COLUNGA, A DEFENDANT IN FEDERAL LAWSUITS SAYS: THROW MORE GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD IN BISD VS. HEALTHSMART

By Juan Montoya
What started out as a blatant (and failed) campaign strategy by Rick Zayas, Ruben Cortez, Joe Colunga and Rolando Aguilar to try to swing the vote in the waning days before the November 2010 Brownsville Independent School District election by suing HealthSmart may end up costing the district yet more money if a proposal by Colunga gets a majority vote today.
At the time the two incumbents – Cortez and Zayas – were quoted extensively in a September 4 article in the Brownsville Herald charging that HealthSmart Benefit Solutions Inc. had cost the BISD $14.5 million in higher medical claims and thousands more in allegedly improper charges.
The majority on the board claimed the alleged "abuses" occurred during the two years it administered the district’s self-funded employee health plan in a lawsuit filed late that August.
HealthSmart protested when it lost the TPA (Third Party Administrator) contract to Mutual Assurance Administrators Inc. (MAA) of Oklahoma City, and this in turn prompted a call for an audit by Cortez of HealthSmart operations.
The resulting audit indicated that "they were taking advantage of us," Cortez said at the time.
Zayas, likewise, said "we’re going to go after them and get our money back," according to news reports.
The pair at the time claimed that awarding the contract to Mutual Assurance Administrators Inc. (MAA) of Oklahoma City would save the district some $7 million a year.
Now, as the costs for the same coverage is projected to approach $51, or about $9 million more than what HealthSmart was charging, Colunga obviously doesn't like the advice the board members are getting from their lawyers and wants to put of Requests For Quotes (RFQ) for new legal counsel to fight HealthSmart.
"It's obvious that the lawyers aren't telling the board what Colunga wants to hear and now he wants to spend more district money to follow through on this wild-goose chase," said a source close to the board. "After all, he was one of the former board's majority who was charged in (former BISD Chief Financial Officer's) Tony Juarez's lawsuit that he conspired to give MMA the contract and then voted to sue HealthSmart for alleged overcharges less two months before the 2010 election."
MMA's agent of record was none other than local insurance mogul Johnny Cavazos, a well-known political supporter of Colunga, Aguilar, and before, of Cortez and Zayas.
The Fifth Court of Appeals on Friday asserted Juarez's ability to hold the former majority members individually liable by upholding the district court's summary judgement denying them qualified immunity as individuals in his claims that they violated his First Amendment rights against retaliation.
Evidence present in his case indicates that the former board majority – including Colunga – engaged in a "conspiracy" to steer the insurance contract to Cavazos by using the district's grievance process and "turning one BISD employee against another " to facilitate their termination.
Despite the recommendations by Juarez, the board's majority awarded the contract to MMA.
"Colunga knows that the lawsuit (against HealthSmart) was nothing more than a political smokescreen that didn't work," said the source. "Now after he has been told there is nothing there, he wants to spend more of the district's money to continue a futile fight."
Colunga can probably count as his allies on the vote for 0the RFQs Rolando Aguilar, his codefendant in the Juarez lawsuit, and Minerva Peña, a fence sitter. Those who will probably oppose the motion will be chairwoman Catalina Presas-Garcia, Luci Longoria and Christina Saavedra.
Enrique Escobedo, who voted against filing the lawsuit against HealthSmart, is up in the air. Observers say he has recently proposed to name the local Colonial Insurance provider as the agent of record instead of designating the self-insured district as its own agent and saving tens of thousands of dollars in fees.
"We're wondering where Enrique will go on this one," he said.