RENE CONTINUES TO PARTY HIS WAY THROUGH 28 YEARS IN OFFICE

By Juan Montoya

You probably saw the ads in the Brownsville Herald when Texas Dist. 27 State Rep. Rene Oliveira held his campaign opening bash at a local popular watering hole.

In fact, if you looked at his campaign expenditure and contribution reports, that night's binge was but the latest of the movable feast that Rene has embarked on since he last ran two years ago wining the night for his 14th term in office.

Expenditure after expenditure has to do with dining and away with "supporters and constituents" at the poshest sports bars here, in Austin, and – as ZZ Top used to say – all points in between.

He's gotten so bad, in fact, that even his chief of staff J.J. Garza warned him in an internal memo dated July 12, 2011, that he should be preparing answers to the questions that could come from reporters once they started looking over the expense report filed covering the period from January 1 to June 30, 2011. Oliveira reported that in that period, he had spent $40,063 and had received no contributions.

However, he also reported that he had $159,519.27 left in his war chest for the coming primary election in 2012.

"I think you need to develop a satisfactory answer to the following facts of the (expenditure report)," Garza wrote.

"In the 181 days (your account) paid for meals and/or drinks form supporters and/or constituents almost 200 times (actually 197) for a total of more than$13,000 (actually $13,360). In some cases these expenditures occurred as many as four times in a day, and make up one-third of your total expenditures.

"Fifty six of those times were valley establishments – 50 times during the regular session and six times during the special session. This means that you entertained supporters and constituents in Austin about 150 times during the 140-day regular session. Considering that often theAustin week is less than a full week – the House met in session just 101 of those 140 days – that means means you were entertaining supporters or constituents an average of 1.5 times per day the House was in session.

"Over the 181 day reporting period, you average almost $74 per day in entertaining expenses.

"Why do you need to spend so much, when your Valley colleagues are spending as little as 10 to 20 percent of what you are spending on supporters and constituents?," Garza asks in his memo.

"I think you should prepare yourself for heavy criticism from them and their readers," Garza warned the festive rep.

How far out of touch has Rene gotten from us, his constituents? Read the following from Wikipedia:

"The median income for a household in Cameron County was $26,155."

One beneficiary of his party-hardy largess was Jones Liquor where he dropped $77, $210, and $222 at a time to quench the cottonmouths of his "supporters and constituents."

For all you readers who contribute to the Oliveira campaign, is your money being well spent? And if he's partying here and in Austin when he's supposed to on the floor of the House minding our business, who's running the show? And would he even be missed if he was gone?

One more telling statistic: A 2000 Texas A&M study stated that of the residents of Cameron County, 43 percent do not have basic literary skills.

Bottoms up, Rene!