AFTER EIGHT YEARS AND MORE THAN $2 MILLION, SALAZAR OUT AS COUNSEL: BROWN, PENA GO DOWN PROTESTING

 

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

The board of the Brownsville Independent School District giveth, and the board taketh away.

Overturning a vote held at their last meeting, a majority of the BISD school board removed the $60,000 special education legal counsel contract given to former board counsel Baltazar Salazar and lumped it together with the original Request For Qualifications (RFQ).

The board had two items to consider: One was to award the original RFQ that included special education legal services to second-ranked law firm of O'Hanlon, Demerath & Castillo that was removed from the RFQ at the urging of board members Minerva Peña and Drue Brown at the last meeting. They convinced a majority of the board members to carve out the special education services and made into different contract to award it to Salazar; The other item was to award the special education legal services to Salazar at $60,000 a year.  

During the RFQ ranking, Walsh Gallegos Treviño and Robinson had come in first followed by O'Hanlon, Demerath & Castillo with Salazar ranked tied for a distant fourth. But at board member  Peña and Brown's insistence, a majority of the board voted to "carve" special education legal services from the original RFQ and give it to Salazar without a separate RFQ issued. 

Salazar had been board counsel since April 2013 and was earning $300,000 a year. Attorney Kevin O'Hanlon told the board that his firm would handle the original RFQ that included special services for $240,000, without adding the $60,000 that was carved out for Salazar. Board member Prisci Roca-Tipton was seconded by board president Eddie Garcia and passed 4-3 with Daniella Lopez Valdez and Garza joining them and Brown, Peña and Jessica Gonzalez voting against.

Brown lamented the fact that the previous vote was cancelled by the board and called the process "biased and tainted."

Peña heaped praises on Salazar's performance with special education services and said it was "disheartening" that the board opted not to keep him as special ed attorney. 

In the following item which had been negated by the previous vote, Salazar was stripped of the special ed contract and the motion made by Brown and seconded by Peña could only get another board member – Gonzalez – to join them. Again, Lopez-Valdez, Garza, Garcia, and Roca-Tipton voted against. 

Before the vote, Garcia said that on at least three occasions Salazar had misinformed the BISD and the board. The first time was last January when he complained that he had not received the board agendas for the past six or eight months despite documentation and emails that he had but had not responded.

And on another occasion in February, when the board asked him whether other school boards recorded their executive sessions, he responded that boards in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi recorded their executive sessions. The administration under Dr. Rene Gutierrez then researched the question and found out that 15 of 16 board mentioned did not record their session contrary to Salazar's assertion that they did. The 16th district that required that the BISD file an information request to provide the information and had Salazar as legal counsel.

"That made the board waste time discussing some of these items we would not have wasted if he had properly responded (to the questions)," Garcia said.

On another occasion, Garcia said that Salazar had misrepresented his role as lead attorney on at least two important cases and gave himself credit during a PowerPoint presentation for getting $6 million in settlements when he did not represent the district in those cases.

"He was taking credit where credit is not due," Garcia said.

Peña tried to question O'Hanlon on his firm's qualifications and Garcia cut her off telling her that the vote had already been decided and that the information she was trying to garner from O'Hanlon was contained in the response to the RFQ the firm had submitted.

For his part, Salazar said he "knew where the board was headed" and said that although he did not agree with the administration because they "played with the numbers" and disagreed with board president Garcia, he was grateful for the eight and one-half years he served as legal counsel and said he had "put his two daughters through college" on the salary. 

Since April 2013, when he was earning a $240,000 salary and when O'Hanlon was chosen as board legal counsel, Salazar was getting paid $300,000 – totaling more than $2 million in salary in the eight years with the BISD.