OPEN SPLIT ON COMMISSION IS EMBARRASSING TO OUR CITY

By Juan Montoya

No one ever said democracy wasn't messy.

It is, but the type of democracy being demonstrated by the City of Brownsville Commission may just happen to be a bit messier than in most other places.

We have had fired city attorneys, suddenly-retired city managers, and a string of interim department heads including a city manager, city police and fire department honchos.

We've also head a decidely uncivil engagement between several members of the city commission starting with acrid-tongued Mayor Tony Martinez who tries to run meetings like he is the city manager, city attorney, Pope-in-residence and dog catcher rolled up into one.

That happened when commissioner Cesar De Leon submitted three finalists' names for consideration of the selection of the city attorney.
Martinez complained that – unlike commissioner Joel Mungia and others – he had not found the time to interview the candidates. This was followed by a member of the selection committee who complained about the way De Leon had managed the selection process.

Then, when commissioner Ben Neece took the mike, he read from a prepared statement blasting De Leon for his role (and alleged manipulation) of the selection process. That drew a response from De Leon and delayed the vote for another week.

Just last week, the commission unanimously voted to hire municipal judge Rene De Coss – the majority's original choice – to the position.

It's painful for those of us who knew them when they were friends, helping each other get elected and even sharing a law office to witness the spectacle. That, too, alas, is over.

Reminds one of the Faulkner take on the obscure soliloquy given by Macbeth in William Shakespeare's play, Macbeth that says it was "told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing..."

When Martinez isn't getting his way, he has a way of manipulating the discussion or openly shutting down discussions and moving on. On more than one occasion he has stopped commissioners Rick Longoria, Jessica Tetreau, and others from having their say, or in Tetreau's case, even asserting her vote.

Everyone knew that the candidate Tetreau wanted to vote for a place on the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation (Esteban Guerra) wasn't Da Mayor's choice (it was the eventual appointee Nurith Galonsky), so he shut down the discussion pretending he didn't hear her vote. When she took an affidavit to the city secretary saying she wanted the minutes changed, Martinez refused and his new ally – commissioner Ben Neece – went as far as filing a complaint with the police to have her charged with tampering with a government document.

Galonsky was appointed with a unanimous vote and she promptly sued the board of the GBIC over their choice of a CEO. Her arguments were thrown out by the court and she filed a non-suit to top the bleeding. Two of the persons she sued were commissioners De Leon and Tetreau.

Not to be outdone, the commission majority passed a change to the membership rules of the various city boards limiting the number of boards on which an individual could serve. Instead of two, at their last meeting they limited participation to one. It states that: "board and commission members shall not serve concurrently on more than one (1) board or commission to become effective immediately."

The ordinance further states that "if members at the time of this section’s enactment are serving on more than one board or commission, they shall complete their current terms as provided by their appointments unless otherwise removed."

So now Nurith Galonsky must decide if she wants to stay on the GBIC or if she wants to serve on the Brownsville Public Utility Board. Same goes for every other member of a board in the city, including John Cowen, also sits on the GBIC.

There have been other occasions when Martinez's heavy-handedness has been all too evident. While he has always been fond of the phrase "our better angels," he is not loath to hurl well-chosen invective at others, sometimes only within earshot of the select victim.

One of the latest divisions occurred when a letter sent to Neece was also sent by someone who identified herself as a local educator to local bloggers. In it the writer questioned the adherence of Tetreau to the city's conflict of interest policy in matters pertaining to her family's car-wash business.

After it was published, the feisty Tetreau accused Neece of leaking the letter and explained that she had signed the conflict-of-interest form as an abundance of caution because she felt her family's business was defamed. She didn't realize that donations carry no conflict.

(We can tell you in all honesty that we really don't have a way of telling who sent us the letter, but it did not come from Neece, at least not from his email.)

As the saying goes in Spanish, todos tienen cola que les pisen. So Tetreau detectors can bring out her arrests for domestic violence charges, or on Neece, for a past domestic altercation.

https://www.valleymorningstar.com/content/tncms/live/https://www.valleymorningstar.com/content/tncms/live/
https://www.valleymorningstar.com/news/local_news/tetreau-kalifa-involved-in-disturbances/article_77fd2531-c263-5f18-b2fd-1915dbc0ab9b.html

But where does this diversion get us as a community?

The friction between the two is characteristic of the dynamic on the city commission, and it hasn't been pretty. However, we can take heart that this will change by the commission members wanting to show a untied front on the unanimous votes for Galonsky to the GBIC and De Coss to the city attorney's office.

Will it last long? We can only hope.