PORT COMMISSIONERS REIN IN CAMPIRANO, ASK WHETHER WE ARE GETTING OUR MONEY'S WORTH

(We have just learned that after we published this post in El Rrun-Rrun-, the commissioners at the Port of Brownsville had second thoughts of giving Port Director Eddie Campirano everything in his wish list otherwise known as the 2011-2012 annual budget. In particular, they balked at giving away the store with pay raises for department heads and their assistants. Commissioners Carlos Masso, Martin Arambula, Tito Lopez, and John Reed voted 4 to 0 to freeze salaries for 2 years for the top administrators, took away all their car allowances and for the mid salary administrators did not give them a raise for 2012 as Campirano had requested. They also froze any new hirings and any new positions to be created without the board's approval. Campirano tried to ram a 3.9 percent raise down their throats for all of the employees. The hourly people got a 2 percent raise. Only Ralph Cowen abstained from voting. We also understand that a couple of commissioners and the port's attorney Dan Rentfro are to meet sometime in the near future where Eddie will be read the Riot Act and asked to curb his extravagant ways. We republish this post and the comments on the original story to bring some of  our three readers who may not have read this post up to snuff. We'll keep you posted on further developments.) 

By Juan Montoya

Below is a list of some of the salaries of department directors and assistants at the Brownsville Navigation District. The Port, everyone seems to agree, has seen better days when it used to be the engine of economic development in the region. Today, it seems to have stayed frozen in time and is playing catch-up to the rest of the maritime industry by just now trying to acquire container cargo capability when more than 95 percent of the world's cargo is shipped by containers.

And characteristic of the ropa de segunda and maquila mentality dominating our local commerce, it has also now home to the nation's largest ship breaking industry, with at least five companies doing business recycling the aged U.S. military fleet for metals and salvage. The Port of Brownsville is "green" in more ways than one.

1. Eduardo Campirano, Director and CEO – $175,618 plus $8,400 (700 a month) auto allowance

Eddie has led a charmed existence since he was first hired as a junior planner with the City of Brownsville Planning Department. Campirano took over as port director in 2007 after eight years with the Brownsville Public Utilities Board, as Asst. Director to John Bruziak. Before PUB, he was area business manager of southeast Cameron County for Central Power and Light. Before CPL, he was South Texas general manager for the cable company TCI before it became Time Warner Cable. Before that he was the city manager of South Padre Island and as an assistant with the Brownsville city manager's office was the community development coordinator for the city. His son Eddie Jr., landed the newly-created position of "Go Green" coordinator with the city of PUB, his dad's former employee, and his daughter was appointed Director of Alumni Relations at UTB-TSC where her dad was a trustee at a cushy $52,200.

2. Donna Eymard, Asst. Port Director – $125,756 plus $8,400 (700 a month) auto allowance

Eymar, who was brought on board by the late (and former) Port director Raul Besteiro from her position as an executive secretary to a vice prsident at the IBC bank. She served as interim Port director after Besteiro's death in the wake of the $21 million infamous Bridge to Nowhere scandal. Despite her high salary, some of her defenders say that in the past the port had two assistant port directors and that Eymar now performs the work of two assistants.

3. Ariel Chavez, Director of Engineering, $98,529 and $8,400 ($700 a month) auto allowance

The port has never had a legitimate marine engineer, instead opting to hire civil engineers like Chavez, a Brownsville native. At the same time that it's paying Chavez his $98,000 salary, it still doles out millions to outside engineering firms to do site-specific chores. As we have seen in the case of Shiner-Mosely, once these companies get their foot in the door, they seem to acquire other jobs by inertia and almost become the de facto vendors for the BND.

4. Jose G. Garza Jr., Director of Maintenance, $90,875
We know of no other director of maintenance for such a small entity as the Port of Brownsville who earns this much. Except for Rey Arteaga, the former director of maintenance for the Brownsville Independent School Distirct who earned $107,138, there is no other. However, one cannot compare the BISD with more than 7,000 employees and some 54 campuses to the Port, which is a self-contained entity with far fewer facilities.

5. Carlos Garcia, Port Security, Chief of Police, $85,000 plus $8,400 ($700 a month) auto allowance

Garcia, like Campirano, is one of those blessed souls who seem to be handed plum jobs wherever they alight. Garcia used to earn t$107,966 (plus benefits) as police chief with the City of Brownsville. He was the third-highest paid city employee only behind City manager Charlie Cabler at $159,120 (an ex-cop himself) and Assistant City Manager for Finance Pete Gonzales, at $115,696. After a farce of a selection process, he was given the position at $85,000 plus the bennies. But While Garcia was responsible for about 250 police officers in a city of almost 200,000, he isl now be the head of a formidable seven-officer force and rides herd on a dwindling port force that has steadily decreased from a high of almost 6,000 workers in the different port leasees to a number estimated to hover between 2,000 to 3,000. If you compare his duties with those of BISD Police Chief Oscar Garcia (no relation, we hope), it is readily obvious that Carlos is grossly overpaid. BISD pays Garcia $89,000 plus benefits but he has to oversee 53 campuses, 7,000-plus BISD employees and has 158 employees under him, incuding 33 police officers and 115 security guards.

