DOES TIN MINNIE HAVE IT IN HER HEART TO CUT BISD'S LOSSES? OR KEEP GIVING AWAY THE "KIDS" MONEY?

“The court has reviewed the materials (tapes, affidavit) and finds that...they are admissible summary judgment material...a genuine issue of material fact exists concerning the alleged conspiracy, which bears on his (Juarez's) 14th Amendment claim.”

"The court finds that the statements are relevant so long as they make it more or less likely that the defendants were involved in a conspiracy to coerce employees into filing grievances against each other..."

 “Juarez describes his report (to the FBI) as one that ’concerned matters of public concern,' not of personal interest. There was a great public concern regarding the treatment of the superintendent and the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money toward the district’s Stop Loss insurance.”
Order by Southern Federal District Court Judge Andrew Hanen upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals

By Juan Montoya
For the better part of two years, the Brownsville Independent School District has been spending millions of dollars defending itself from lawsuits by former superintendent Hector Gonzales chief financial officer Tony Juarez.
The defendants in the cases, including the district, were Rick Zayas, Ruben Cortez, Joe Colunga and Rolando Aguilar. Even before the expenditures on the actual case, this majority had paid Nic Navarro, a Harlingen attorney, almost $400,000 to dig up enough justification for firing Gonzales.
Then, even after Zayas and Cortez were rejected by the voters in 2010, the distict continued to pay for their defense. When the Juarez case reached the federal courts, Hanen rejected their claim of qualified immunity from the lawsuit, meaning that they would not be granted immunity and were personally liable for illegal acts committed while they were trustees of the district.
The district paid for their appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans where Hanen's order was upheld. Their re-appeal was not even granted a rehearing.
By then, the BISD had paid lawyers representing the four trustees millions of dollars in legal fees. At this point, the BISD's insurance companies and the current board majority saw no sense in prolonging the hemorrhaging of the district's money defending the indefensible. So they agreed to settle the lawsuits and put an end to the waste. Why throw good money after bad?
But now we have the Zayas-Cortez megaphone named Gary Long of the Brownsville Herald writing today's banner headline story and quoting none other than trustee Minerva Peña – up for reelection – where she says "In my heart I cannot take money from the kids to settle the lawsuits."
Peña, the ultimate Tin Man on the board of trustees, could find "in her heart" to continue defending the two former trustees (Zayas and Cortez) and the current ones (Colunga and Aguilar) at district expense despite the findings by the federal judge and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that there was a factual dispute about their violations of the law in the termination of the two men.
And her sensitive little heart did not skip a beat when the former majority fired the two men for not going along with their illegal conspiracy to rig the districts lucrative ($40 million) Stop-Loss insurance contract and steer it toward their political benefactor, the late Johnny Cavazos.
There were no palpitations in her ventricles when she voted to hire financial advisers Estrada, Hinojosa &amp Company again this year after the firm failed the district miserably in past bond issues. Remember this?
Estrada and Hinojosa were primarily responsible for convincing the trustees and the administration to issue $25.9 million in Qualified School Construction Bonds (QSCB) under the federal Instructional Facilities Allotment (IFA)in 2010 .
Board members and even former Superintendent Brett Springston were told at the time that the state would consider the entire debt service with federal tax credits which would make the bond "free money."
The board authorized the issuance Dec. 7, 2010...and the bonds were sold Dec. 22. A little over two weeks later, on Jan. 6, 2011, Estrada Hinojosa & Company were contacted by the Texas Education Agency and they were told the debt service schedules submitted with the four applications were incorrect because they did not deduct the federal subsidy from the debt service requirement on the bonds.
So, instead of a minimal payment, or none at all as they had been promised, the board members were told that the district's local share will be approximately $507,068 a year which over the 18-year term of the bonds will cost the district $9,127,216 to retire. So much for "free money."
The net profit for the "consultants" for that slight-of-hand? Close to $3.5 million.
So hey, Minnie, paying $700,000 to keep the district from incurring millions in losses in the future if the four defendant-trustees lost their cases in court – as they were sure to do – hurts your little heart? Do you think you know more than a federal judge and a panel of senior federal judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals?
How about your two fellow trustees Aguilar and Colunga also voting not to approve the BISD paying the settlement and cutting its losses while defending them as co-conspirators? The fact that they voted not to pay the settlement when they were defendants in the lawsuit doesn't make your heartbeat flutter with doubt as to the propriety in doing that just a bit?
The Tin Man has nothing on you, Minnie.
You may not have it "in your heart" to stop the bleeding of the district's money into the pockets of lawyers, but you can turn a blind eye to documented injustices committed in the name of the BISD and throw money at people who have indebted the district to the tune of millions for years to come and your heart won't skip a beat, will it?