IDEAL GOVERNMENT CLASHES AGAINST COLD, HARD REALITY

By Juan Montoya
Time and time again textbook county government has met with the cold reality of influence-peddling and patronage in the trial of Cameron County Pct. 2 Administrative Assistant Raul Salazar.
Salazar, the right-hand man of Cameron County Pct. 2 commissioner Ernie Hernandez, is charged with two counts of tampering with a government document in the illegal hiring of his boss's brother-in-law Roberto Cadriel.
Cadriel is the brother of Ernie's wife, Norma Hernandez.
Witness after witness in the three-day-old trial hasve come forth to say they were pressured by Hernandez and Salazar to "move along" Cadriel's application through the county's Human Resources Dept. to get him hired first as an animal-control officer and later as a security guard in the county's international bridge system.
Robert Lopez, the former director of HR testified that Hernandez called him to his office and told him he wanted Cadriel, who has a fifth-grade level intelligence and was a special needs student, to get hired by the county.
In what has emerged as a repetitive mantra, Salazar's defense attorney Victor Ramirez has continuously queried the witnesses whether county policy allows a commissioner or a commissioner's administrative assistant (secretary, he calls Salazar) to hire or fire county employees.
The answer, of course, is that they aren't supposed to.
But time and time again, witnesses say they were contacted by Hernandez and Salazar and pressured by them to get Cadriel hired.
This in spite of the fact that Cadriel could neither read nor write bin English or Spanish, could not pass the civil service exam twice until a low-level HR employee was ordered to take it in his place, is a convicted felon, and was last fired from his two previous jobs for misconduct and for not showing up for work.
This afternoon International Bridge System director David Silva said that "commissioner Hernandez and Salazar were continually calling for us to hire him as a security guard."
Despite the fact that Cadriel would not have qualified for civil service or county personnel polices under the guidelines, Cadriel's application was approved at HR after he had a third test for dog catcher taken for him and he was given the answers by Salazar to pass the security guard exam.
And in spite of the fact that if Silva had followed the county's personnel policies Cadriel wouldn't have made the cut as a bridge security guard because he had a first-degree affinity to a sitting commissioner (Hernandez), he was nonetheless chosen over other candidates to get the job.
Defense attorney Ramirez tried to counter that the civil service manual never mentioned nepotism in tis guidelines but was rebutted by Asst. DA Ismael Mendoza with a county personnel manual that prohibited hiring the relative of someone working for the county.
"Nonetheless you know of people who have relatives working for the county," Ramirez insisted.
"Every time I went to the county building he would tell me that once I got the application we should hire him," Silva said.
"I was being pressured by (assistant county administrator) Mr. (David) Garcia, Raul Salazar and Ernie Hernandez," he told Mendoza. "They were continuously pressuring me."
Interestingly, Silva said that once Cadriel had resigned after four or five days of work and after a controversy erupted in the media over his hiring, "his application disappeared."
Deputy Cameron County Administrator David Garcia told Asst. DA Gus Garza that when both Hernandez and Salazar had contacted him to hire Cadriel, he had "felt uncomfortable in that situation."
"At times, the commissioner does get involved with other personnel," he said. "The commissioner to a certain extent was getting involved in the issue."
"Were you asked to make sure Roberto Cadriel got hired?" Garza asked.
"I was asked to move his application along for further review," Garcia said, adding that he at first hesitated to sign the statement because he feared how it would "affect me personally and career wise."
He said that after he reluctantly signed a statement to that effect, Hernandez had been the driving force to strip him of a $70,000 stipend he received from the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority.
Ramirez countered that the commissioners court had removed the payments made by the CCRMA to at least four other county employees, not ust Garcia.
The amounts they were paid, however, were not anywhere near the hit that Garcia took after he had written the statement saying he had been pressured by Hernandez and Salazar to move Cadriel's application along.
The commissioners court  at Hernandez's initiative – in order to counter criticism of double-dipping by at least a half-dozen employees, particularly Garcia, passed a motion to have the CCRMA reimburse the county for work performed by full-time county employees.