BISD CONTINUES FUTILE COVER-UP FOR COUNSEL SALAZAR

By Juan Montoya
Ever since current Brownsville Independent School District counsel Baltazar Salazar filled out his application for employment with the district in December 2011, that document has been in the public domain.
When the trustee who met to choose law firms to represent the board, they were given copies of the application and a compilation of the firms' strengths and weakness. It is noteworthy to state at the outset that Salazar's firm was nowhere near the top of the strongest candidates. In fact, its list of shortcomings placed it somewhere near the bottom of the eight finalists.
Salazar was hired by the current majority including the late Enrique Ecobedo, Otis Powers, Jose Chirinos, and Minerva Peña. Catalina Presas-Garcia and Lucy Longoria voted against his hiring.
Since then, many things have happened, including a lawsuit filed by Presas-Garcia and Longoria against the four board members, Superintendent Carl Montoya, and Salazar. They claim that by trying to censure (censor?) them and keeping them from voicing their opinion on a number of subjects, the board members and the administrators violated their First Amendment rights.
Among other things, they claim that the board majority knew that Salazar had kep the fact that he had been charged with three felony theft by check charges and that he had been trying to expunge his record. A local trial court granted the expungement, only to have the 13th Court of Appeals overturn its decision when it found that the convictions had not been "set aside" as Salazar contended, but that he had served probation for at least one of those convictions.
He was hired in April 2013. The court of appeals rendered its decision in August of the same year. So even as he stood before the board members and made his pitch for the job, Salazar knew all along that the Texas Department of Public Safety had objected to the trial court's expungement of his criminal record. He also knew that he had lied on his application.
After the ladies filed the lawsuit, we made a public information request to get another copy of Salazar's BISD employment application. Since it had been on record since 2011 and available to the public ever since, we didn't figure it was such a big deal. In fact, there are extant copies of floating around the city and in some BISD administrators' files.
That's why it was a somewhat unpleasant surprise to learn that instead of handing it over as we requested, the BISD is taking the unusual (and futile) step of objecting to its release based on the fact that Presas-Garcia and Longoria list that application as proof that Salazar lied on his application that he had been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude, in this case, of theft.
BISD policies clearly state that no one convicted of a crime of such a nature will be hired by the district.

"The original complaint filed by the plaintiffs includes allegations against Mr. Baltazar Salazar with respect to his application for employment with the District and information that may or may not have been revealed on his employment application," the district wrote the Texas Attorney General in its objection to releasing the document.
Current staff attorney Leandra Costilla Ortiz says that as a result of the pending litigation, the district is within its right to withhold the information requested.
We are going through our files to look for a copy of Salazar's original application. We know we have his and the other firms', but if you are like us it will not be a pleasant task to rifle though boxes of fiels to look for that particular document. But we'll find it.
What is in that application that is making the BISD circle its wagons? Did (as we suspect) Salazar lie on it? And if he did, how can he continue to hold that position at $20,000 a month ($240,000 a year)?