LOADING THE DICE BEFORE ELECTIONS AN OLD, TIRED GAME

By Juan Montoya

In 1990, the year that Carlos Cascos was elected to be Cameron County Pct. 2 Commissioner, he took office the following January...and found that his predecessor, in a fit of pique, had transferred every last one of his road and Bridge dollars to the Pct. 3 budget under the control of Commissioner Dolph Thomae.

Both Thomae and Cortinas have passed since, but ever since then the idea of allowing the incoming commissioner to have a say so in his department's budget has been thrown about.


The thinking goes like this: The next commissioner will have to deal with the needs of his precinct and the outgoing commission should not be able to throw logs on the tracks to derail his tenure.

In 1990, before the consolidation of the Road and Bridge fund, those dollars were supposed to last the entire year. This was the years before most precinct roads were paved and caliche politics was a fact of life. If you could send a crew and a truck to rain-gutted roads or place a concrete pipe in a driveway for your constituents, they would remember you next time there was an election.

Thomae knew this better than most, with his tenure extending several decades in his Democratic precinct. The other commissioners – especially those from Brownsville – complained that he had 60 percent of the paved roads (and funds to service them) while the other three struggled with lean budgets to merely spread a thin layer of caliche on them.

Therefore, when Cortina transferred his road and Bridge funds to Thomae, he was purposely denying Pct. 2 residents the little they had, and tying the hand sof the man who beat him for office.

This may be past history, but it comes to mind when just this week we saw the results of boards taking actions before the November elections that will have to be dealt with by their successors. It happened when an old board of the Texas Southmost College extended the contract of President Lily Tercero, and it happened when the current board of the Brownsville Independent School District extended the contract of Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas for three more years before next month's election.

In the case of Tercero, a new board terminated the contract after listing numerous grievances against her administration. Predictably, she sued in federal court and now she wants the remaining two years of her salary paid by the college, almost a half million plus her attorneys' fees.

And – even if her majority wins these elections – Zendejas can sue the BISD for her $300,000-plus yearly salary if push comes to shove. It was almost laughable to hear BISD general counsel Baltazar Salazar call the contract extension "improper" since he is currently making $280,000 himself to attend 12 monthly meetings.

Trustees Joe Rodriguez, Carlos Elizondo and Cesar Lopez were joined by Laura Perez-Reyes to extend Zendejas' contract. Rodriguez and Elizondo are running for reelection and Lopez did not seek reelection.

And trustee Phil Cowen chimed in that the public should have been consulted on whether the contract should have been extended was also suspect because he raised no such outcry when the board – without consulting the electorate – raised taxes by 11.25 cents on every $100 in property valuations.

But since some of the funds were earmarked for facilities, his bread and butter, that was ok with him.

The idea that such extensions of contracts should be left up to the incoming board members – or the incumbents if they prevail after an election – is one that should be explored and implemented as policy.

Otherwise, just as Cortinas did back in 1990, that will hand around the incoming elected officisals' necks like an albatross.