HERALD GIVES FREE ADVERTISING TO PRESAS-GARCIA'S CRITICS WHILE TAKING HER MONEY

By Juan Montoya
If it had been one or two letters to the editor criticizing the majority of the board of the Brownsville Independent School Board for settling the lawsuits filed by former superintendent Hector Gonzales and former CFO Antonio Juarez nothing would seem amiss.
But now, as letters from at least three writers hammer down not on the majority that approved the settlement that cost the district's insurance $1.5 million, $700,000 of which was paid out of pocket by the district, but on the one trustee that is running for reelection, the editorial judgement of the newspaper begins to emit a familiar smell characteristic of the slanted articles of Gary Long, its education writer.
The latest is by one Jose Torres who goes after trustee Catalina Presas-Garcia and blames her for costing taxpayers the money. He then also blames her for "hiring" the forensic audit company Defenbaugh and Associates and "hid" the fact that there existed a "prior professional relationship" between her and this firm.
He doesn't really accuse Presas-Garcia, though. He insinuates something might be wrong an forms his charges in the form of a question, a time-honored tradition in print journalism.
All this has been aired before, but another time-honored tradition is that if you repeat a "Big Lie" often enough, it will in time be taken as truth.
But before you blame one trustee who has one vote for the actions of an entire BISD administration and the actions of a majority (that's four Jose), let's look at what the choices the board was facing before the majority decided that they had spent enough of your money fighting lawsuits that their counsel told them could not be won.
Presas-Garcia, Lucy Longoria, Dr. Christina Saavedra and Ernique Escobedo did not cause these lawsuits to be filed. It was the former board majority that is named in the lawsuit filed by the two men. You know who they are. They were Rick Zayas, Ruben Cortez, Joe Colunga and Rolando Aguilar. Documentation filed in federal court indicate that the four men were not happy that the insurance firm for which their political benefactor (the late) Johnnhy Cavoazos was the agent of record was not recommended by Juarez for the lucrative Stop-Loss contract.
Federal judge Andrew Hanen determined enough evidence existed for the cases to go to court and a jury determine whether a conspiracy was perpetrated by these defendants and others to one, rig the insurance contract, and two, to pervert the district's grievance process to terminate the superintendent.
They gave Gonzales the ultimatum to fire Juarez, or face termination himself. Then they tried to have Juarez file a grievance against Gonzales. Instead, both men went to the FBI and state law enforcement authorities. Both were terminated.
In the lawsuit filed by Joe Rodriguez and his protege Tom Chavez, the only defendant named is Defenbaugh and Associates, not Presas-Garcia or the BISD. How does Mr. Jose make the jump and say that the BISD taxpayer is going to pay for any settlement that might result from this, if any?
His letter and others smells of a political campaign being waged with the implicit consent of the Herald, which prints the letters without any critical perusal of the contents. Look below Jose and decide whether you would have not done the same that the BISD board majority did to settle with the wronged men.
Since the lawsuits were filed BISD and ACE insurance had spent millions defending the district and the trustee-defendants. Even before the $700,000, the BISD Finance Office estimates the this much had been spent*:

· $366,755 to Denton, Navarro, Rocha & Bernal (includes the Art Rendon case)
· $150,000 on BISD Insurance deductible
· $1,100,000 ACE Insurance settlements
· $700,000 ACE Insurance Legal Fees

Until BISD settled, a grand total of $2,316,755 had been spent…with no end in sight.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld the findings of the local federal judge. Both found that there was enough evidence to go to trial to determine if the four defendant-trustees – Zayas, Cortez, Colunga and Aguilar – had conspired with others and engaged in illegal conduct to deprive the two men of their constitutional rights because both chose not to join the conspiracy and went to the FBI and state law enforcement instead.
If the BISD had lost in court, the $700,000 would have been multiplied by three or four times. All of it would have come from the district's fund balance since the insurance companies do not pay damage judgments caused by the illegal conduct of the trustee-defendants.
In a newspaper ad, Presas-Garcia states:
"That is the unvarnished truth. The federal record speaks for itself and I, for one, am not going to second-guess a federal judge and two federal courts and spend more of your money defending the indefensible."
By the way, guess what Jose? Presas-Garcia, Saavedra, Longoria and Escobedo all pay property taxes on their homes, so your claim that "me you and all other taxpayers" and not Presas-Garcia would pay for settlements amounts to no more than crass political drivel.
And what about the people who caused this mess trying to steer an insurance contract toward a certain company? You have nothing to say about that in your self-righteous indignation? We're waiting.