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BISD VOTES TUESDAY WHETHER TO STOP BLEEDING ON LAWSUITS OF FORMER $4 MAJORITY
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<strong>Item B109: Aug. 21 Brownsville Independent School District Board Meeting:</strong><br /><em>b. Discussion, consideration and possible action regarding threatened or pending litigation, including lawsuits by Hector Gonzalez and Antonio Juarez, and the status of settlement negotiations or settlement proposals</em>.<br /><br />By <strong>Juan Montoya</strong><br />Withe the death of insurance mogul Johnny Cavazos, it is somewhat fitting that the lawsuits sparked by the outcry of two former BISD board members and two current ones because his company wasn't recommended for the multimillion Stop-Loss insurance contract should also reach a quiet end.<br />On Tuesday, the BISD trustees will decide whether the settlement negotiations between attorneys for Rick Zayas, Ruben Cortez (both former trustees) and Rolando Aguilar and Joe Colunga (both current trustees) and the two former BISD administrators will come to an end.<br /><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB4YtCnzWDpoSDk0j1ncvEuhCiE4x1nnRKZHiYCGXOygRd2wnPwIty3A4V7uSvgrWlHyHS_sUiMCigU2YXu7za1Vu0y90yIpVr3Y7SqZy673o1dIxSqylzlmxHsgmOEbK1es4m769r0FU/s1600/BLEEDING.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" mda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB4YtCnzWDpoSDk0j1ncvEuhCiE4x1nnRKZHiYCGXOygRd2wnPwIty3A4V7uSvgrWlHyHS_sUiMCigU2YXu7za1Vu0y90yIpVr3Y7SqZy673o1dIxSqylzlmxHsgmOEbK1es4m769r0FU/s400/BLEEDING.jpg" width="400" /></a>The lawsuits over the termination of former BISD Superintendent Hector Gonzalez and former Chief Financial Officer Antonio Juarez are on the board's agenda after traveling a long and winding (and extremely costly) path toward resolution in state and federal courts.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Yet, now we understand that the parties in the cases through mediation have reached a tentative settlement in both cases that will be presented for approval by the board on Tuesday.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">If you'll remember, Juarez sued the former majority and the BISD after he was forced to leave his position as CFO after Colunga and Cortez demanded that he be fired by Gonzalez of face firing himself by their group. It's all laid out in the Gonzalez lawsuit now making its way through state court.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">In the Gonzalez case, as in the Art Rendon case before, the former majority paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Ric Navarro and his Harlingen law firm to find some justification for their termination. Whatever flimsy "evidence" Navarro produced for the former board was rebutted by their attorneys and the cases continued making their way to trial.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Then there was the slight matter of the four trustees (Zayas, Cortez, Aguilar and Colunga) being denied qualified immunity in federal court even after they appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans (<em>en banc</em>, as their behind-the-scenes genius legal consultants advised). In fact, the appeals court flat out denied a rehearing on the same matter.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Apparently, that was the sticking point of these settlement negotiations. Would the four trustees be made to pay from their own pockets?</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">We still don't know the answer to that question, but we'll know soon enough this Tuesday if the wishes of the insurance company to staunch the hemorrhaging flow of money to lawyers defending the district and the trustees are heeded.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">In the Gonzalez case, the courts gave the plaintiff's attorneys time to formulate a conspiracy complaint that drove stake through their defense. Evidence introduced in both cases indicates that the majority and others in the district conspired to violate their civil rights, perverted the grievance process and used employee against employee to justify terminations, and violated their right of protected speech when reporting illegal acts with the proper authorities outside the district (FBI, Texas Rangers, US Attorneys, etc.).</div>In the HealthSmart case the district had to cut its litigation losses and settle. In the Rendon case, the result was the same. Former BISD AD Joe Rodriguez dropped his defamation lawsuit against trustee Catalina Presas-Garcia. And now, as we head for Tuesday, it'll be up to the current majority to put a stop to this carryover from the previous majority and bury the issue once and for all.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6016803033174468094-5933285275742146876?l=rrunrrun.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
LINK: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2012/08/bisd-votes-tuesday-whether-to-stop.html
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HERALD HELPS MARTINEZ WITH ANTI-TSC, PRO-UTB SPIN