6.Beatrice Rosenbaum, Director of Leasing, $90,188

Rosenbaum (Bea for short) has been at the port for the better part of four decades and seems, like other port employees, to have grown into her job. The wife of a former Cameron County commissioner, Bea has overseen the effort to make leasing policies uniform for businesses at the port. After 40 years on the job, her duties have also grown exponentially as the nature of cargoes coming into Brownsville has changed. She had applied for the position now held by Eymard, but was passed over because of former port director Raul Besteiro's connections to IBC honchos as a member of the bank's board. He brought in Eymard as a favor to one of  IBC's vice presidents.

7. Debbie Duke, Director of Finance, $88,545, Asst. Leticia Treviño, $60,985

Duke is another one of those port employees who has grown into her job. Increasingly targeted by the Campirano administration because she does not possess a CPA, Duke has been one of those employees who has kept the organization afloat during its turbulent recent past and kept the books straight. Unpossessing, yet steadfast, she has seen boards and administrators come and go and remains at the helm. If anyone knows how the sausage is made at the port, it's her. Of course, to do all this heavy lifting, Duke has to have a good assistant and that's where Treviño comes in.

8. Michael Davis, Harbormaster, $71, 177, Asst. Keri Dann, $56,00
Davis was hired as Harbormaster for the Port of Brownsville starting at $71,177. His assistant Dann who left the Coast Guard about a year ago had also applied for the position. She, at 24, was getting $56,000 a year helping out the former harbor master. She was kicked up to $65,000 as interim and is said now to be back to her former salary. However, at least one commissioner disputes that she was put back at her original salary and is investigating the issue. Mr. Davis’ first day on the job was Monday, Nov. 28, 2011. For three years, Davis was out looking for a job. When the Port of Brownsville advertised, he was the applicant chosen from the handful who applied. Davis got into hot water at the Port of Palm Beach was when he reported that a colleague ordered the port's private security guards to search valet-parked cars of customers away on gambling cruises.
"All of a sudden things changed," said Davis, then operations director at the port told a local daily. They told me to start thinking about my career."
Davis was fired weeks later, in March 2007. Until then, he had been out of work. He sued, alleging that the port's Executive Director at the time, Lori Baer, had him fired in retaliation for raising concerns about the potentially illegal searches. Port of Palm Beach commissioners approved a $487,500 settlement in the case, which Davis' attorney, Frank Shooster, called "the most cut-and-dry case of whistleblower retaliation" he has seen in his 28-year practice.
So, Port of Brownsville admins and commissioners: "Sobre aviso no hay engaño, guys. Watch your back.

9. German Rico, Director of Marketing, $73,798
Rico is another one of those well-connected public employees who enjoys a free rein as becomes the son-in-law of UTB-TSC Presdient Juliet Garcia. Remember that Campirano was one of Garcia's trustees at the college and pretty much did as Garcia would dictate to the board at the time. Her son-in-law Rico is wont to travel the globe and spend lavishly on his port credit car and expense account. It is not unusual to see bills for meals charged to the port's credit card of $462, $349, $343, etc., wining and dining his hosts in exotic locales like Bogota, Chicago, Guatemala City, Jacksonville, Fla., etc. There is no way to gauge Rico's effectiveness because there is no specific results of his globe hopping, wining and dining,. How many jobs have been created here? Probably not many, but restaurants and hotels up and down the hemisphere are probably grateful when they see his portly persona on the horizon.


10. Tony Rodriguez, Cargo Services Director, $73,584
Rodriguez and Rico work hand in hand at the port to the point where it has been assumed that Rodriguez is Rico's assistant. However, the port's director of public information disabused us of the facts and said that Rico does not have an assistant. Being as it were that the vagaries of cargo follow the ebb and flow of international economies, the position is really that of caretaker for the capabilities already present at the port.

11. Ma. Victoria Mercado, Campirano's executive secretary, $62, 462
Every successful executive is in critical need of a dynamic executive secretary and by all accounts, Mercado fits the bill. Discreet, fiercely loyal and dependable, she runs interference for Eddi and makes her boss look good. We understand that Campirano is having a hard time selling commissioners the budget that includes the bloated salaries outlined here. We will revisit the port and point out the way that commissioners and administrators are, in their own words, "living high off the hog."