COMMISSIONERS BLINK, SHERIFF GARZA TO GET COURT SECURITY, BUDGET, AHEAD OF TRO HEARING TUESDAY

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Innocuous as the executive session item in the Cameron Count Commissioner's Court Tuesday agenda above  may seem, it signifies the end of a head-to-head confrontation between Sheriff Eric Garza and the commissioners over the control of the courthouse security fund budget currently under Pct. 2 Constable Abel Gomez.

In one fell swoop, Gomez will be stripped of the courthouse security budget and 15 deputies and their combined $579,487 salaries. He will be left with his 10-person staff and a $367,862 budget.

The confrontation was triggered when Garza's representatives – Chief Deputy Robert Gracia and Deputy Silverio Cisneros – showed up in the courthouse and ordered the deputies and bailiffs under the courthouse security fund budget to report to the sheriff's office at Rucker-Carrizales instead of to Gomez.

They were then sworn in under the sheriff, issued new uniforms, and told they were now under the sheriff. 

The choice of Gracia and Cisneros smacked of political backbiting. Before the sheriff's election, Gracia had rented the spot across Cameron Park community center from under Gomez, who had traditionally used it to barbecue chicken and give it to the voters as they emerged from voting at the center. Gomez was openly supporting former sheriff Omar Lucio against Garza in the Democratic Party primary.

Gracia went a step further with the corner lot of the Southmost Library where voters entered to cast their ballots. He bought it and prevented anyone from using the lot to campaign if it wasn't for Garza. 

The choice of deputy Cisneros is even more tinged politically. Cisneros had challenged Gomez for Pct. 2 constable twice and lost. To have Cisneros be sent by Garza and order the deputies under him through the courthouse security budget was a slap in the face for Gomez.

But there was one slight hitch.
The courthouse security fund was placed under Gomez by a Memorandum Of Understanding signed by former sheriff Lucio, who agreed that since Gomez already had an office in the Harrison Street county judiciary wing, it was convenient to place them under his supervision.

But when Garza came into office after defeating Lucio in the Democratic Party primary, he said he had not agreed to the MOU and unilaterally rescinded it.

The commissioners court – asserting their administrative and budgetary authority under the Texas Constitution – sued the sheriff and the case ended up in the 445th District Court presided by Judge Gloria Rincones. The commissioners court civil division attorneys argued that although they agreed that courthouse security was the purview of the sheriff, that the ham-fisted way in which Garza, Gracia and Cisneros went about it violated the administrative process. 

They went to the court and attained a Temporary Restraining Order to enjoin the sheriff and his agents from removing the deputies working under the courthouse security budget they had placed under Gomez.

Garza asked for an emergency hearing to dissolve the TRO and Rincones instructed both parties to work out an agreement that would also respect the budget amendment process. She gave them until Tuesday to work out their differences. 

The innocuous item above will result in a commissioner making a motion to transfer the courthouse security budget – and the 15 deputies – under Gomez to Garza. Rincones then scheduled a hearing on whether to dissolve the TRO at 4 p.m. Tuesday after the meeting.

As it stands now, Garza will get his courthouse security budget and deputies by adhering to the budget amendment process and Gomez will retain his 10-person staff like other constables in the county. 

So is the crisis over? Not really. The bad blood created by Gracia, Cisneros and Garza against Gomez and the commissioners court and the deputies in the first four months of his tenure will linger through his four-year term and will trigger political consequences none of them could possibly imagine.