MORALITY IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT? DON'T BET ON IT!

By Juan Montoya
Cameron County District Attorney Luis V. Saenz is wrong.
His first promise when he took office wasn't to bring back Amit Livingston from India to serve his 23-year prison sentence for murdering his former lover. That would have been the moral thing to do.
Instead, and we have the recording to prove it, it was to stamp out maquinitas in Cameron County which he said were depriving poor families of household income, were fostering violent crime, and were used to launder money for the drug cartels of Northern Mexico. To hear him talk at his press conferences every time he raided an 8-Liner arcade, they were a scourge on the good morals of this county's residents.
Not only was he going to confiscate the machines, but he wasn't going to do what his predecessor (Armando Villalobos) used to do – sell them back to buyers who would use them again.
That turned out to be a fib, we learned later when it was revealed that Saenz had authorized the sale of 500 maquinitas (with a promise of another 100 if the sale was a success). That little gambit resulted in $100,000 in his forfeiture budget, but Luis, like Bill Clinton, said he never touched it (didn't inhale). How many other sales he approved we'll probably never know because as soon as people started asking, the flow of information dried up.
And are any of those machines he sold turning up in the 8-Liner arcades he is raiding now?
"We teach our people how not to give information," Saenz candidly told me at the steps of the courthouse when I told him I had sent his PIO an information request.
In an interview with this blog, he said that the Bishop Daniel Flores, of the Brownsville Catholic Diocese had told former county judge Carlos Cascos that the money the faithful were spending in the maquinitas was negatively impacting the offering baskets on Sunday and the take of the parish bingos.
Seizing on the religious connection, Saenz said that the name "Operation Bishop" seemed apropos for the crusade against the heathen pastime.
Of course, as soon as the crackdown begin in Cameron and the old ladies playing in the arcades started to get arrested, they lit out for clandestine salons or to Willacy, Hidalgo, and Starr counties.
Meanwhile, Saenz's picture appeared in the Facebook pages where he was in racetracks in Central Texas running (and betting on) his quarter horses. "Do as I say," seems to be the slogan, "not as I do."
Likewise, at the city level, Mayor Tony Martinez has a private chapel in his swank Palm Boulevard home. It was there he takes his communion and communicates with the Man Upstairs.
Martinez was at the press conference at the Brownsville-Padre Island Airport to welcome Allegiant Airlines, the newest airline to take a gamble on Brownsville service.
Allegiant Airlines' claim to fame? Would you believe direct flights to Las Vegas so that Cameron County residents can...gamble.
It appears that the prohibition on gambling would seem to apply to people of a certain economic level that the Powers That Be (Saenz, Martinez, et al) have determined cannot be responsible odds takers.
If you can afford to play the ponies at Bandera, or to fly off to Vegas, more power to you. But if you're a retired lady in your 70s and 80s and want to spend a morning with your bods spending $20 at the slots (maquinitas), the full power of the state will be unleashed against you.
It's the, ahem, moral thing to do, of course.
Were still waiting for Martinez to do the one thing he's do as soon as he took office four years ago. He said something about putting together a code of ethic for city officials and employees. After all his wheeling and dealing and real-estate speculation, we'd think he's really need a primer on the subject. Thou should not steal, pilfer, or gamble.
OBut, if you must, you can always travel to Starr County and gamble away at your leisure because those poor communities are not so sanctimonious about taking your money. They're pretty up front about that, a stark contrast to the hypocritical policies demonstrated by our "leaders."