JOE "COACH" RODRIGUEZ, THE VENDOR: I'LL RUN AGAIN UNTIL THEY PRY MY COMMISSION FROM MY COLD DEAD FINGERS

By Juan Montoya

Just a meeting or two ago, when someone mentioned that perhaps Brownsville Independent School District trustee "Coach" Joe Rodriguez may not run again after his term is up in 2018, they were surprised to hear him say he would, indeed, run for another four-year term.

Now, those of us who have seen him totter around and worry he might just topple over from his infirm step, wonder how much longer he wants to battle for the students and the Brownsville community. What makes Joe Rod tick?, people wonder.

Aside from the fact that he is a retired BISD employee and has pocketed his share of settlements from various lawsuits, we also know that he is a registered vendor (Sports Consultant) for BSN Sports, an outfit under the Varsity Brands umbrella and a sister company to ring-maker Herrf Jones.

The terms of that employment are between Coach Joe and BSN, but we understand that he pockets around 20 percent commission of all sales of sports equipment made by the company to BISD and other nearby districts. A request for information to the district yielded the BISD's annual purchases. Now we begin to understand why it is that Joe won't go.

Sales to BISD by BSN which then pays Joe commission in the last eight years have totaled $2,440,222. At a 20 percent commission that would have put a cool $488,044 in Coach Joe's pocket.

As you can see by the numbers in the graphic above, sales by BSN Sports to the BISD jumped from $225,792 in the FY 2013-2014 to $316,758.01 when Rodriguez was elected to the board. The only FY that was higher before then was in 2010-2011 when BSN raked in $497,116.90 in sales to BISD through Rodriguez, whose 20 percent commission would have totaled 99,423.20.

That year, according to a forensic audit, there was "no doubt the Athletic Department in general and Tom Chavez in particular exercised undue influence and misuse of authority in choosing BSN Sports, through their sales rep. Joe Rodriguez” in purchasing uniforms and other sports supplies for Manzano Middle School and Veterans Memorial High School for the 2010-2011 school year."

In a lawsuit that followed, Rodriguez's attorneys contended that both men were defamed when it stated that "Chavez allowed his and Rodriguez’s friendship to interfere with what should have been a business decision, causing a potential loss of revenue to the district.

Be that as it may, in the four years since Rodriguez has been on the board after he was elected in 2014, BSN sold $1,391,632.08 through this FY (2017) to the BISD. At 20 percent, that would have earned Coach Joe a cool $278, 326.40 while he has been on the board.

But, wait, you say, Coch Joe abstains from voting or discussing anything to do with BSN Sports. Well, if you ask Mary Solis, the former principal at Veterans Memorial High School, she would tell you different. In her grievance that reached Level 3, Solis charged that Rodriguez had pressured the coaches to buy their equipment from "certain vendors." Could one of those have been BSN?

And even if Rodriguez abstains, the field work had already been done through purchasing and the with the board majority to choose BSN for a good chunk of the district's sports equipment purchases. As long as he's got the majority in his pocket, Rodriguez's vote really doesn't matter. His "friends" will take care of him.

Other purchasing agents up the valley have also said that Rodriguez and other Varsity Brands representatives were after them to sign "exclusive" contracts with their companies and emailed the BISD inquiring about them.

Herrf Jones, which was the vendor for $31,000 in rings for the Porter championship soccer team last year, is a sister company of BSN under the Varsity Brands corporation.

As such, Rodriguez should have abstained from discussing or even voting on whether to pay for the rings without a purchase order, or accept them as gifts. Herrf Jones representatives were willing to "donate" the $25,060 for the student rings, but the non-players would have to pay for their own.

The board eventually decided to allow Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas to purchase them by increasing the amount she could use in discretionary funds and  approved an item that raised the spending cap to $50,000 up from the $25,000 cap that the local policy had set in the past.

While ostensibly a move that would make the local policy align with the state policy and set it at $50,000, some BISD administrators say that the change adopted by the board at the last meeting was really meant to allow Zendejas to unilaterally approve the purchase of 28 $895 rings for the Porter Early College High School after it was found that the district's procurement process had been bypassed when they were acquired.


The total of that purchase after Herrf Jones "donated" the rings after learning an investigation into their procurement was launched is $25,060, just $60 above the local cap.

Having dodged that bullet, Rodriguez seems to back to his cash-making days as a board member of the BISD. It is no secret that he has been a vociferous advocate of spending between $5 to $7 million in BISD funds to install artificial turn is some football and soccer fields through Paragon Sports, of Ft. Worth.

Zendejas contended that Paragon was recommended to her by fellow superintendents "over coffee," and Rodriguez called them "the best company in the world" during a meeting. The company did not bid for the contract, but instead are members of the TASBE Buy Board, which allows member school districts to buy without bids or RFQs.

In fact, Board president Cesar Lopez is the TASBE Buy Board representative for Region I and he was not allowed to discuss the artificial turf at a facilities committee meeting where Zendejas had asked that one of Paragon's reps was going to speak about the subject.

Next on "Coach Joe's" list is the purchase of a $1.4 million "state-of-the-art" LED scoreboard, again from a Buy Board company where no bids are required for the purchase. Hapless BISD trustee Phil Cowen told members during the last meeting that the vendor had called him and asked him "what it would take" for him to support the purchase.

The item was tabled when some trustees complained that the original $600,000 price that Rodriguez had quoted before trustee raised property taxes by 11 cents without public input had been increase by $800,000 after taxes were raised by their vote. 

Now we know why Rodriguez is loath to leave his perch atop the BISD cash cow. Lopez, in fact, is also seeking reelection. We wonder what size commission he gets from the TASBE Buy Board. Enough to finance a reelection campaign, perhaps?