POWERS, BISD MAJORITY REFUSE TO REVIEW LAWYER

By Juan Montoya
Even after three attempts by two Brownsville Independent School District board members to include an item to review the performance of board counsel Baltazar Salazar, board president Otis Powers has refused to place it on the agenda.
The two trustees – Catalina Presas-Garcia and Lucy Longoria – have attempted to place items on the district's agenda, but have been rebuffed by Powers who cites board policy that it takes three board members to include them for board consideration.

Both women have claimed that when board counsel Baltazar Salazar applied for the position, he failed to divulge the fact that he had been convicted of at least three felony charges of theft by check. In fact, they claim, at the time that he was hired (April 2013), the Texas Department of Public Safety had challenged the expungement of his felony cases by the 107th District Court in the 13th Court of Appeals.
However, it wasn't until August that year that the appeals court ruled that the 107th had erred in granting the expungement of the cases and ordered records of the convictions reinstated.
A felony conviction on even one of the theft charges should have kept Salazar from being hired by the district.
The BISD policy categorizes such a conviction as an act of moral turpitude.
According to a memorandum issued December 2, 2011 when Salazar filled out his application, certified personnel administrator Maricela Zarate wrote then-Asst. Superintendent Sylvia Atkinson that "his charges hinged on moral turpitude which is defined as an act of baseness, vileness, or depravity in the private and social duties which a person owes another member of society or society in general and which is contrary to the accepted rule of right and duty between persons including, but not limited ot acts such as theft, murder, rape, swindling and indecency with a minor. The basis of his case revolved around the act of a felony theft which falls under moral turpitude."
Nonetheless, a majority of the school board which included the late Enrique Escobedo, Minerva Peña, Jose Chirinos, and Cesar Lopez, voted to hire Salazar at $20,000 a month. Then they voted to have only one regular meeting per month, thus giving Salazar a $240,000 annual salary.
Did Salazar lie on his application as the two trustees charge? And is Otis Powers, Peña, Lopez, and Chirinos running cover for Salazar as he fights to keep his BISD application withheld from the public?