IS TONY MARTINEZ REALLY RUNNING FOR REELECTION?

By Juan Montoya

Coming on the heels of standing-room only turnout at Texas Southmost College trustee Trey Mendez's Meet-and-Greet  at Cobbleheads, the repudiation of his stand on the merger of the three valley Metropolitan Planning Organizations, and his apparent chumminess with the diminutive pizza restaurateur, there is a mounting consensus that incumbent City of Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez will not run for reelection.

Others point at what hey say is the apparent close relationship between Mendez and Martinez to the point that his pizzeria recently featured a 1848 pie that features brisket from the mayor's restaurant (1848) across the street from his Lola's Bistro on Palm Blvd.

Anecdotal? Perhaps. But it is the stuff of local chisme.

It's a version that Mendez disputes vigorously and says his Manzo pizza - a big seller - is because he and his business support Abraham, his pitmaster, who introduced it.

"I'm not cloe to Mayor Martinez at all," he said. "In fact, I don't think he really likes me."

Add the results of an election poll that allegedly shows him running far

behind Mendez and former city manager Charlie Cabler in the May mayoral race and the rumors of his withdrawal have gained traction.

But it is the baggage from two terms that Martinez is carrying that has convinced many local political observers that Martinez may withdraw and allow the college trustee to face off against  Cabler.

Just recently, both the Cameron County and Brownsville commissioners voted for resolutions supporting a proposed merger of the three Rio Grande Valley organizations that handle transportation planning in their respective areas.

They say that the move will make the region eligible for far more state transportation funding and impact economic growth for generations. The resolutions favor of joining the Brownsville, Harlingen-San Benito and Hidalgo County metropolitan planning organizations. 

It is a move that flies squarely in the face of Martinez's adamant stand against the merger as recently as the last MPO meeting, which as mayor of the largest city he chairs.

Martinez has long held out against merging the Brownsville, Harlingen, San Benito with that of Hidalgo County claiming it would put Brownsville at the mercy of the larger county upriver. Even though estimates provided by Texas Dept. of Transportation District Engineer Pete Alvarez showing that the city would receive at the very least an additional $12 million if the merger occurred, Martinez has been adamant about losing local control.

"It is the policy of this board not to pursue the merger," he wrote Alvarez in October 2017. "We continue to discuss this ad nauseum...It will obliterate the local control fro Brownsville. We are being asked to give up the autonomy we have to control the destiny of our community."

But Alvarez countered that under a governance scheme that in the bylaws being formulated by TxDoT, is includes the concept of a supermajority where the bigger cities in the three existing MPOs would get weighed votes, with Brownsville possibly getting 6 votes and a small community like Los Indios one.

The model envisions the merged MPOs having a board of 42 members, with Hidalgo accounting for 66 percent of the vote. However, in order for any project to be approved, the item would have to get 75 percent of the vote (supermajority), giving Cameron County leverage to decide the outcome of any agenda item with 9 or 10 percent of the vote.

"If 9 or 10 percent of Cameron County votes against any item, it will be quashed," Alvarez told Wood.

At the time, Alvarez said that so far, all nine Texas State Representatives in both counties have signed a resolution in favor of the merger as has a unanimous Cameron County Commissioners Court. Cameron County elected state officials including then-State Rep. Rene Oliveira, Rep. Eddie Lucio III, and Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. also voiced their support for the merger idea as long as a model making a supermajority is included in the bylaws.

"This is something that’s been in the process for many, many, many years,” County Judge Eddie Trevino Jr. said after the resolution vote...it’s at the point now where the proposed merger is a win-win for everybody involved.”

Trevino told the local daily that the merger would give the Rio Grande Valley the fifth-largest MPO in Texas. That would make the region eligible for a pot of money containing 83 percent of Texas Department of Transportation funding, he explained, compared to the 17 percent of money it competes for now.

“We would be at a completely different buffet table that we’ve been at before,” he said.

Has Martinez seen the writing on the wall and secretly bailed out to leave the field clear for the other two? We'll chew on our 1848 until we find out.