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By <strong>Juan Montoya</strong><br />By now we know that ever since the current board on the Texas Southmost College board was campaigning to get into office one of the anchor planks on their platform was that they would not give away any of the land or assets of the 75-year-old community college.<br />Not real estate, not money, not bank deposits. In short, not anything that this community college that has been nurtured by local taxpayers in this poverty-stricken, high unemployment region for the last 75 years will be "given" away or sold to the UT System, the third-richest institution of higher education in the United States.<br />UTB President Juliet Garcia's plan to do just that crashed to the ground with a resounding thud that was emphasized by the election of the "no giveaway" candidates who swamped the UTB's president's ticket in past elections.<br />So why does Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez insist on painting the TSC board as an obstacle to the resurrection of downtown Brownsville because they won't budge on the issue knowing that it was one of the promises they made the electorate who put them in office?<br /><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4NnqejZpcfAet8B_p5f2Uh63xcR4fNtvbGjVirki0m8x-WB30MIOWP-f9Fhwrrxwj9s9h2ARFRgEmKgX0r2Oyu6w5xZhNGNbXYU1Ew1Kby24d6g3Us-d8vOBAJ2Px06we138d-6wJkGc/s1600/chentone.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" mda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4NnqejZpcfAet8B_p5f2Uh63xcR4fNtvbGjVirki0m8x-WB30MIOWP-f9Fhwrrxwj9s9h2ARFRgEmKgX0r2Oyu6w5xZhNGNbXYU1Ew1Kby24d6g3Us-d8vOBAJ2Px06we138d-6wJkGc/s400/chentone.png" width="400" /></a>In today's <em>Brownsville Herald</em> (characteristic of previous coverage), the loaded words ascribing negative overtones to the decision of the TSC board permeate reporter Steve Clark's story.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The UT System's decision to move the campus away from the TSC site is ascribed to the <em>"failure to find resolution with the Texas Southmost College trustees over land issues."</em></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">His advisers' plan to move UTB downtown <em>"exclude any possibility that TSC will change its stance regarding selling the property."</em></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">UTB's plans to get a new campus is necessary because <em>"TSC refused to agree to sell property to the UTB."</em></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">And he says that his cadre of out-of-town development gurus are working on how to satisfy any <em>"financial shortfalls UT might confront in locating downtown."</em></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">In other words, if the TSC trustees would just go back on their word to the electorate and lie down and roll over for the UTB System, everything would be so easy.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Always the Sunshine Boy, DA Mayor says that the chance that the University of Texas at Brownsville will move then campus downtown, as opposed to UTB building a new main campus somewhere else, has gotten its “foot in the door†in terms of the UT Board of Regents’ willingness to consider it alongside other options.<br />And guess what? Remember that "rapidly closing window" of the Aug. 22 UT System Regents meeting where the final decision would be made regarding the move downtown? Well, it wasn't such an emergency after all, we now hear.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">None less than Brent Brown, the head of the self-appointed community workshop group BCWorkshop now says that perhaps it wasn't such a "drop-dead" deadline as he had said before after all.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Brown had been operating under an "assumption" that the UT Board of Regents would make a final decision regarding downtown at that meeting. However, now Da Mayor says that he believes the regents would "keep everything open" while considering land acquisition.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">No effort will be spared, he said, to address UTB's concerns about locating downtown.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">We've been to this rodeo before, haven't we?</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Remember when Garcia and her academia gunslinger Michael Putegant tried the same line oh, so many times? There seemed to be some sort of mortal deadline at every turn. If the trustees didn't get everyhting they wanted ($200 million in college assets including â€" but not limited to â€" real estate, bank deposits, buildings, your dreams, etc.) UTB would [gasp] leave Brownsville.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">That was some three or four years ago and guess what? They're still here trying the same old ruses that didn't work for them before. However, now we have Hizzoner Da Mayor trying to twist arms and make the TSC trustees cough up the goods for the UT System.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">They should just cut the crap and have the UT System cough up the money as they have done in the other 15 system facilities across the state and forget about strong-arming the local community college taxpayers to continue subsidizing them as they have for the last 20 years.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Bill Hudson didn't buy it. Mary Yturria didn't buy it either. Neither did the rest of the mere mortals who support the college district with their property taxes. Martinez should cut the losses to his diminishing political stock and fold up his dog and pony show as well because no one is buying. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Yet, he seems unperturbed, at least for the consumption of the <em>Brownsville Herald's</em> readers.</div>“I’m not at all deterred," said Martinez. This has brought a lot of things to light, and I’m liking what I see.â€<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6016803033174468094-6372102101373104315?l=rrunrrun.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
LINK: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2012/08/herald-helps-martinez-with-anti-tsc-pro.html
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