If you have a chance, log in to the City of Brownsville website and watch the Oct. 17 meeting of the city commission.
Go to the approval of the minutes item on the agenda and watch an imperious mayor at work. If the taped meeting isn't posted yet, take the time to see it. It shows a despot at work.
In one fell swoop, Hizzoner Da Mayor Tony Martinez disenfranchised half of the voters of Brownsville.
When commissioners Jessica Tetreau and Ricardo Longoria tried to speak out about her vote on the nomination of Steve Guerra to the board of the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation, Martinez summarily denied them the forum to which the voters of Brownsville gave them by electing them.
We have often derided both of the commissioners on this page. Sometimes they are trivial in their pursuit for personal glory. Often they are used as tools for special interests. Yet, this does not give Martinez any right to silence their voices on the commission meetings.
The issue was Tetreau's attempt to correct the minutes to show she had cast a "aye" vote for Guerra, a local businessman with extensive ties to the Matamoros business community. This is not as strange as it sounds. Most, if not all, local business people have some kind of tie to Mexico. We are, after all, on the border.
Tetreau had attempted to have city secretary Griselda Rosas change the minutes to reflect her "aye" vote on the minutes and submitted an affidavit to have her change what Martinez had decreed a non-vote. When she tried to object, as did Longoria, he imperiously shut them up, even to the point where he threatened to have Longoria escorted by the police out of the chamber.
Tetreau said that two commissioners next to her (Longoria and Cesar de Leon) had heard her say "aye" and could vouch for her, but Martinez denied her or Longoria the right to explain their objection to having the minutes changed. Instead, he silenced them and – with the support of commissioner Ben Neece – rolled roughshod over their constituency. Neece went as far as handing her affidavit on the Guerra vote to the chief of the Brownsville Police Department so he could investigate if she had committed "perjury."
Then they all voted for the appointment of Nurith Galonsky to the GBIC board. Yes, Galonsky, of the Casa del Nylon infamy. After all the complains against having the same people from the same old families running this city to the ground, they chose a Galonsy to the GBIC which controls an annual budget of $5 million in incentives for economic development.
We know we should not visit the sins of the father upon the children, but look at what $2.3 million bought us. It is a shell of a building which has no use whatsoever apart from putting cold hard cash in the pocket of the mayor's friend. In fact, it's a magnet for homeless people and their pooches.
We hate to part ways with our friend Neece on this one, but like commission De Leon, we have to call a spade a spade. Martinez has so downgraded our political representation that what passes for representative democracy is now a theocracy personified in Emperor Martinez.