice the amount of $2,307.69, and some times a much larger amount on a weekly basis as indicated below:
She then went on to list checks and their totals that indicated much more was paid to Sossi than the simple contract stipulated.
Then Miller repeated a story getting told more often relating to Sossi's strange relationship with the law firm of Willette and Guerra. Willette and Guerra brought a lawsuit against Sossi in 2002 that ended in a settlement in favor of the law firm and against Sossi in 2004 in the sum of $167, 363.00.
Sossi then was an employee of Willette and Guerra and the law firm charged he kept money that belonged to the law firm. The court documents filed by the firm indicate he took money from the firm. The settlement was still on record as of 03-09-2009.
In 2010, contracts to Willette and Guerra by the city have been in excess of $37,000.00. It seems odd, Miller continues, "that some one who filed a law suit against you and still has a judgment against you, would now be receiving favorable treatment in obtaining contracts with the City of Brownsville. Is this odd or a good way to reduce what you owe?"
Is the Sossi-Willete and Guerra shell game continuing at city taxpayer expense?
"We are ging to find out as soon as we get them to provide us with copies of the checks as we requested," Sorola said.
(Ed.'s note: Soon after this post was published, we got a call from Mr. Sorola saying that he had received the city check records he had requested via email. Knowing him he'll go over them with a fine-toothed comb and unearth nuggets of questionable city expenditures. We'll keep you posted.)