WHAT HAPPENED TO OQUIN AFTER HER PUB APPOINTMENT?

By Juan Montoya

Even before she ran for the board of the Brownsville Independent School District, hamburger mogul  Ana Hernandez-Oquin was a frequent speaker during he public comment section of the meetings.

There, she would harangue the board - in civil undertones - that the public demanded transparency, accountability and members should set the example for the children of the district.

In 2016, she finally decided to run for the BISD board and found out that while everyone encourages to run and promise you their support, when push comes to shove, or to campaigning, you're pretty much left on your own.

Oquin, who owns several McDonald franchise in the city, campaigned as hard as she knew how, but in the end, incumbent Minerva Pena prevailed. She came out fourth of the five candidates in votes.

But she had made her mark. Her message of accountability, transparency, and hard-nose business practices touched a nerve. Not long after the election, she was tapped by some members of the city commission who felt they needed someone like Oquin to sit on the Brownsville Public Utility Board.

Before she was nominated, several of the city commission members interviewed her to make sure that she meant what she had said on the campaign stump. They wanted to know what she thought of the Tenaska boondoggle, CEO John Bruciak's tenure, and the high utility rates. She assured them that she shared their concerns.

But then she was made chairman of the PUB and something changed. She was suddenly wined and dined and jetted all over the United States, all in first class for the madam chair. Bruciak could not do enough to make her feel she was an integral cog in the PUB works. Plied with smooth words and obsequience, she was made to feel the sense of the power of the chair.

Now, with at least two sitting members (Sandra Langley and Sandra Saenz) at the beck and call of former mayor Tony Martinez, the city commission members who supported her thought it would be ideal to have an independent voice on the  board as a counterweight.

Alas, it was not to be. After she was made board chair all the causes she had championed were left by the wayside. No end to Tenaska, or high utility bills, or transparency since the Tenaska Memorandum Of Understanding remains secret as Tenaska and Bruciak fight tooth and nail to keep it so.

But it is this latest issue, the payment of two checks of $1.3 million to Texas Noble Construction after the first one was apparently misdirected to a different bank after someone - no one is saying who - called PUB supposedly representing Noble and told them that the company had changed accounts for $1.3 million in salary draws for the workers from Lone Star National Bank to Bank of America.

A letter bearing the Noble letterhead said as much. That's why it came as a surprise when Noble called and asked where the money was. It was later determined that Noble had initiated no such thing and that PUB had fallen for a ruse, a $1.3 million ruse.

The matter festered and the FBI and law enforcement was called into investigate the swindle. Meanwhile, Noble threatened litigation if PUB did not make good on the $1.3 million. The initial payment had been approved by the PUB board. But someone - and again, no one is saying who - gave Bruciak the go-ahead to make good the $1.3 million owed to Noble.

Who could it have been? Was the second payment made without board approval? Again, no one is saying anything.

But Bruciak knows and so does Oquin and the PUB lawyers. And perhaps, by now, so does the FBI.

How do they know?

Bruciak ordered an internal audit apart from the law enforcement investigation. That report is finished and has been presented to the administration which has kept it under wraps and refused to divulge the contents with the excuse that there is "an ongoing" investigation. Surely the PUB board chair also is privy to the contents of the audit but is choosing to support the Bruciak administration instead of the public's right to know where their money went and who took it.

An inquiry forwarded by the city manager's office generated by the city commission has also gotten nowhere, drawing only the remonstrance of the PIB chair (Oquin) for the city having the temerity to poke its nose into her domain.

But there is much more to this story than renovating a burger joint. There is the vote that gave Bruciak permission to petition the Texas attorney General's Office to exempt the PUB from having to answer requests under the Public Information Act (PIA) based on the fact that it has been impacted by the COVID-19 "catastrophe." The chair and every other member except for holdover Armando Magallanes voted for the item.

How the virus could be made worse by telling people the truth about the $1.3 million (now $2.6 million) is quite a stretch, even for Bruciak. Will he be able to convince the AG that he can keep the people in the dark of potentially inept - or perhaps criminal - behavior under his watch?

And what happened to our champion of accountability and transparency Oquin?

Did Bruciak's blandishments and his administration's obsequience incite a touch of amnesia of her former ideals? It's like the television commercial of the Big Macs. Once you get it in your hands, you realize how much smaller the real thing is than the promises made in the pitches made for us to buy.