AVIADORA ERIN, PATRON ERNIE, CITY CANDIDATES IN '15?

By Juan Montoya
Cameron County Justice of the Peace 2-2 Erin Hernandez Garcia is seen so seldom at her office nowadays that employees on the second floor of the judicial wing of the courthouse have taken to call her an "aviadora."
For the uninitiated in Mexican bureaucratise, the term refers to someone who shows up at their work site only on pay day to pick up their check.
"It's been  a while since we've seen her," said a clerk in one of the second-floor offices. "We don't know if she's on vacation or whether she's sick."
In fact, people who have gone to her office to file a small claim have been turned away and told that it will be at least 180 days before she has to hear their claim. So instead of waiting that long, they usually walk next door to Linda Salazar's office at JP 2-1 and file it there.
This hasn't sat well with Salazar who's been heard to state her piece in her endearingly salty and colorful language.
We don't really know how vacation or leave time accrues for county employees, but since she took office in late 2012, it would appear she has racked up enough time to do it.
We know, however, that she has somehow managed to set up appointments to marry couples even though she's not at the office through her trusted office staff which included Linda Castro, the Cheezmeh poster vixen. At $200 to $300 a pop, it's nothing to sneeze at.
But when the cat's away the meeces will play, as Sylvester used to say.
Now we hear that Erin is making noises about running for city commissioner in the upcoming May 2015 elections. She ran for re-election this year but was left out of the eventual runoff between Jonathan Gracia and Yolanda Begum. Gracia eventually won in May.
And that's not all.
Now we hear that her father – disgraced Pct. 2 commissioner Ernie Hernandez who had to resign to avoid prosecution –is also making noises about running for City of Brownsville mayor in the same election.
If he does, he will have to over come his history of shady dealings and the eight-count indictment for official misconduct in trying to get his brother-in-law hired as a security guard at the county-owned Veteran Memorial International Bridge.
Hernandez also ran for re-election for the Pct. 2 position but also did not make the runoff. Leo Lopez and Alex Dominguez squared off in that one and Dominguez eked out a narrow win.
"Norma (Hernandez's wife) and Ernie are going around town telling everyone that he is running for mayor," said a courthouse source. "Apparently, he thinks that he has a chance of winning."
Hernandez served as a City of Brownsville commissioner for many years before he ran for the Pct. 2 commissioner spot and won in a fraud-fraught runoff election against local attorney Ruben Peña in 2010. Peña sued Hernandez in court for using politiqueras to cast illegal mail-in ballots and the judge said that although he could see they were illegal, he allowed the election to stand.
In the short time that Hernandez was in office – and despite the Civil Service requirements of the county – he was able to place many of his political supporters in county jobs as patronage for their continued support.

It was the attempt to pace his brother-in-law in the bridge security position that eventually lead to his indictment.
Meanwhile, Erin Hernandez came into scrutiny by the Cameron County District Attorney's Office and the Texas Attorney General's Office after it was revealed that she had sold couples waivers to allow them to forego the 72-hour waiting period between getting a wedding license and having the ceremony performed.
The DA's office requested an opinion from the AG's office and the state attorney ruled that the JP had no authority to issue a 72-hour marriage waivers.
The attorney general did not issue an opinion on whether a justice of the peace may accept payment for a marriage waiver because a JP was not even authorized to issue the waivers.
At the time, DA Luis Saenz said that his office was awaiting the AG's decision to see if he would proceed with prosecution in the case. So far, even though the the Texas AG has nixed the issuance of waivers, we have not heard anything for Sanez's office on any upcoming presentation of the evidence to a grand jury.
Will Saenz drop the other shoe, or was non-prosecution of Erin a condition of Ernie's resignation, too?