"BIZARRE" BOARD COUNSEL CONFLICT DRAGS DOWN DISTRICT

By Juan Montoya

Is Brownsville Independent School District board counsel Baltazar Salazar a convicted felon?

Some say yes. Some say no. That dispute has cast another black eye on the district which has recently endured the resignation of one board member for DWI and the federal indictment of another for bribery and conspiracy.

The trustee who resigned, Erasmo Castro, is on the ballot in the November 3 elections again. The indicted trustee, Dr. Sylvia Atkinson, opted not to run for reelection to focus on her defense from the charges.

And at this stage of the game, does it really matter?

The controversy centers around his tenure as board counsel with some trustees saying that he has told them he represents only the majority of the board, has not provided board members with the status of litigation as required in his contract, hired costly outside counsel on cases, and that he has been helping with the defense of Atkinson in federal court in contradiction to his claims he doesn't represent trustees individually.

The board will meet during a special called meeting this Thursday – September, 10 – for "consideration and possible action to review, amend and/or terminate...Salazar."

BISD trustee Laura Perez-Reyes and her supporters say his 1985 conviction for felony theft by check for $5,700 by Judge Melchor Chavez in the 107th District Court that he appealed to the 13th Court of Appeals which upheld the court's ruling proves he is.

He and his supporters say that his petition to shorten his probation from seven to four years granted in July 1985 by then-107th District Court Gilbert Hinojosa which they claim "sets aside" and erases the conviction proves he's not.

Two other theft by check charges (totaling some $5,800) – one after more than six years of protracted litigation by his lawyers – ended up in dismissals for violation of the Speedy Trail Act. and the other for "want of prosecution."

In 2011, when Salazar applied for the position of BISD Administrative Staff attorney – not the board counsel position he now holds – HR examiners declared him "ineligible" citing the 1985 charge and conviction he said was set aside. Salazar has countered that if he had been a felon the State of Texas would not have admitted him to practice at the bar, he could not be a certified teacher, and – has said it repeatedly – that he would not be allowed to own a gun.

(Coincidentally, one of his references in his 2011 application was attorney Noe Garza, one of Atkinson's defense attorneys.)

Before he graduated from Texas Southern University, he applied for admission to the bar and signed a an authorization and release for the Texas Supreme Court of Board Examiners to investigate his moral fitness and character which included all records of his behavior. But it wasn't your normal release. In it he pointedly included these eye-raising clauses directing the examiners' attention to:

Was this a deliberate preemption to the examiners who would find the charges and conviction in the district clerk's files to suggest that he was not the same person when he committed those violations that he was now as a law school graduate some 10 years later? Was he cured of these maladies by then?

Apparently, it worked because Salazar was admitted to the bar in 1994. What he didn't realize was that the entire files –including the authorization and release – would become part of the public record and is included in the 1985 theft-by-check file.

His attempt to expunge his criminal record was granted by 107th District Court Judge Ben Euresti on June 26, 2012, only to have the Texas Department of Pubic Safety appeal it and the 13th Court of Appeals reverse the court's ruling on August 15, 2013.

And even after the reversal, the district clerk's office delayed returning the files until after 2015 when the court order was brought to their attention.

But by them Salazar had been hired by the BISD board as their counsel on April 2013 – despite his purported "ineligibility"– and is the position he now holds at a $25,000 a month, or $300,000 a year, salary.

Things grow more and more bizarre as the controversy – and black eye on the BISD – continues.