NEW COUNTY JUDGE INHERITS ENTRENCHED PERSONNEL

By Juan Montoya
Remember the bad old days when virtually all Cameron County elected officials had their relatives placed in the departments of their fellow elected officials?

One of the main dispenser of patronage jobs was none other than now-retired Cameron County District Clerk Aurora de la Garza. For years, she ruled the roost and had relatives and relatives of relatives in the various departments. If you were in her good graces, chances are that she could whisper into someone's ear to fix someone up with a county job.

One could literally walk into the courthouse and find one of her relatives (or relatives of her relatives) working for the county and drawing a n ice paycheck.
That has been the case in the county and its Road and Bridge departments for as long as one can remember. In Pct. 1, the Cisneros family has been entrenched in the various positions with the road crews. In Pct. 3, the same could be said for the Ramos clan.

The way it works is that these employees were beholden to the office holders so when election time comes around, they can be counted on to knock on doors and get out the vote to keep them there. One hand, as it were, washes the other.

This expected loyalty to the master goes as far as facing consequences should you not suppport the politicalpicks that the boss wants. Inevitably, the

For example, when constable Horacio Barrera was beaten for his position, the county quickly revived the park ranger department make a place for him on the payroll. They also gave him a park ranger crew that included, you guessed it, another Cisneros. In fact, Silverio Cisneros even made a run for Pct. 2 Constable Abel Gomez's position and failed. But this attempt at showing the family's political muscle has not gone unnoticed by local political observers.

In the days when Pct. 1 was run by D.J. Lerma and his crew his main supporter was a grader operator named Anastacio Guillen. Working with him was his brother-in-law and Chavira and people who were loyal to the boss. Guillen has since passed, and Chavira has retired. It didn't matter that Guillen's brother-in-law was a mediocre loader opoerator. The fact that he was related to him was enought to bring him on board.

At times, it seems that the level of skills of the county workers counts very little compared to the political connections. The level of public service does not seem to rank very high among the personnel priorities.
And even after the workers came under civil service, it was not unusual for the county commissioner to pick the workers they wanted regardless of the screening by the civil service people.

We have heard that when a new supervisor was being considered for Pct. 4 new commissioner Gus Ruiz sat in on the interviews and helped personnel people choose the new guy. This is exactly the type of interference that the consolidation of the county Public Work crews was supposed to prevent. Yet, it obviously continues to this day.

It wasn't very long ago that former Pct. 2 county commissioner Ernie Hernandez lost his position for having meddled (with his Asst. Raul Salazar) and try to place his brother-in-law as a non-commissioned security guard at one of the international bridges. News reports indicated that the relative was a convicted felon and that he could neither read nor write.

In the scandal that followed, Hernandez was allowed to resign and had a handful of  charges dropped against him in return.

And in the Gilberto Hinojosa administration, his political supporters from El Ranchito, Combes and San Benito had a desk in the front office space before you got to his office in the rear. Silver, Mrs. Frances Domenski, and Remi Garza all worked for Gilbert and pitched in on his campaigns.

Treviño inherits this system as he takes over the county. Will he prove to be a reformer, or will he accept the system as it is and hope not to step on any toes so he can run for reelection in two years?