By Juan Montoya
The last time that the board of the Brownsville Independent School District addressed the multi-million delinquent tax contract, they heard Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, LLP representative John Guevara downplaying the district's loss of an estimated $2.4 million due to the firm's failure to file taxable value audits with the Texas Comptroller's Office for the years 2011-2014.Still, the former board came to a 3-3 vote on an action item last July that read: Recommend approval of RFQ #20-127 for Delinquent Ad Valorem Tax Attorney Services. Contract will be for one year that was to begin June 16, 2020, with the option to renew.
The votes on a motion before the board to award the contract to Linebarger competitor Perdue, Brandon, Fielder, Collins and Mott LLP broke down this way:
Yes: Drue Brown, Prisci Roca-Tipton and Minerva Pena
(Brown made the motion and Roca-Tipton provided the second.)
Nay: Phil Cowen, Laura Reyes-Perez and Eddie Garcia
That tied vote meant that Linebarger – who held the contract – has been working on a month-to-month basis because no one was chosen to get the contract. But now, with Cowen and Perez-Reyes gone from the board, will the pro-Perdue faction on the board garner the fourth vote?
Since the BISD already has the RFQs from these only two firms that submitted their proposals, the process may move along faster then usual. In fact, it may be less than a month before the BISD's staff evaluates both RFQs and make their recommendation to the board.
The delinquent tax contract is no small potatoes. It is estimated to have earned Linebarger some $800,000 a year for the last five years for a total of some $4 million during that time.
If we assume that the sitting board members from the old board Brown, Tipton and Peña, will stick with Perdue, then they need only one vote from the trio of new board members – Jessica Gonzalez, Danielle Valdez-Lopez and Denise Garza – to tip the balance toward Perdue.
One board member who will not change her vote is Peña, whose opponent Marisa F. Leal, was supported by Linebarger campaign contributions and whose local attorney on retainer, former Cameron County Judge Gilbert Hinojosa, is representing Leal in her challenge to Peña's seat claiming the number of alleged illegal votes did not yield true results and should be rejected and another election called.
That challenge is still pending in the courts. To cloud matters even more, Leal had won the election by one vote on election day and sworn in before Peña asked for a recount and emerged with an eight-vote advantage and replaced Leal. The challenger than filed the lawsuit to throw out the election.
For the last five years 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. In fact, in the last election, they gave losing candidate Cowen $3,500. Candidate Jaime Diez did not take any campaign contributions from vendors.
They did better when it came to Valdez-Lopez who won and received $2,500 from the firm.
But what of their miscalculation in the case of board members Garza and Gonzalez? Just one of these members siding with Perdue will end the five-year gravy train for Linebarger.
When the board was considering RFQs for the 2020 collection services, Perdue 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.
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 they were proposing.
When Linebarger's 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 had left the barn long ago and there's was no recouping the lost money.
It will be up to the new board now to untangle the mess and select the firm for a permanent contract. Welcome to Governance 101.
10 comments:
Linebarger wanted Cowen, Diez and Leal. They rolled the dice on them and their horses lost. This will be interesting. Will new board members do the right thing and vote the corrupt Linebarger and Gilberto Hinojosa out.... or will they side with corruption?
The daughter of Joey Lopez, Lopez Valdez, is a Linebarger puppet. She is already bought and paid for by Linebarger. And she wanted to bring a fresh perspective to BISD.... PFFFTTTT!
Fuera con Linebarger. Get rid of these unscrupulous scoundrels.
The integrity of the corruption in South Texas, committed by our so called Dist. Atty, Sheriff Omar Lucio, corrupt greedy lawyers, and judicial system, county judges had long been established before Trump. This low life of Gilberto Hinojosa has himself been named numerous times by convicted judges, lawyers, and latest by Sylvia Atkinson as being corrupt. He himself is the attorney on retainer, ( remember convicted DA Armando Villalobos was accused by prosecutors as a DA on retainer, pay up front in case you need me), for Board member- Marisa F. Leal, alleging voter's fraud. He is challenging Pena's seat claiming the number of alleged ILLEGAL VOTES, from the trio of new board members. shouldn't such duties be performed by our so called District Attorney? This low life of shit should be sanctioned and impeached by our law abiding citizens of Cameron County. Get him and his so called wife out of office . Mr. Hinojosa, South Texas has and will continues to be an incendiary rhetoric society as long as you are in office.
Go out on bids to find out which law enforcement agency has the intestinal fortitude to arrest all these crooks.
traced your genetic timeline back 17,000 years—and discovered if you are 83% human.
Estimates indicate that the last common ancestor for cockroaches appeared much earlier than fossil evidence, around 235 million years ago.
El idiota hillbilly coco wanna be white claims that the earth and part of the universe belongs to him becasue he is related to the cockroaches pinche pendejo...
Instead of discussing items that will help our student with the virtual learning options, they will spend their time arguing about lawyers. When will this ever stop/
salazar is money hungry. He kept after it until he got it. He wanted to get more than the superintendent, when he only sat and slept through one board meeting at a time and would hire out for law firms to handle most of the cases, so the district was paying double for his "non-job! It is time for the new board members to come thought according to their oath of office and it would be a great disappointment if they didn't. We voted for new-blood on the board, we got it and now we wait to see that no blood is spilled.
If it is true that they cost the district over 2 million, why are they still on the job? Get them out already!
Shady "Sub-Contractor" Salazar will find someone who can do, what he doesn't know how to do for a FINDERS FEE. Shady!!
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