LINEBARGER TAX LAWYERS: COMPETITORS "INFLATED" MONEY LOST TO BISD BECAUSE OF NO AUDITS; AND IT WASN'T $2.4 MILLION, MORE LIKE ONLY $1.6 MILLION, OR MAYBE NOTHING

By Juan Montoya

What it you depended on your rents from your properties and hired a tax lawyer to collect for you from your delinquent tenants?

And what if you found out that another tax lawyer told you that -  because of inattention from your employee - you had lost $2.4 million in rents (ad valorem taxes) upon which you were entrusted to teach the children of the Brownsville Independent School District?

(Wait. It gets better.)

And what if you confronted your employee (tax attorney) and asked about the $2.4 million and he accused his competitor of lying. Only later, when were shown proof that, indeed, your lawyer had misled you and when confronted to come clean, he, well, almost did.

On November 6, 2019, he said they had, indeed, been doing the "tax and audit" work for the BISD. It wasn't $2.4 million, he protested.

In fact, he claimed in open meeting later on May 5, 2020 that the "competitors" had "inflated" the number by $800,000.

In other words, it was more like $1.6 million that may have been lost for not performing the taxable value audits for the years 2011-2014.

Would you be justified in firing the first guy and bringing on board the other guy who alerted you to your estimated losses?

That's exactly the position that the trustees of the board of the Brownsville Independent School District now find themselves as they consider responses to their Request For Proposals (RFPs) for the district's delinquent tax collection business.

For years - and because of the political influence that Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, LLP  can wield through political donations to politicians - that firm has been employed by the BISD and other local governmental entities for its delinquent tax collections.

But as the 2019, as the board was considering RFPs for the 2020 collection services, a competitor, Perdue Brandon Fielder Collins and Mott, alerted the district and its interim superintendent Dr. Sylvia Hatton May 17, that unless the district timely filed an taxable value audit with the Texas Comptroller's Office, it stood to lose millions in funds from the state for the year 2015, the taxable value audit which was due in 2019.

A Perdue representative contacted Hatton and told her about the imminent loss and offered their services to prevent further losses. That deadline was June 2019. Hatton told Perdue to file a proposal, only to find out later that the district had already hired Linebarger to do the very same service.

But that's not all. When Linebarger representative John Guevara was asked point blank whether the firm had performed taxable value audits for the previous years, Guevara told them it had. Only when the district was shown Comptroller's Office reports on its website that "No Audits Were ever Done."

In response, Guevara dragged out the "expertise" of former trustee "Coach" Joe Rodriguez's yes-man CFO Lorenzo Sanchez to support his claim, saying the former CFO (and now Linebarger consultant?) was claiming that although the $1.6 were lost, somehow the BISD had saved money and held out the possibility it could get the money back. In other words, no his company nor the district had done the audits, but, according to Sanchez, the "expert," the BISD probably saved money not doing it (?).

It was Sanchez, by the way, who helped "Coach Joe" push through a 11.25 cent tax raise without a tax hike election and made possible the shifting of funds to pay $1.4 million for his Super-Duper scoreboard at Sams Stadium.

This explanation has not sat well with a growing number of board members, who tabled the item until documented proof could be presented to them that the competitor's claims were incorrect and that Linebarger's reps were not lying.

The current members - Laura Perez-Reyes, Minerva Pena, Eddie Garcia, Drue Brown, Prisci Roca-Tipton, and Phil Cowen - will now consider the various companies' RFPs and choose the company that will be hired to collect the money. At 15 percent commission for the service, it's a service Linebarger does not want to lose.

(Perez-Reyes, by the way, is running for Cameron County District Clerk against a Republican opponent in the November general election.)

Can the BISD afford any more of these nasty surprises from a company that it has trusted and has paid good money to help it collect on its diminishing funds for its school budget?