ERNIE SETTING ALL THE DUCKS IN A ROW FOR HIS EMPIRE

By Juan Montoya
With the installation of his daughter Erin Hernandez Garcia as Justice of the Peace 2-2, Ernie Hernandez and his vote-harvesting machine have come one step closer to establishing his political empire.
Hernandez, the commissioner for Cameron County's Pct.2, took to handing out patronage and jobs like a duck to water. In fact, his former buddy and close associate John Wood did him the favor of hiring him as his assistant two months before he took office before Wood lost to Carlos Cascos for the position of county judge.
It was like letting a kid loose in the candy store. But he lacked finesse, as he found out when his ruse to give his brother-in-law a job as a security guard at the Veterans Memorial Bridge (Los Tomates) was foiled after an investigation disclosed that poor Roberto Cadriel couldn't pass his Civil Service exam and that someone else (an affidavit exists) that an employee at the Human Resources Dept. took it for him and he passed after tow dismal attempts to pass it.
As a result of the ensuing controversy, Cadriel resigned after one day as a security guard at Veteran's Memorial Bridge. Acting Human Resources director Robert Lopez resigned immediately after the story became public, right after Cadriel. That case is still being investigated by the county's District Attorney Armanado Villalobos, who himself has been indicted for racketeering and corruption in cases related to the Abel Limas scandal, among others.
 With Public Works Supervisor Louie Ara resigning for unspecified reasons, Ernie must now seek someone else to dispense his patronage. Ara had Santana Vallejo as his assistant there. You remember Vallejo, he used to to be streets supervisor with the City of Brownsville until management sniffed out something wrong with their neighborhood sidewalk program. Apparently, some of the cement being delivered to the program somehow found its way out of the city and ended up being used by individuals who then sold it to homeowners for driveways and sidewalks.
And just last year, a homeowner's complaint in rural Olmito filed with the Cameron County's Sheriff Department charged that Vallejo and his compadre Rosendo Rodriguez had sold them driveway pipes they were replacing as they performed ditchwork on the roads and keeping the money for themselves.
Sheriff Dept. officials said that the complaint against the two were dismissed on a "technicality," but insiders say that aggressive defense attorneys for the men scared them into withdrawing their charges telling them they were just as guilty as their clients because they knew the pipes were not legitimately acquired.
With the charges withdrawn, the men returned to their positions free and clear.
And it just so happens that Rosendo's brother, Ricardo, is also working for the county in the colonia grants section and mostly in Cameron Park. Ara had put that crew under the supervision of inexperienced supervisor and one of his favorites, foreman Ruben Gonzalez, who showed immediately upon arrival at the project that he didn't know his keister from a bar ditch.
He had workers climb into deep trenches without the OSHA-mandated protection for workers in sloping ditches. OSHA mandates that entities doing the work may use a trench box or shield that is either designed or approved by a registered professional engineer or is based on tabulated data prepared or approved by a registered professional engineer.
Well, our Mr. Gonzalez knew nothing of this and had the workers climb into the trenches without the required protection. One, Javier Mendoza (Nuco), had the misfortune of suffering the predicable: the trench collapsed and trapped him under tons of dirt. He suffered serious injuries including damage to his internal organs and has now been declared disabled and can no longer work. As an afterthought, Ara suspended his appointee as foreman Gonzalez and now the county has been forced to pay for all the injured worker's medical and disability payments.
After Vallejo left the city, he ended up in the Cameron County Public Works department under Ara, who is under Pete Sepulveda, county administrator. But the incestuous nature of the Ara-Vallejo-Hernandez relationship didn't end there.
Ara's sister, Lavinia Ralston Long, who used to work at Fiesta graphics, Ernie's company, is now the receptionist for Hernandez's Precinct 2 office.
And remember Gilbert Galvan, the county's hapless safety officer who wrecked the county SUV when he failed to negotiate the curve at the intersection of FM 803 and Henderson Road? Well, apparently just after the truck was repaired, accident-prone Galvan had it hit by another car and the vehicle sustained some damage. Back to the repair garage!
Hi sister, Claudia Garza, by the way, works as receptionist at the county warehouse on 14th Street in Brownsville.
And Vallejos' wife, Linda C. Vallejo, also works for the county auditor's office.
Vallejo's brother was also found a spot on the Cameron Park colonia work crew.
Ernie is getting better at this all the time.
It is apparent that the colonia fund crews and county jobs had become the destination of Hernandez-Ara-Vallejo patronage ring with the predictable results. So what are a few thousands dollars in wasted road materials when they tried to pave Carmen Avenue and ended up botching the job? They just shrugged their shoulders, blamed the quality of the materials sold to the county by the Texas Department of Transportation and tried it again.
And who can forget Aroldo Cadriel, who as we well know is Ernie's wife Norman's cousin? He has been charged with murdering a young woman with whom he had a romantic relationship and dumping her body is a desolate rural area. Ernie sent Public Road crews at a cost of thousands of  in caliche and manpower to spread it past his firing range even though there were no residences more than a half mile from there.
Remember when Ernie's niece – the former Magistrate Patricia Edlestein – gave the commissioner's  daughter-in-law Daisy de la Fuente, a former receptionist with the Cameron County Sheriff's Department, a "get out of jail" card after she was arrested after being engaged in a drunken brawl in northern rural Los Fresnos?
De la Fuente, married to Evan Hernandez, Ernie' son, was said to have been clocked traveling more than 100 miles per hour on Highway 100 at approximately 3 a.m.
Los Fresnos police chased her and she is reported to have ditched her car and taken off on foot through the bush to elude them,
She then called her friends at the sheriff's department to ask them for a ride. Police found her walking on the side of the road. Unfortunately for Daisy, she forgot that she had left her purse and ID in the car and when the Los Fresnos cops went though it, they found out her real identity.
Even with Ernie's pleading, Sheriff Omar Lucio decided he had had enough embarrassment from one of his employees and declined to keep her on board.
Now, as Ernie's daughter Erin Hernandez Garcia takes over the JP 2-2 helm, can we reasonably expect any different?
She is, after all, an important cog in the machine Hernandez and his extended family of politiqueras vote harvesters have built and none which county residents will have to contend with for years to come. Even should Ernie lose the next election, the pieces are all in place for him to pull the strings from behind the scenes and try to control the political life in this county.