POLITICAL HACKS SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME FOR COUNTY

By Juan Montoya
When Cameron County Program Management and Development Director Frank Bejarano left for retirement earlier this year, his department was full of top-level administrative talent.
There was a former planning administrator for a former county judge, a former director of the county health department, and the former interim director for the Private Industry Council before he came to the county.
All of them were highly qualified in program management, grant applications, implementation, reporting, etc., and thoroughly versed in the byzantine world of state and federal grants, deadlines and meeting the strict guidelines associated with them.
After the applications came in to fill the position Bejarano left, the county – under the direction of County Administrator David Garcia and HR Director Manuel Villarreal – picked Mark Yates, a former county auditor who left in disgrace and in handcuffs least time he worked for the county.
But Yates had a few qualifications that the the other three competent applicants did not have. He had political connections with the old Gilbert Hinojosa regime.
Pct. 3 Commissioner David Garza – David Garcia's longtime benefactor – championed Yates, also from his precinct. And so Yates was chosen. He has been in the position for the better part of a month.
If you get a chance to see Yates in action during a county meeting, the first thing that will come out of his lips is that he is not "yet in the loop," in particular grants, is still "in the learning curve," has "a bit of homework to do," and he will "get back to you on that issue," commissioner.
And when he needs a grant explained to the court, it'll be one of the three holdovers from the Bejarano regime who has to come forward and explain the intricacies of this or that grant to the inquiring commissioners.
Aside from being out of the public service loop for decades and not being up to speed on county services, what makes Yates different from the other three? His surname?
How did we gr to this fix?
County Administrator David Garcia replaced county judge appointee Pete Sepulveda when Carlos Cascos left. Garcia is himself a political appointee who was taken on by Gilbert Hinojosa at the behest of U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz's chief of staff Lencho Rendon.
Today, Garcia is raking in $180,000 for his troubles.
No one is going to say that Garcia is a crackerjack. He has played off his political connections and natural sympathies from people for his handicap to worm his way up the pecking order. Taking the tumultuous state of affairs in the county with an appointed county judge, the departure of HR Director Arnold Flores, and others, he might have well offered Bejarano an attractive raise to keep his expertise on board during these troubled times. But Bejarano wasn't a bootlicker or brown-noser like those people Garcia is used to dealing with. A straight talker, Bejarano gave you the straight skinny whether it pleased the listener or not. There was no sugar coating.
When he retired, Garcia did not make an effort to entice him to stay even though the work product coming out of that office was above reproach and much better than that coming from Garcia's own department.
Look at the hirings under Garcia:

At Program Management and Development:
1.Yates, who took a deferred adjudication plea in return for no conviction on approving an insurance contract and payments for it without the authorization of the county commissioners. He was accused of violating the competitive bidding process for renewing an insurance contract without Commissioners Court approval. The contract in question was worth $1 million with United of Omaha Life Insurance. The last thing he was doing was selling shrimp. He had been out of public service so long that even a planning degree from the days of yore did not make him a better candidate than the personnel already at PM and D. We understand he is earning $70,102, even more than Bejarano was earning when he left. Yates was an auditor, not a planner. These are two vastly different arenas and expect to see Yates lean on the staff as his learning curve turns into the Indianapolis 500.

At Human Resources:
2, Manuel Villarreal: Villarreal was hired to replace Arnold Flores at HR at $50 an hour. Villarreal was one of the Hinojosa holdovers and is known to be pliant to the powers-that-be like Garcia (and his boss Sepulveda. Sepulveda, by the way is getting paid $230,000 as county judge, but not by Cameron County. He is paid by the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority. He answers to no one and neither the taxpayers nor the voters have a say so in his employment.) There were qualified personnel at that office who applied and were turned down. They did not have the political connections Villarreal had.

At Elections
3. Remi Garza: Garza was hired at $76,000 for the Cameron County Elections as its administrator and chosen over eminently qualified elections administrators with decades of experience. He just happened to have been the chief of staff for Gilbert Hinojosa. That, apparently, was enough qualifications for Garcia to recommend his employment. There were also a number of staff at elections who were running the office when Roger Ortiz and Chris Davis were around and who were doing all the grunt work to make Davis and Garza look good. Their tasks turned out to be thankless.

At Emergency Management
4. Tom Hushen: Chosen to be County Emergency Management Coordinator at $65,317. He was – you guessed it – the emergency coordinator under Hinojosa. And yes, there were people there who could have done the job and were passed over, too.

At Administration:
5. Javier Villarreal: David Garcia's Asst. County Administrator. We have nothing against Javier. He was County Auditor Marta Galarza's right-hand man when it came to the budget. But bean counting and county administration are like day and night. His father, by the way, is Manuel Villarreal, at HR.

What kind of message does this give to staff at these departments who have been laboring to make the come-and-go administrators look good? It makes them realize that no matter how good you perform your job, you will always be bypassed when it comes to promotion or to get the top job because you're not willing to be a political hack like David Garcia was to get his job.
Take a look at Garcia's performance as administrator for Public Works. He turned a blind eye to his supervisors getting charged with stealing driveway pipes and selling them for personal profit, ignored the continuing lackluster performance of his Public Works Chief in exposing his workers to unprotected labor in trenches (see graphic at right), and allowed the injury of employees as a result.
Instead of progressing in the delivery of public services under Garcia, we are regressing back to the sordid past that Cameron County used to be.