REVISITING ERNIE AND ERIN'S "LEGALITY" OF VENDING CONTRACT WITH COUNTY

By Juan Montoya

As we shift gears and slide into the 2012 elections campaign in full throttle, troubling questions remain about the vending machine contract that Cameron County signed with Central Vending Services.
In 2009, the previously, the contract was signed with Norma Hernandez, the wife of Ernie Hernandez – now the commissioner for Precinct 2 – and the company was known as Central Vending Services. However, this year's renewal was with CV Services and his daughter Erin (Hernandez) Garcia signed the contract on behalf of the company.
Wait, there's more.
If that didn't pass the stench test, consider this.
When Hernandez’s wife and Garcia’s mother Norma Hernandez submitted the proposal to Cameron County in 2009, she identified herself as the owner of C V Services.
As Emma Perez-Treviño noted at the time: According to Cameron County’s vending machine policy, "The County prohibits operation of machines on county property of which profits go to county employees or county elected officials."
Everyone could see that the name changes and the shuffling of ownership of the company doing business with the county was just a ploy to keep the profits in the family. But the curious thing about this is that no county legal eagle never seems to have bothered to consult the state code to determine if the stratagem passed the conflict of interest test.
We have been advised by someone who should know that the county dropped the ball on this one. They point out that the Texas Local Government Code contains a statute that apparently controls this arrangement. [see link]
 Section 171.001 is the pertinent statute governing a “Conflict Of Interest” for local (as opposed to state) officials, which is codified in the Code.
The Code defines “local public official” and “business entity,” while Section 171.002 defines a “substantial interest in [a] business entity,” which focuses upon a “local public official” in the context of having a “substantial interest” under this statute “if a person [is] related to the official in the first degree by consanguinity or affinity.”
 This appears to confirm that if a County Commissioner entered into a contract with the County, the “excuse” that the business was recently transferred to his wife or daughter would run afoul of that statute (in regard to, respectively, affinity and consanguinity).
 Under Section 171.004 (addressing “affidavit and abstention from voting required”), which gives rise to a criminal offense under Section 171.003 if Section 171.004 is violated, if the County Commissioner were to vote on that contract with the County, regardless of the claim that he no longer owns that business, as it was transferred to his wife or daughter, he would nevertheless violate Section 171.004, which would (under Section 171.003) constitute a criminal offense.
 The remaining statutes (Sections 171.005 through 171.009) are germane (generally speaking) to this issue (although Section 171.010 is not).
So far, no one (except for Emma) has raised a question regarding the legality or appropriateness of the contract between the commissioners' wife or his daughter. Erin, by the way, is also running for the JP 2-2 position. If, as the Code seems to establish, the legality (or illegality) of the vending contract scheme is in question, wouldn't she, as the attorney she claims to be, do what is right instead of what may be legal?
In other words, are Erin and Ernie more interested in using the law to get around it than in imparting justice as she would have to do as a justice of the peace?
We're not lawyers, nor do we pretend to be, but the code appears to be pretty cut and dried on the illegality  of the immediate relatives of a local public official inking a contract with the entity he represents? Are we right? Or did we miss something?