Fresh from his abysmal performance as budget committee chairman of the Brownsville Independent School District, Jose Hector Chirinos, who single-handedly ran the Transportation Dept. into the red, is now the new board chairman.
His vice-presidnet is Cesar Lopez, the former purchasing agent for the Mercedes ISD who parlayed his connections in Brownsville into an appointment on the board. Lopez then ran and won the seat for his current term.
But it ain't gonna be a cakewalk for Chirinos, or anyone for that matter. On top of the list is the mounting legal expenses engendered by the legal acumen of general counsel Baltazar Salazar, a rouge attorney who has basically driven the district to ever mounting legal expenses.When Baltazar Salazar came to the BISD board podium April 2013 to make his pitch for the lucrative legal gig, he stressed the fact that he was a straight shooter who would "stab you in the front" in contrast to others who would stab you in the back.
He looked at trustee Minerva Peña and said pointedly: "I've known some of you since I was a kid," and said his goal was "not to make money."
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.
The most recent snafu is the gender-discrimination lawsuit that the insurance company refused to cover, leaving the district holding a $780,000 bag to come out of the general fund.Salazar had sat on that lawsuit for over a year when the women's attorneys filed in court to press their point. Based on Salzar's elgal advice, the distict settled, in the apparent belief that the insurance would cover it.
Not so. Now that the insurance company has refused to cover it, Salzar has brought in two of his lawyer buddies to help with the milking on a contingency basis to try to recover that sum from the company. Prediction: The lawyers and the insurance company will come to a settlement that will benefit everyone except for the district taxpayer.
If anyone can create chaos (and allow his lawyer buddies to make money), that would be Salazar.
Yesterday at teh board meeting the majority approved the awarding of a $2,385,908 contract for Ziwa Corporation, of for the construction of yet another athletic facility.
This time it's the Rivera Early College High School Athletic Facility.
There weas only one catch, as trustee Caty Presas-Garcia pointed out during the meeting (if you saw it on TV). Apparenlty, the company had not provided the board the required bond to protect the district in case of nonperformance. But we're not going to let a small matter like that stop us, are we, said the board majority and approved it.
This is about par for the course for Chirinos. If you recall, he was the director of transportation when auditors discovered an appalling spike in overtime that he approved for bus drivers and a huge inventory overload that resulted in huge monetary losses for the district.
A forensic and an internal audit of the BISD Transportation Department while under Chirinons' watch indicated that he was a favorite of the overtime-loving bus drivers' union and supplies vendors.
A forensic budget analysis put together for the district found that as head of transportation Chirinos managed to accomplish the following:
Chirinos kept something called an "Activity/Motivational Fund Account" in his budget which came from the profits of the vending machines at Transportation against BISD policy. That was put to an end with no accounting of the proceeds and the money now goes to the district's miscellaneous revenue fund like all other departments. It was, in other words, a slush fund.
The auditors found an inventory that kept steadily growing from 2007-2008 to 2010-2011, finally decreasing in 2011-2012, when Chirinos was gone.
* During those four years, the accumulated inventory increased by $325,868. It wasn't until Art Rendon took over in the 2011-2012 budget that it decreased by $277,749.
* Of the 3,841 parts with a value of $792,535 in inventory, approximately 698 items with a value of $89,144 had become obsolete. The parts no longer fit any of the buses on the district's fleet. The district had to eat the loss.
* The useful life of 46 tires worth $5,020 had expired. These tires could no longer be used or sold.* Variances in the inventory due to "miscounts, theft, disposal or removal from inventory without corresponding record" totaled $16,092.
The auditors recommended that the department implement a "just in time" outsource method with vendors that would reduce inventory, and save warehouse space and costs. That "JIT" system is now in place.
When the auditors visited the Transportation warehouse in 2012 they found it stacked to the roof with and "excess amount" of miscellaneous office supplies that included three LaserJet printers still in the box that had been purchased in 2009 and 2010. Cases of paper clips, file folders, computer paper and other office supplies filled the sides of entire walls.
* Curious to see whether a sample audit of 200 fixed-assets would turn up any discrepancies, the auditors found that a camera worth $589, a battery backup worth $477, at least four radios worth over $300 and an external hard drive worth $263 were missing.
* During a 100 percent fixed-assets inventory, auditors discovered that 11 items totaling $100,377 could not be located in the department.
But it was the overtime budget under Chirinos that caused the most concern for the auditors. Until he left, the overtime charges ballooned unchecked. When asked about it, Chirinos said that the unions (Ms. Petra Ramirez's outfit) and the past administration prevented him from acting. Here's a breakdown by year:
Overtime Pd. Increase
2008-2009 $2,142,468
2009-2010 $2,976,557 $834,089
Now we have this guy running the district and buy-board member Lopez at his side. Hold on to you wallet.
4 comments:
Aren't Ken and Micaela doing the same thing? They were buying wrong expensive products at the warehouse and some of those were or are already expired???
Cesar is doing a heckuva job
The late Dr Esco be do picked him because he had a bachelor's degree.
Now we know why it took him 10 years to earn that degree.
Chirinos is not a good man. He is vendictive and only supports his friends. He is compadres to Rachel Ayala who thank God recently retired, but now Chirinos is taking care of the little Ayalas. He fixed them up with principal jobs over people with lots more experience. The report is detailed about fixed assets, but what about the not so fixed ass-ets that he also enjoyed. He had good time with secretaries (Chirinos' angels) since he was a principal, more noticeable when he was at Porter. He darkened his office so no one could see inside, lock the doors and stayed inside office for hours with da bae. Assistants would run the school while this occurred. Now as president, aggarate papa, how much more assets is he going to affect.
another black hole where taxpayers money flows and disappear. Looks like Houdini works here. or more like a toilet.
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