POLITICS OF GREED AND MEAN: JROD, CHAVEZ (jrod jr.) AND ZAYAS TARGET CATY (WE MEAN FORENSIC AUDITOR DEFENBAUGH); SAY THEY WANT $1 MILLION, TOO

By Juan Montoya

Not content that he was let off the hook and allowed to walk away from two lawsuits in which he was a defendant and which cost the Brownsville Independent School District some $2 million to settle, former trustee Rick Zayas has filed a lawsuit on behalf of former athletic directors Joe Rodriguez and Tom Chavez against forensic auditor Defenbaugh and Associates of Dallas.
While the giving is good, they want the district to pay them $1 million in "exemplary" damages"

However, although the lawsuit ostensibly names Defenbaugh as the defendant, the "facts" of the case are built entirely around the presumed illegal relationship between trustee Catalina Presas-Garcia and the forensic investigators and her attorney John Barr – and there there is more reaching – and HealthSmart, the former third-party administrator for the BISD.

The tangled tale starts in 2008 after Presas-Garcia was elected to the BISD board. Rodriguez and Chavez allege that an found discrepancies in the administration of the Center, specifically, that Presas-Garcia had deposited an unspecified "large sum of cash" of the district's funds in her personal account and that $7,000 were unaccounted for while she worked there, although the lawsuit stops short of charging she took the money.

Rodriguez said the BISD adminsitration "tried to cover up the findings" and that Presas-Garcia "began a campaign to smear" him. Rodriguez further charges that she "abused her authority and acted as dictator" who spoke for the board in her "relentless public attacks" on him.

From there on, Rodriguez and Chavez' convoluted tale veers off to the alleged relationship between HealthSmart and its employees and charges she kept in touch with "a flim flam" man by the name of Carlos Quintanilla who they charge "was hired" by HealthSmart CEO Ted Parker to discredit any board members that voted against the renewal of the firm's contract with BISD. They allege – without acknowledging that BISD's lawsuit was settled against HealthSmart – that the savings the company claimed "was intentionally misrepresented.

The lawsuit then veers off further to a lawsuit filed in 2007 by the City of Lubbock against HealthSmart and to its legal representative John Barr. Barr used Defenbaugh and Associates as experts to analyze the audit used by the city to sue HealthSmart. Defenbaugh and Associates found the city audit to be "biased reporting" and eventually both parties agreed to settle the lawsuit.

In October, the pair continues, Rodriguez filed a lawsuit against Presas-Garcia for handing two audit reports performed by the district before she had even come on board as trustee that found evidence of wrongdoing and potential criminal acts by a foundation operated by Rodriguez with little or no accountability or oversight by the district. She said at the time that she was acting within her fiduciary duty and handed them to the Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos who did not act on the matter.

The former majority on the board – including the defendants' attorney Zayas, Ruben Cortez, Joe Colunga and Rolando Aguilar – instructed the administration not to release the reports. A private citizen and the Brownsville Herald appealed the withholding of the documents and the BISD sued the Texas Attorney General when he ruled the reports could be released to the public. Some reports put the legal cost to the district at around $60,000.

Eventually, the reports made their way into the public domain and the majority stopped their efforts stop their release. Rodriguez was never called to answer for the findings in the reports and issued a general denial of the findings.

Rodriguez eventually also non-suited Presas-Garcia for handing the reports to the D.A. Presas-Garcia had hired – and the BISD had paid – attorney John Barr to defend her in the lawsuit.

The school board in July 2011– under a new board majority made up of Presas-Garcia, Lucy Longoria, Enrique Escobedo and Christina Saavedra – authorized a forensic audit of several departments in the BISD. After a request for proposals from different firms, the majority hired Defenbaugh and Associates at $250,000 to perform it.

The men – through Zayas – charge that "somehow, certain departments and individuals that were not 'political allies' of Presas-Garcia were audited" with the intent to commit public humiliations.

They say that the forensic report found that Chavez – though his close relationship with Rodriguez – allowed their friendship to "interfere with what should have been a business decision causing a potential loss of revenue to be sustained with the district."

The lawsuit refers to the findings by Defenbaugh that state:

"Initial allegations that Joe Rodriguez was using undue influence and coercive tactics to pressure BISD coaches, athletic coordinators, and athletic personnel to purchaser sports uniforms and equipment from a company, BNS Sports, after Rordriguez became a sales representative for them after he left BISD in Dec. 31, 2009.

In addition, Rodriguez in a telephone call made to Margarita Pizano-Flores in Sept. 2011 threatened to sue BISD because the Purchasing Department had changed and improved the Catalog/Co-op procurement process.

Investigation and analysis subsequently revealed that a substantial amount of payments of uniforms and equipment totaling $497,117 in fiscal year 2010-2011 was completed compared to the previous fiscal years (2009-2010) total of $175,715; an increase of 283 percent...

"Although Chavez denied giving preferential treatment to BNS and/or Joe Rodriguez in the purchasing process for both schools, Chavez never gave any due consideration to at least three other approved vendors sports distributors."

What the lawsuit does not state is that as part of the negotiations with BISD before he left the district, Rodriguez was granted the option of choosing the next district AD, and chose Chavez. Further, there is no mention that Rodriguez was also given a "golden parachute" of $90,000 to go quietly.

Chavez took over Rodriguez's sppot at a cool $98,000 a year. He is now a coach at a high school.

Both men  – through Zayas – ask that they be paid for "loss of earnings in the past," loss of earnings in the future," mental anguish in the past and future, and presumed damages as well as the cool $1 million in exemplary damages.

"These men think they own the district," said a friend of Presas-Garcia. "They are not content to well good enough alone after all they've done to the BISD. Is it any surprise that this lawsuit comes only two months before the BISD election? If they think for a moment that Caty, Barr or the forensic auditor are going to take this lying down they're in for a rough surprise."