CITY TO JOIN NATIONAL RACISM ISSUES CONVERSATION

By Juan Montoya
Are chickens coming home to roost in Brownsville?
Someone who does not know Brownsville may well ask that if he attended the commission meeting tonight.

After a two-page ad in the Brownsville Herald denouncing sitting commissioner Cesar de Leon signed by some 300 people including some elected officials appeared on Sunday, a demonstration at 5 p.m. is staged in City Hall to demand his resignation. The meeting starts at 6 p.m.

Also on the agenda is an action item to remove the Jefferson Davis Highway Memorial that is in Washington Park that was defaced Friday with the words "No Trump, No KKK, NO Fascist USA" painted with red spray paint. A petition and counter petition to remove the monument to a different place and to keep it at the park were launched last December.

But it's the call for De Leon's resignation that has divided the community. Local attorney Paul Cowen paid for the ad, leading some local residents to think of the apparent contradiction.

"One of Cowen's great-great ancestors was none other than John "Rip" Ford, a Confederate officer who fought the Union forces in Texas," said a local historian.

His real name was John Salmon Ford and he was a Confederate loyalist who was also a member of the Republic of Texas Congress, the State Senate, and also mayor of Brownsville.

And the founder of Brownsville Charles Stillman appears on the Cameron County 1860 Census as one of several white residents who owned slaves in Cameron and Hidalgo counties. In fact, the Stillman House on Washington Street still has slave quarters toward the rear wall. (Stillman's name is the fourth on the 1860 census copy at left.)

With the former City of Brownsville mayor a Confederate loyalist and its founder a slave owner held high in the public's esteem, some wonder whether the recording secretly made of De Leon by former fire chief Carlos Elizondo and released on social media is enough to force him to resign.

Cowen used his Facebook page to promote the ad and the calls for De Elon's resignation. In one passage he states that there are more than 100 attorneys from throughout Texas and out of state who signed on to join him in attempting the ouster of De Leon, leading some to wonder whether those from north and central Texas might also have harbored racist tendencies in their youth. 

The release of the recordings came days before an audit of the fire department's ambulance transfers was released. Ambulance transfer calls were made to benefit a private ambulance company with which he was associated. In four cases, it was reported that Elizondo had directed the transfers personally. The report said the calls netted the Intercity Ambulance Services about $62,000. Normally, the city's EMS handled the calls and charged the patients' private insurance or Medicaid accounts.

And despite the fact that the audit committee report was made public, city manager Charlie Cabler indicated that there was still another audit being conducted in house by the city. He said that he would direct the city's staff to hire an independent audit form to perform a third audit of the transfer calls.

"Why would you want three audits of the same thing?," asked local city businessman. "It's pretty clear that someone profited from the transfer calls and that on at least four occasions it was Elizondo himself when he was fire chief that ordered the transfers to Intercity. That's like stealing from the city he works for. That's enough to terminate anyone."

Curiously, one of the public officials calling for De Leon's resignation was Cameron County District Attorney Luis V. Saenz. Saenz is currently investigating Elizondo on the ambulance issue and on a criminal complaint of Theft by a Public Servant for his alleged theft of some $8,000 over two years from the firefighter's Political Action Committee that he withdrew from ATM machines even after the Texas Ethics Commission sanctioned him and removed him as the PAC's treasurer.

The audit and oversight committee's report indicates that the $62,000 that Intercity received for the transfers averaged about $795 per call for the private ambulance service.

Some say that it was the imminent release of the report that spurred the release of the secret recordings. Present at the time when the recordings were made were De Leon, Elizondo, local bail bondsman and PUB board member Armando Magallanes and Joe Barrientes, a former banker. At first, only snippets of De Leon uttering the "N" word and criticizing his colleagues on the city commission were released. But later, the entire tape was aired on social media.

“I want to apologize to the citizens of Brownsville or whoever had to listen to those tapes because there is a lot of profane language and that was a private conversation. It was never meant to be public, but it’s very important that people understand that I’m very apologetic.”

After the recording where he made the racial slurs was released, De Leon said Elizondo had released the tape to divert attention from his problems in the department. Apparently, that was not enough for lawyer Cowen and others who signed the newspaper petition calling for his resignation.

So far, none of the members of the city commission – including Mayor Tony Rodriguez – have called for De Leon's resignation. Among some who have were Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño, State Rep. Eddie Lucio III, Sheriff  Omar Lucio and Texas Southmost College vice chair Trey Mendez.

"All those people who signed should be as active in providing people here with a decent job and better economic and educational conditions," said a local businessman. "Obviously, the recording and its release were made for the purpose of discrediting De Leon and the findings of the fire department's audit. He's already publicly apologized and people should move on. If they want to get rid of him they can vote in the next election if he chooses to run."

De Leon garnered 4,335 votes to beat out three opponents outright without a runoff in the 2015 city election. That's about 4,000 more votes than the number of signatures on the petition published in the Sunday paper, the businessman said.