SALAZAR; A TRAIL OF OMISSION AND DECEIT AND A BISD ADMINISTRATION AND BOARD MAJORITY WHO IGNORED IT

By Juan Montoya
Anyone who has ever applied for employment with the Brownsville Independent School District knows it's not the easiest thing in the world to do.
Not only are they thorough as to the educational background, although occasionally a fake PhD or two manage to slip by them, but they also ask some pretty detailed questions. For example, off the top of your head, can you remember the address of all the places where you ave lived since you were 18? Didn't think so. For those of us who took off for the military and college afterwards, there has to be some pretty meticulous research to gather all that information.
Likewise, when it comes to an applicant's criminal history, the district (as it should) asks for all pertinent information relating to convictions, guilty pleas, or no contest (nolo contendre) to "any federal, state or municipal criminal offense, including a misdemeanor, a felony offense or offense involving moral turpitude (excluding minor traffic violations)."
That's pretty darn specific, we would think. If you fail to disclose any offense, you can be sure that the fact checkers over at the BISD HR Department will be on you in a New York heartbeat.
That's why it amazed us when we put in an informational request to the BISD for the certified application of BISD board legal counsel Baltazar Salazar. We have documented in these cyberpages the fact that he was arrested and went to court for at least three theft by check cases (hot check), one of them resulting in a non-jury conviction to which he was sentenced to three years in the state prison, and was given seven years probation.
We later found out that prior to his being hired by the district in April 2013,  he had petitioned (and a court granted) an order of expunction of his three offenses. That order was signed on June 26, 2012. When Salazar's application was filed with the BISD the record was no longer available on the Cameron County District Clerk's Office and therefore would not show up when the fact checkers sought to confirm his answers.
However, when the Texas Department of Public Safety learned about the expunction, it filed an appeal within six months of the order with the 13th Court of Appeals. The state's attorneys charged that the court erred in granting Salazar's petition for expunction "because (he) failed to establish, by legally sufficient evidence, that he had satisfied the statutory requirements for expunction."
The cases listed by the appeals court are 83-CR-416-A (January 15, 1983, theft by check), 85-CR-450-A (theft by check, April 26, 1984), and 85-CR-23-A, (theft by check, also April 26, 1984).  
To make the long story short, no person's criminal record can be expunged if the person pleaded with the court and was given probation, or even deferred adjudication.
In Salazar's case, not only was he given county jail time for the first two theft by check cases, but was actually given a three-year prison sentence probated for seven-years. The amount in question on the third charge, which he appealed with to the 13th Court of Appeals in May 15 1986, was $5,700, making it a felony.
He was ordered to pay in restitution to Coburn Optical, an out-of-state company specializing in eyeglass lenses and machinery. At the time,. Salazar was not an attorney and owned the Salazar Optical and Medical Company in Brownsville.
The appeals court reversed the 107th District Court's order of expungement and ordered all the records returned to the law enforcement agencies and the district and county clerks' files. That was in August 2013, 13 months after the order was signed by the trial court and five months after Salazar was hired by the BISD.
When we checked with the district clerk's office earlier this week, the files still were not in the district clerk's computers and the hard copies were unavailable.
Yet, when he filled out his application with the BISD, Salazar answered that "in 1984, in Cameron County Cause #84-CCr-A-4113, theft by check, I was placed on deferred probation and the case was dismissed. In 1985, Cameron County Cause #85-CR-23-A, theft by check, I was placed on probation and the case was dismissed and conviction set aside."
That would probably be news to the 13th Court of Appeals which reversed the expunction order.
But more to the point, we looked up the first case he mentioned (Cause #84-CCr-A-4113, theft by check), and the case, a misdemeanor, does not relate to Salazar in any way. In other words, it was not a true statement. The other case he mentioned (Cause #85-CR-23-A), was the case he appealed to the 13th Court of Appeals and lost.
He never listed the other two cases he tried to get expunged 83-CR-416-A (January 15, 1983, theft by check), 85-CR-450-A (theft by check, April 26, 1984) and failed after the DPS objected. On the very day that he made his pitch to the BISD board of trustees (April 1, 2013), he was awaiting the appeals court decision on the DPS objection and never said anything about it.
The late Enrique Escobedo, Minerva Peña, Otis Powers and Jose Chirinos gave him the thumbs up. Catalina Presas-Garcia and Lucy Longoria voted against his hiring. 
It's bad enough that he didn't answer truthfully, but according to the BISD's local policies, the applicant is required to affirm that "all information provided on this form is true and accurate. I also understand that an employment contract based upon information contained in this application which later proves to be false or incomplete shall result in the contract becoming null and void or terminated."
Local policies also state that "at the Superintendent's discretion, the district shall not employ an applicant who:
1. is a convicted felon
2. in convicted of a misdemeanor involving moral turpitude
3. is charged with a felony or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, until there is a disposition of the charge
4. is on probation for any offense (including deferred adjudication probation) that would otherwise restrict employment.
The BISD's employment policies get even more explicit. They state that: "Persons charged with a criminal offense that was dismissed through deferred adjudication may be considered for employment after five years except when the charge was capital murder; murder; voluntary or involuntary manslaughter; any felony theft offense...
"No one convicted of a felony or any misdemeanor involving moral turpitude will be considered for employment in the district...Moral turpitude is "an act of baseness, vileness, or depravity in the private or social duties outside the accepted standards of decency and that shock the conscience of an ordinary person, Examples, but not by way of limitation, of offenses that involve moral turpitude are:
1. Public lewdness
2. Prostitution
3. Theft or theft of services (in excess of $500 in value).
4. Fraud.
Unlike Mr. Salazar, we are not attorneys here or even claim to be well-versed in the law, but the matter seems to be fairly clear. Salazar was not completely honest when he filled out the district's application for certified employment on his criminal record history and omitted at least two offenses and lied about the one he did disclose. He might have even listed a bogus misdemeanor offense on his application.
Clearly, his conviction involved a case of moral turpitude as defined by BISD policies and should have made him immediately ineligible for employment. 
In fact, a memorandum prepared by a  HR administrator who reviewed his application Dec. 2, 2011 stated that "the basis of his case revolved around the act of felony theft which falls under moral turpitude."
Yet, last time we checked (mid-February 2014) BISD records indicate he had already drawn $200,000 since April 2013 based on his $20,000 monthly salary with the district.
Is there something wrong with this picture?