CISNEROS FILES FOR UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS AGAINST CAMERON COUNTY

By Juan Montoya
A candidate for Cameron County Sheriff is filing an unemployment claim against Cameron County alleging he was terminated without cause after Pct. 2 Constable Pete Avila said he was campaigning during working hours at the judicial wing of the county courthouse, among other things.

Jose A. Cisneros, who is running against incumbent Omar Lucio, is scheduled to have an unemployment compensation hearing in his claim against Cameron County Wednesday. He claims that he was terminated without cause by Avila and has submitted affidavits from two other former bailiffs to support his claim before Texas Workforce Hearing Officer C. Geppert. 

One of the affiants is none other than Alfred Petraca who, rather than patrol the courthouse parking lot as he was directed by Avila after the county commissioners placed the 11 courthouse bailiffs under his jurisdiction, chose to resign instead.

The other is former Chief Bailiff-Security Raymond Shears. Shears also resigned from office after he was placed under Avila and assigned to a rotation shift patrolling the parking lot with other bailiffs. He is currently one of several candidates who have announced to run against Avila in the 2012 election for constable of Pct. 2.

Cisneros, on Nov. 1, 2011, confirmed that he had been dismissed but said that he had no hard feelings against Avila.

The 11 bailiffs were placed under Avila after Sheriff Lucio told commissioners in open court that he would replace them with his own people if they were placed under him as he had requested. When commissioners balked at having Lucio terminate the bailiffs, they appointed Avila in charge of the group from his Pct. 2 constable's office.

Under the arrangement, all of them would keep their jobs but would have to serve a one-year probationary  period before they acquired civil service protection. Although the reports at the time of Cisneros' termination indicated that his campaigning for sheriff had played a part in his dismissal from county service, neither Avila nor Cisneros were willing to specify what other complaints may have led to his firing.

At the time of his firing, Cisneros said he did not plan to pursue any issues regarding his dismissal.
“Right now I am going to concentrate on my campaign,” he told the local daily then, adding that his termination did not undermine his election plans and that although he believed he was fired because of politics, he was a “forgiving” man.

Avila countered that Cisneros was not fired for political reasons and declined to elaborate, noting that it was a personnel issue.

Cisneros defended his candidacy when he was fired using the "everybody does it" justification for handing out pushcards and acknowledging his candidacy to people asking him about it.

“It’s sad that some elected officials get to campaign, get to sell tickets, get to set up political signs, do all their campaigning and have their staff also campaign for them on county taxpayers’ time, but here I am a candidate for sheriff and if somebody comes up and asks if I’m running for sheriff, I can’t even acknowledge that I am running because that is considered campaigning on the job,” Cisneros said.

He declined at the time to identify the elected officials and staff that may have been campaign on the county’s time. 

“I don’t want to name anybody as of yet, but there are,” Cisneros said. “They use county government equipment to purchase material, to set up fundraisers, all that, you know.”

In the affidavits filed on behalf of Cisneros, Petraca cited several incidents that he said reflected badly on the bailiffs, including an allegation that a female bailiff had an "intimate" relationship with her supervisor and that they often argued in public.

Shears said his demotion after he had been placed under Avila "caused a lot of ridicule and humiliation from the other bailiffs. They would laugh at me. They would tell other employees at the courthouse what had happened. It became a hostile environment and unbearable for me to stay there."

As part of his claim for unemployment, Cisneros included s photograph of himself as a state trooper, a newspaper clipping of his service, a certificate of service from the City of Harlingen, a photograph of his young daughter in his uniform, and photographs of the political signs of Cameron County Commissioner Sofia Benavides and Constable Avila in front of the courthouse parking lot.

"Joe said at the time of his dismissal that he wasn't going to pursue any issues regarding his dismissal," said a courthouse employee. "He was still on probation when he was terminated. If he, Petraca and Shears were going to go after anybody, it should have been the commissioners who assigned them there."
Brownsville attorney Dolores G. Zarate is representing Cisneros in his claim before the Workforce Commission.