RIDING HIS HIGH HORSE, WILL GARCIA BE BROUGHT TO HEEL?

By Juan Montoya
Well, well, well, what have we got here?
The agenda item posted for the executive session of the Cameron County Commissioners Court special meeting this Wednesday at 8:45 a.m. has raised a lot of eyebrows at the Dancy Building on Madison and the Cameron County Courthouse on Harrison Street.
The issue is deliberately vague and was posted – as most executive session items dealing with litigation – by county legal counsel and hints at "legal liability and risk issues" and "possible litigation and discipline" pertaining to the operation, personnel and management of the county's international bridge system.
Now, we know that under the county's consolidation of the Road and Bridge, Engineering, Public Works and road precincts, the buck stops at the county administrator's desk.
That person used to be current appointed Cameron County Judge Pete Sepulveda. However, with Sepulveda's ascension to the county throne, that (as it usually happens in the county) was handed to his administrative assistant David Garcia.
Now, Garcia was one of those political animals that was brought to the county by former county judge Gilberto Hinojosa as a favor to Lencho Rendon, the former administrative assistant to fomer U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz. Garcia was to serve as a legislative liaison to Ortiz for the Hinojosa administration.
At an annual salary of $180,000 plus benefits, Garcia makes almost five times more than average gross adjusted income of non-migrant taxpayers.  You would think, then, that he would be obsequious to his superiors and those above him who sign his checks.
But politics has a way of blinding some people, apparently. Just recently we learned that Garcia has been supporting Eddie Treviño, the new Democratic Party nominee for the county judgeship in November's general election. In fact, he and Treviño got an invitation to meet with Gov. Greg Abbot at a confab hosted by OP 10.33's Mike Hernandez and attended by Texas Rep. Eddie Lucio III.
Apparently, Garica is feeling his oats and revels in the glow of being included with the Good People.
In fact, he has been identified as one of the main writers of the full-page newspaper ad where the county's commissioners court takes its critics to tak, including those who were at odds with the Morrison Road "cease and desist" order south by the county to stop city construction there, and critics of the West Loop Boulevard.
In it, the missive chides Brownsville MPO's reluctance to join the other two MPOs (Hidalgo, Harlingen-San Benito) to get a bigger bite of the transportation pie.
Brownsville – and Mayor Tony Martinez particularly – has been adamant about merging with the other MPOS because it feels that it's needs would be given second shrift by Hidalgo County. Texas Department of Transportation commissioners have been belaboring the need for a merger arguing that it would give the Valley Region with more than 1 million residents a seat at the table where the transportation monies are divided.
The county commissioners, the ad read, are "ready to take on another historic project like the West Park Boulevard" and "working together with the city" is certain of success.
But then the ad goes on to point out that the county had to step in to save the city losing $4 million in federal funds because they had not done their homework on Morrison Road East and West, much to the umbrage of Martinez.
"The county recreated the process going back a number of years and locating property owners and make them whole," it reads. "Thus we were able to acquire the nearly lost funds and the city did not have to tap into its own coffers to finance the project saving the taxpayers millions of dollars."
The ad goes on to point out that the county had created a Transportation Reinvestment Zone that will generate millions to cover the cost of opening the road and the railroad crossing.
The ad also cover the issue of the East Loop that would remove overweight and hazardous truck traffic from the heart of downtown Brownsville saying it was now in the process of securing funding for its construction. The route will take 18-wheeler traffic from Veterans Memorial Bridge and divert it east to the Port of Brownsville. So far, the ad states, the county has secured $45 million from the State of Texas for the project.
Then, the dig at the City of Brownsville, and Martinez in particular.
"We hope that the City can provide some financial assistance to this project in the near future," the ad states.
And then, it takes a swipe at the city and the hike-and-bike-trail group again saying: "Doing for the benefit of one group or cause will never be our way of doing things but instead watching out for those who work hard every day, live paycheck to paycheck and need to have the proper infrastructure and amenities to make their daily commute easier and more efficient as they go about their daily routine. This is our number one priority."
We beat the county bushes and found out that Sepulveda had instructed his secretary to email Garcia about certain deadlines that were approaching for county projects and that she had not received a response. In fact, with the county's email system, one can tell whether the sent mail had been opened. It had not.
Miffed at the apparent snub from his underlings, Sepulveda emailed Garcia to remind him and expected him to respond as the deadline fast approached. He did not.
Legal counsel than had their try at it. Again, a recalcitrant Garcia did not even deign to open their electronic missives.
Exasperated, legal approached the county judge's office and wanted to include the item above to bring Garcia to heel. Sepulveda, to many county observers' surprise, agreed to the item and signed the agenda including the executive session item above.
Later, we learned that Garcia wanted to know what the item referred to an was asking legal to tell him who was being considered for discipline since he was in charge of the international bridges and is paid from their budgets as well as from Public Works, Engineering, the county airport, etc.
Garcia is expecting to be sitting pretty when Treviño takes over the reins of the county on January 1, 2017.
But if he continues on his high horse, he may find that the support he had on the commission – and with former boss Sepulveda and Pct. 3 commissioner David Garza – may evaporate long before that day arrives and he'll be thrown off the saddle.