ERNIE DESPERATELY SPINS THE TALE TO ESCAPE BLAME

By Juan Montoya
He's doing it again, Ma!
The Teflon Don of Brownsville politics is in fine form.
Cameron County Pct. 2 Commissioner Ernie Hernandez took the opportunity to comment on the local daily about the 10-month sentence handed to his administrative assistant Raul Salazar for his conviction on two counts of abuse of his official capacity and tampering with a government document to shift the blame from himself for the illegal hiring of his brother-in-law Roberto Cadriel.
 Hernandez, who refused to testify on behalf of his employee during the trial or at his sentencing, is calling the prosecution of Salazar as being politically motivated. And he chafed under defense attorney Larry Warner when he told Visiting Judge Federico Hinojosa that Salazar – "a minion " – had only acted at the behest of Hernandez.
"Ernie Heranndez is not on trial," he said. "You shouldn't punish (Salazar) for what he did, either."
In other words, no one – not the judge, not the defense, not the prosecutors, not the general public – believe that Raul Salazar acted on his own to stick out his neck to get Ernie's brother-in-law a job with the county with little or no benefit for himself.
In gratuitous comments to the press outside the ear of the court, Hernandez did not deny that the DA's office had told the court that Hernandez was also under investigation and that the suddenly garrulous commissioner who took the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination couldn't say enough.
He insinuated that the DA's office doesn''t have enough evidence to indict him and that a second trial of his administrative assistant would shed light on the "inaccuracies."
Warner, in his plea for a lenient sentence for Salazar, said that the law requires a conviction of the principal – Hernandez – before accomplices can be tried.
Let's see.
During the trial, testimony from several witnesses indicated that Cadriel – a convicted felon – was not eligible for employment with the county because he could neither read nor write, could not operate a computer, and was unable to pass the Civil Service examination all county employees must pass.
Several witnesses said that a Human Resources female employee was ordered to take the exam for Cadriel after he tried and failed twice with score sin the low 30s. When the woman took the exam for him, he scored an 86.
After he couldn't get the position he sought initially (animal control, that is, dog catcher), witnesses and Cadriel himself testified that a copy of the answers to a written test for security officer were given to him before he took the exam. He scored a 96 and was placed as a non-commissioned security guard at one of the bridges at the Cameron County International Bridge System.
And even though his boss Ernie Hernandez denied any role in his hiring, Cadriel testified on the stand that it was the commissioner who told him to go see Salazar at his commissioner's office to help him apply for a job with the county. Cadriel said Norma – his sister and the commissioner's wife – helped him fill out the county application.
Then, during the trial, numerous state witnesses said Hernandez and Salazar pressured them through conversations and phone calls urging them to "move the application along," and get Cadriel hired.
Cadriel resigned – as did then-HR director Robert Lopez after media inquiries about his hiring began.
Hernandez told the local daily that he knew nothing about Cadriel being hired or resigning until he read it in the online version of the Brownsville Herald.
It is obvious that Hernandez, running for his political life in the primaries coming up on March 4, 2014, is trying to deflect attention from himself much as a military recruit who has dirty boots tries to stand next to someone with worse-looking footwear in the hopes that the other will bear the brunt of the drill instructor's ire.
We hope that DA Luis Saenz doesn't succumb to the pressure of initiating the case against Hernandez before he has all his ducks lined up in  a row. There is nothing better that Hernandez would love than to see the DA follow his agenda and go off half-cocked and the case be wrapped up before the primary or runoff that might ensue.