It is difficult to say with any exactness just what the infatuation that Texas Southmost College board member Dr. Rey Garcia had with terminated community college Lily Tercero.
Whether it was his defense of her entering a contract for more than $1 million in windstorm insurance without board approval, issuing more than $1 million in checks without the required signatures of sitting board members, or filing a complaint against his fellow board members with the The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS-COC), TSC's accrediting agency, it has left many people scratching their heads.
Take the case of the check, for example.
In Augut of 2016, rumors were rampant at the college that in just over two months – June and July and part of August 2016 – Tercero signed off on $100,000s in payments to vendors and students without the required co-signatures from TSC board officers.
In a Public Information Request to TSC, we emailed the current administration that we were: "...making a formal information request for copies (electronic or otherwise) of checks issued by TSC during the months of June, July, and up to August 10 of 2016. Please see that the name of the administrator and TSC trustee signing off on the payments are included."
After TSC and its counsel asked for additional time to gather the information, we received a box containing hundreds of copies of the cancelled checks and facsimiles of payments.The overwhelming majority, except for some at mid-August bore the rubber-stamp signature of Kiko
Rendon, Ed Rivera and TSC president Lily Tercero. As in the signatures on the graphic at right, the checks bore the names of both trustees who were not longer on the board and not authorized to sign.
After inspecting the trove of cancelled checks, instead of $100,000s, we found that the total of the checks bearing the rubber-stamp signatures of Rendon and Rivera total more than $1 million in that time period alone.
There was another hitch.
Rendon had been replaced by Brownsville attorney Ruben Herrera on May 18 and Rivera had left at the end of June after a runoff between Evelyn Cantu and Dr. Tony Zavaleta. So far, the better part of a two months and a half after Rendon had left office, Tercero had used his rubber-stamp signature to act as a co-signer and approve the checks. The same applied to Tercero's use of Rivera's signature stamp which Tercero kept on using for nearly two months after he was replaced on the board.
In a nutshell, by using the rubber-stamp signatures of both Rendon and Rivera instead of one of the current board members, Tercero virtually single-handedly approved the expenditures of more than $1 million in community college funds.
The co-signatures, by the way, are a security requirement to deter the spending of public funds without the required oversight by an elected official on a board.that could have resulted in removal of TSC's accreditation, his actions have left many scratching their heads.
Nonetheless, even after this concrete evidence was made public showing Terceo's disregard for TSC policy, Garcia continued to criticize the board majority who he claimed were micromanaging and intruding into the purview of the college president. When Herrera said he wanted to review any checks issued by the college over $10,000 Garcia roundly criticized him and said the responsibility was in Tercero's purview and not the board's.Tercero later sued the board majority – excluding Garcia and Art Rendon – and her attorneys used the complaint filed by Garcia with the accrediting agency against the college freely to buttress her lawsuit seeking $100,000s in backpay and attorneys' fees. That lawsuit continues in federal court and Garcia's SAC-COC complaint and apparent allegiance to the former president just gave her ammunition to use against the college and his fellow board members.
Garcia is in a runoff with Brownsville Independent School District administrator J.J. de Leon. Early voting starts June 11 and the election is June 23. When you vote, ask yourself:
Who is Garcia loyal to, TSC or the former college president?
2 comments:
Juan, You are risking beating this horse to death.
Get over it, bro!
The board needs to get its shit together and fix the convoluted registration process. It's ridiculous, and the well intentioned, but highly incompetent nincompoops in charge don't know their asses from a hole in the ground. It's like Trump's border wall around tsc. They just don't want students to register!!
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