FOR RUBINSTEIN, THE TOP POST AT TEXAS WATER BOARD

By Juan Montoya

In the wake of the shakeup of the Texas Water Development Board by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Brownsville got a chairman and lost a member of this agency Critical to agriculture and the fast-developing Rio Grande Valley.

Brownsville TWDB Member Billy Bradford was one casualty of the shakeup while former Brownsville City Manager Carlos Rubinstein was appointed chairman of the three-member board. Unlike the former members of the board, Rubinstein, Bech Bruun, and Mary Ann Williamson will get a $150,000 salary in contrast to the former members who served on a voluntary basis.

We understand that Bradford was miffed at the sudden changes imposed by Perry and hinted to friends that something other than increased efficiency and streamlining the agency was at work. But being a circumspect sort, he declined to enumerate his concerns.

For Rubinstein, it's been a long heady ride to the top of the water chain ever since he left the lower end of the Rio Grande watershed. Rubinstein's rise was accelerated by the passage of the board of House Bill 4 by the 83rd Legislature tat establishes the new full-time, three-member board effective Sept. 1, 2013. Rubinstein will oversee the new board to "provide leadership, planning, and financial and technical assistance for the responsible development of water for Texas."
It wasn't that long ago that Rubinstein was involved in the delicious local scandals only our local pols can contrive. Take, for example, when he was city manager and he tangled with resident racist Bud Richards, then a commissioner, who was after him to punish some local cops for some imagined slight.
The year was 1998.
If you think politics is hot in the City of Brownsville now, you should have been in town that torrid summer.

At the time a commissioner named Bud Richards was at odds with the City of Brownsville police union and in a conversation with then-city manager Carlos Rubinstein, complained the union was acting like "the Gestapo" and suggested he "treat them like Hitler would" in his dealing with them.

Richards knew Rubinstein was Jewish and he referred to him in a letter as "a Jew boy" and other choice ethnic slurs.
Rubinstein made the contents of the letter available and also disclosed the substance of a March 30, 1998, phone conversation where similar sentiments were made by Richards to the other city commissioners. After Richards apologized to Rubinstein for his remarks, Rubinstein withdrew the letter, but alas, city gremlins had already distributed the letter far and wide.
The resulting controversy gained the attention of the Texas and U.S. media and Brownsville was again catapulted into the national limelight as a result.

The situation was rendered into an eye-opening caricature by Crossroads Weekly newspaper by artist/contributor Joaquin Ribera. It showed Rubinstein defending the police who are depicted wearing concentration-camp garb standing behind a barbed-wire pen.

McNair and Hernandez are wearing Nazi-like uniforms and stand timidly behind Richards, who is seen giving the Nazi salute.
A local group headed by Bill Hudson (yeah, our Paseo de la Resaca Bill) launched a recall movement that ended going nowhere and Richards ended his term.

McNair went back to being a local businessman. Hernandez resurfaced and got elected to another public office, and Rubinstein was appointed to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Richards went back to whatever hole he came from and disappeared from public view. In his case, good riddance.

Before his appointment to the Water Development Board, Rubinstein was a commissioner of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), a position he has held since his appointment in August 2009. He is a member of the Texas Environmental Flows Advisory Group and is the Texas representative to the Western States Water Council, the Border Governors Conference Sustainable Development worktable, the Environmental Council of the States, the Good Neighbor Environmental Board, an independent federal advisory committee that assists the president and Congress on environmental infrastructure needs along the U.S. border with Mexico, and the Governmental Advisory Committee, which advises the EPA Administrator on environmental concerns regarding NAFTA, the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation, and the Commission for Environmental Cooperation. Prior to his appointment, Rubinstein served as deputy executive director of TCEQ and as Rio Grande Watermaster. He is also the past Texas representative to the Border Governors Conference Water worktable and a former city manager for the City of Brownsville. Rubinstein received a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Pan American University.
Our congratulations to him.