OTHER ISSUES ON AGENDA BLURRED BY BISD TAX INCREASE

By Juan Montoya
As Dagoberto Barrera and Ernesto De Leon fret (and rightfully so) about the move by the Brownsville Independent School District administration to raise taxes, other issues are trying to fly under the radar.
The board meeting to be held today at the BISD is divided into two parts The one dealing with personnel items starts at 2:30 p.m. The one dealing with money items in general  including the raising of taxes and district purchases starts at 5:30 p.m.
But while taxes may fire up Dago and Neto, there are some juicy tidbits in both that people should know about.

The first one that piques people's interest is one held in closed session involving the Whistleblower lawsuit by Terri L. Spellane vs. BISD. If you remember, Spellane was a Transportation Dept. accountant and provided forensic auditors with proof that trustee Jose Hector Chirinos (then Dept. of Transportation Director) was ineffective and complacent about drivers and monitors "riding the clock" on overtime because – as some witnesses are reported to have heard him say – "it's not my money."
In the forensic report of Transportation, it charged that Chirinos not only failed to disclose the abuses, but "also took measures, in the form of termination and emotion, in an effort to prevent employees withing the Transportation Dept. from 1) revealing overtime abuse, 2) furnishing information and 3) confronting the abusers.
"Starting with Viola Currier in 2006 and continuing to date with Terry Spellane, Chirinos subtly and effectively suppressed disclosure and evidence of abuse through firing and demotion.
"First, Ms. Currier, with 19 yeras experience in Transportation was terminated by Chirinos after she questioned employees about their riding the clock. Then, five years later, Mr. Spellane, an experienced accountant, was demoted and removed from Payroll by Chirinos after she continued to identify the abuse and waste taking lace within Transportation. Ms. Spellane estimated the loss due to the abuse at $600,000 a year. If conservatively only 70 percent were abusing the system by riding the clock one hour per day, the Forensic Audit Staff would put the loss at $420,000 a year or roughly $2.5 million over the six years in which Chirinos was Administrator."
That's trustee Chirinos, the trustee placed in charge of the BISD budget.
It gets better.
On Item 60, there is a recommendation by the administration of Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas that the 2015-2016 district's fuel supply (mainly buses but other vehicles as well) be purchased from the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) Energy Cooperative purchasing program.
BISD had traditionally funneled its annual $2 million in fuel purchases through Oil Patch, much like insurance was steered to the late Johnny Cavazos (now McGriff). Former Transportation administrators (after Chirinos) had advocated that the lucrative contract be bid out with little success. This latest wrinkle has the fingerprints of trustee Cesar Lopez all over it.
If you remember, before Lopez was appointed to the board, he was a purchasing agent with the Mercedes ISD. Later, he became the local representative of the (Ah, no fair. You were peeking!)...TASB.
The only difference between a bid with local suppliers is that TASB requires an up-front payment of $500,000 before you get a drop of fuel. Will Lopez abstain from voting on this item since it involves his employer? Or is the deal done and his vote not required??
There is another item of interest on the money agenda. That it Item 65. This (plus another three more) involve the payment of legal fees. Item 65, however, deals with a $24,348 payment to Walsh, Anderson, Gallegos, Treviño, Russo and Kyle. You remember the law firm. It was at the core of Special Needs due-process claims back when the district exploded in controversy over ballooning legal fees. Its local representative was former BISD trustee Mike Saldaña.
There would be a faulty diagnosis of students and their parents would be encouraged to file a due-process claim against the district, Walsh-Anderson would have to defend, the opposing lawyers would file, skip mediation and go on to settle. Walsh-Anderson made money, the students' lawyers would, too, and the student and parents would get nothing.

Everyone was a happy camper. Keep an eye on this one because the due-process claims are on the uptick and BISD general counsel Baltazar Salazar – after cutting Walsh-Anderson out – has them back in the fold with his referrals. Everyone makes a little money and everyone is a happy camper.
There is a little bit of the pie for everyone.
When Salazar came on board on April 2013, he promised he would "tone down your legal expenses" and bring "stability, because you have chaos, and when there's chaos, lawyers make money."
The school district, he told them, had "become a cash cow" because the district did not follow procedure and said he was there "to serve the board as a whole."
Well, it appears that despite his Herculean efforts to keep down legal costs as promised, the cow is out of the barn and headed down the road to be milked once again.
In fact, since April 2013, Salazar and his referrals have done anything but "tone down legal expenses."
In the first 16 months since then, the district  paid out $849,426 to 12 law firms hired at Salazar's recommendation, dwarfing his predecessors. 
Board President Minerva Peña, after railing for years about the hiring of consultants, will probably vote "yes" in Item 96 to retain Lorenzo Sanchez as a (yikes!) consultant at $5,000 a month for the next five months (August-December) to "support the continued development of the proposed compensation plan and subsequent implementation..."
Sanchez, as you recall, Sanchez was a CFO with the district and then bounced around a bit ending with his last gig at the Raymondville ISD under his former boss Johnny Pineda. When trustee Joe Rodriguez came on the board, he was one of his old team that was called back from pasture to fill out is "team." So why do we have  Human Resources Department and a Chief Executive Officer?
Maybe Rodriguez is an adherent to Chirinos' philosophy that "It's not my money."
Well, Ms. Peña? What about the overpriced consultants you were complaining about?