THE LAWYERS DECIDE THE PEOPLE WON'T BE HEARD ON THE PUBLIC'S AIRWAVES

By Juan Montoya
We have come to a fine peck of pickles.
When a contract lawyer – aided and abetted by a lawyer-would-be-saint, another lawyer who's a board member of a Catholic school, a sanctimonious teacher, and a correctness-crazy health-nut do-gooder can decide that members of the public will not be heard over their own airwaves, it heralds a new low point in representative government.
Mayor Tony Martinez, Rose Gowen, Ricardo Longoria, and Estela Chavez-Vasquez decided it was in the best interest of the city and its residents that those voices of dissent remain out of earshot of cable TV viewers.
So while the mayor can report on the opening of the latest Catholic school, Gowen can wax expansively about the healthy aspects of carrots, Longoria tries to lamely translate for his English-challenged constituency in Southmost, and Chavez-Vasquez can just look lost as usual, the public's views on their performance – by their fiat – won't be aired for all to view or hear.
The motion to consider reestablishing the broadcast of the public comment section was brought up – to her credit – by commisisoner Melissa Zamora – as befits a former journalist. Commisioner John Villarreal and Jessica Tetreau-Kalifa backed her up, but, alas, as Chavez-Vasquez seemed about to join them, a discreet signal from Martinez brought her back to the "nay" fold.
Since when, we may ask, does the tail wag the dog?
The Rev. Alex Resendez remembers when contract attorney Mark Sossi first jumped on the idea of gagging the public.
"We were questioning the amount of money he got paid for working part-time as a city attorney," he said recently. "That's when he came up with the idea of not broadcasting the public comment section."
Commissioner Zamora was blindsided during Tuesday meeting when the item to open broadcast the comments came up.
Sossi put on a (this time) winning performance by unveiling a prepared power point presentation that he said actually showed that more people have participated in the public comment after the segment was blacked out on the cable station. Some people wondered aloud whether the commenters included those who were speaking out against the blackout policy.
Using that logic, maybe if we didn't hold elections, perhaps more people would vote.
Sossi concluded that he was recommending the public be silenced because their comments could degenerate into "personal attacks" were "disruptive," and some of the speakers were "grandstanding."
But did he consider it a personal attack, as Resendez pointed out, that he charges a $10,000 monthly retainer as city commission counsel and another $5,000 to sit in on the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation to round out his public pay at a neat $180,000 a year for his part-time work? Surely Sossi can't argue that voicing the fact that the two times he has represented the city commission in court (the benefits package, and the Zimmerman Construction Company case) the city came out on the losing end?
In the case where he argued before District Judge Janet Leal that the commissioners were within their right to dip into the public kitty to pay themselves a $300 monthly stipend in gas money, hundreds of thousands in health insurance benefits for themselves and their families, and to get free cell phones because the city charter didn't state they couldn't, he was laughed out of court.
Of course, the public humiliation was eased by the estimated $40,000 payoff he charged the city for his brilliant legal analysis.
In the Zimmerman Co. case, where he invoiced the city since way back in 2006 as the company entered and emerged from bankruptcy and the case dragged on for eight years with the legal meter running, he ended up pocketing some $137,000, with about $79,000 of those charges coming after he became the commission's counsel in March 2009.
Instead of the city merely paying the company some $266,000 it withheld over a disputed project at the airport, it ended up going to court, losing the trial, and being told by a jury that it should pay the company some $750,000.
The city claimed sovereign immunity and it and the company finally settled for $500,000, about $244,000 more than it originally owed the company for the work. If they had just paid the company at the outset, they could have saved the taxpayer the extra $244,000 and Sossi's $137,000.
No wonder some people don't want that sterling performance publicized. It could just dry up the calls to Sossi's private law firm, After all, his part-time work is just a gig on the side for him. So who needs the negative publicity?
Martinez and Chavez-Vasquez are both attorneys who supposedly believe in the constitutional right to free speech. Gowen is an academic who would be the first one to protest any endangerment on her right to academic (and intellectual) freedom. Longoria is a teacher inculcating the American way into hjis middle-class students at Longoria. And we're sure Tetreau-Kalifa believes in the average American's right to party and let their hair loose.
So why are they so afraid of what members of the public think about their city and administration's performance and share those assessments with their fellow taxpayers? After all, doesn't the public own their airwaves, city hall, and their positions as well?
If 10 trees fell in the woods and nobody heard them, would they make a sound? Or do we like it that way contract lawyer and public "servants?"