BEHIND THE SCENES; MINERVA AND BALTA PULL THE STRINGS

By Juan Montoya
We hear from reliable sources that the machinations to insure that the same majority remains at the helm of the Brownsville Independent School District is largely being orchestrated by trustee Minerva Peña and district general counsel Baltazar Salazar.
The negative onslaught against Luci Longoria unleashed by opponent Cesar Lopez in full-page and half-page expensive newspaper ads state in the opening lines that he feels victimized by their "negative" ads won't lower himself to that level, disingenuously try to strike a high tone on the moral road, and then reverts to the lowest type of innuendo against them.
Lopez – basically a snake-oil salesman – want to have his cake and eat it, too.
Already, at least one of the candidates in his race – Juan Pacheco – has told intimates that Lopez took him to lunch at a high-class joint and tried to entice him to leave the race in exchange for some unspecified benefit in the future. To his credit, he refused.
And behind the Lopez smoke and mirrors are trustee Minerva Peña and district general counsel Baltazar Salazar.
Despite the protestations of Lopez adherents, they say that it is Peña and Salazar who are behind the scenes pulling out all the stops on money going to Lopez, Joe Rodriguez and Roberto Rodriguez to assure a continuation of what can only be classified as a continuing criminal enterprise run by the current majority.
Peña is a retired Texas Department of Public Safety officer who has made at run for Justice of the Peace and came in a poor third behind Mary Esther Garcia and Pete Avila. She then endorsed Avila and he lost.
Now she's backing Lopez and the Rodriguez (squared) slate to keep control of the board.
Salazar is no stranger to squalor.
He lied on his application to the district by stating that he had been charged with two felonies but that they were "set aside" by the courts.
In fact, Salazar was arrested and charged with three felony theft by check charges, and convicted and sentenced on one. The record is there for all to see.
Theoretically, Salazar should have never been hired by the BISD because he was convicted of a crime of moral turpitude.
Minnie, as her friends call her, should know that while she was pushing for the board to hire her pal Salazar, her former employer (DPS), was successfully challenging the expunction of the three felony charges that was issued in the 107th District court in Cameron County.
But a majority of the board – at that time the late Enrique Escobedo, Peña, Jose Chirinos and Otis Powers – ignored the policy and voted to hire Salazar as board counsel with a $240,000 a year retainer. Then, to make matters worse, the new majority with Cesar Lopez on board appointed by Escobedo to replace Christina Saavedra (with Powers, Chirinos and Peña) renewed his contract (this time as district general counsel) for another year and gave him a 10 percent salary increase.
In a lawsuit filed in the federal courts by trustees Luci Longoria and Catalina Presas-Garcia, they point out that Lopez was appointed to the board by Escobedo for his part in helping his security company land a lucrative surveillance contract with the Mercedes ISD for which he worked at the time.
Now, Peña as a former law enforcment officer with the DPS is aware of that. So where is the rectitude she preaches?
It's no wonder that Salazar has been hustling the big bucks to keep Lopez on the board. In fact, the last election campaign report indicates that he gave Lopez $4,000 in campaign contributions despite a clause in his contract where he agreed not to make any gifts to a public servant.
The stakes are high in this race. There is a $520 million district budget at stake and Salazar and his cronies will be damned if they can't control it. That Lopez, Powers, Peña and Chirinos are willing to give this apparent violation of district policy a nod and a wink shows that the rules don;t apply to their favorites despite their chest beating and sack-cloth lamentations.