TIME FOR BISD BOARD TO STAND UP FOR ITS TAXPAYERS

By Juan Montoya

The audience listening to tax firm Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, LLP representative John Guevara  try to downplay the loss of an estimated $2.4 million loss due to the failure to file taxable value audits with the Texas Comptroller's Office for the years 2011-2014 couldn't believe their ears.

Here was the lawyer whose firm was hired by the BISD and that at 15 percent in commissions makes $100,000s a year saying that indeed, his firm had not filed the audits with the state, but no, it wasn't $2.4 lost by the district, but that instead – according former BISD CFO Lorenzo Sanchez – it was more like $1.6 million.

And then, he went on, tax matters are too complicated and maybe, just maybe, the district had not lost as much. That came at 3:40 mark of the meeting video.

That prompted board member Laura Perez-Reyes to question Guevara on the numbers because he had assured the board as late as last November 6, 2019 they had, indeed, been doing the "tax and audit" work for the board.

Intrigued, she moved to table the award of the Request For Proposals (RFPs) for the district's delinquent tax collection business. The rest of the board members agreed and then got the convoluted non answer from the Linebarger rep.

Today, the board members will have a chance to vote on the RFPs again. The agenda item reads: 6. Recommend approval of RFQ #20-127 for Delinquent Ad Valorem Tax Attorney Services. Contract will be for one year beginning June 16, 2020, with the option to renew.

Will they go back to the same firm who admitted it had cost the district more ten $1 million – and perhaps as much as$2.4 – for the past years it did not file the tax-value audits?

Now that they have found out that what another tax lawyer told them was true, will they continue to hire the company that lost million in upon which they were entrusted to teach the children of the Brownsville Independent School District?

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.

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 today at 5:30 p.m. 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 Guevara was first asked point blank whether the firm had performed taxable value audits for the previous years, he told them it had. Only when the district was shown Comptroller's Office reports on its website that no audits from the BISD had been filed by the firm for those years did he own up to it. That horse left the barn long ago and there's no recouping the lost money.

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?

How the board members will vote today will show the district taxpayers whether they have their – and the student's – interest at heart. Was Guevara right that taxes are just too complicated for this board? And will Linebarger's money will carry the day?