TREVINO: THERE'S PROFIT IN KEEPING PEOPLE IN THE DARK

By Juan Montoya

Cameron County Eddie Treviño is one of those guys who likes to think that as long as he has the inside skinny, no one else needs to know.

He is the quintessential lawyer who thinks that people won't be able to handle the truth, and in fact, have no need for it. As long as he and the people in the know share the facts and chips, no one else needs to know.

He has demonstrated that in his almost daily press conferences where he shares the various numbers associated with the COVID-19 crisis: the number of new positive cases, the number of hospitalized patients, the number of the dead. His numbers are generated by the crew over at the Cameron County Health Department.

The nature of the daily report is ostensibly to give county residents a current picture of how the county is dealing withe deadly, highly-contagious plague. And although the positive confirmations lag a bit in time and are the results of those who tested a few days, maybe a week or two ago, they are somewhat recent, as are those who have been hospitalized.

But it is the number of deaths where the slight-of-hand comes in.

Although Treviño makes it seem as if the reports of the deaths happened last night, the fact is – and he and his medical director Dr. Jaime Castillo admitted as much this week – the deaths reported may have happened as far back as a month ago.

County residents have no idea how many people have died in the county since COVID-19 struck here, or how many have died in the last month. The number we get in the daily reports is like a geologic core sample of the ground below us, or if we were in Antarctica, a sample from the ice cap below us.

It's ancient history that gives us no idea of the crisis we're in.

Pressed to the wall, Treviño and Castillo had to admit that they don't know how many people have died, or when they died.

All they could say was that once people found out that the death count given in the daily report is obsolete information, that they should expect future reports of deaths to be "hundreds," rather the the daily dozen or 15 they are still giving out daily.

Why? The county's first report of a COVID-19 related death to the Texas Office of Emergency Management was one (1) on April 7. And we don't even know if that person died on that day, or whether it's the day that the county confirmed and documented the demise.

From then on, it's been the same sleight of hand for the last three months that continues today. Report seven fatalities today, but don't tell them they died three weeks or a month ago.

If the truth were to be told that hundreds may be dying daily today, people might panic. They might actually stay home and take the precautions to keep from becoming infected. They might stop taking their families to the beach or crossing the international bridges on which the county's budget depends. Do we really want, or need, that?

Treviño has always been a firm believer in the adage that information is power, that information is an advantage that – if managed well –  can make you not only powerful, but also rich.

Treviño has learned this lesson well. As the legal counsel for the Brownsville Public Utility Board, he fashioned the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Tenaska and PUB that increased (electric) utility rates over five years for the residents of the poorest city in the United States starting in 2012 by as much as 36 percent where they still remain.

The gouging on rates on the back of the poor started in earnest in January 2013.

The increases were justified to raise the city's $325 million share of the planned $500 million, 800 KW gas-powered electric-generating plant with private "partner" Tenaska. According to the MOU, we were told, the PUB ratepayers were going to pay 65 percent of the $500 and receive 25 percent (200 KW) of the 800 KWs generated by the plant. What a deal!

When years passed with ratepayers paying the artificially-inflated utility rates and no plant was ever built, people questioned the MOU. That's when we learned that a clause in it gave Tenaska the power to decide on when to build the plant. or to not build it at all. In fact, Tenaska reserved the right to initiate construction of the plant until they had sold the 600 KWs of the 800 KWs the plant was projected to produce on the market.

With a glut of electricity on the grid, and other plants coming online in the Rio Grande Valley, the need for 600 KWs vanished. No plant was needed. So the plant, which was to have been completed by 2017, has never been built.

Eddie knew this. But every time a member of the media or the public attempted to get a copy of the MOU, he forwarded the information request to PUB's San Antonio contract counsel Davidson and Troilo Ream and Garza to tie up the request by appealing to the Texas Attorney General to keep the truth from the people claiming the information is "proprietary" and would give give Tenaska and PUB competitors an unfair advantage if it was made public.

To this date, the public has never been allowed to see the entire MOU and learn what other obligations PUB has with Tenaska or whether it will cost them more to end the abusive relationship fashioned by Treviño and his legal pals in San Antonio on the backs of the PUB ratepayers.

Since December 2012 when the MOU was signed until Treviño was elected county judge and then was reelected in 2018, PUB lined his pockets. From 2013 until 2018, records show that he and his partners' firm – Treviño and Bodden – received $1,995,600.74. 

(Click on graphic to enlarge.)

Before 2013, and after 2018, they received no payments from PUB.

His accomplices in San Antonio – Davidson and Troilo Ream and Garza – have since 2009 been the largest recipients of the PUB legal services largess to the tune of $16,283,612.72 for the same period (2009 to 2018). That was for only those 10 years.

In the past two years (2019 through January to June 30, 2020) they have charged PUB an additional $2,707,825.54 for a grand total of $18,991,438.26.

Treviño enjoyed the benefits of withholding the information on the PUB-Tenaska MOU and now he is again keeping the COVID-19 true picture away from the public for another benefit. This time it appears to be political.

He will again seek reelection for county judge a couple of years from now. Having the people know the extent of his disastrous management of the COVID-19 crisis would not be profitable to those political aspirations, either.

He has learned one fact from his PUB-Tenaska experience: It pays to keep people in the dark.