The federal jury verdict awarding former Texas Southmost College president Lily Tercero $12.5 million in damages and $675,000 is casting a harsh glare on a practice that is a blueprint for disaster: allowing lame duck boards to extend administrators' contract and unloading the burden on incoming board members.
This same recipe for disaster is brewing in the Brownsville Independent School District as we speak.
This past Tuesday, voters swept out two incumbent and since another didn't run for reelection, the BISD board will now have a majority who might not want Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas at the district's helm. The incoming candidates did not run on a stated fire-Zendejas platform, but their calls for "transparency,""change" and "reform" indicates that they think her administrative style and policies are part of the problem.
But what stands in the way of the new board members implementing their campaign platform and changing administrators?
Before they left the board – and prior to the elections where two of them turned out to be losing candidates – the three outgoing BISD trustees formed the majority to extend Zendejas' contract for an additional three years.
Foremost among Zendejas' boosters was Joe Rodriguez, who at the October 2 meeting, less than a month before the November 6 election where he was ousted, convinced his two other allies and third trustee (Carlos Elizondo, Cesar Lopez and Laura Perez-Reyes) to extend her contract. By a 4-3 vote, they extended her contract through June 30, 2021 at $305,000 a year.
Dr. Sylvia Atkinson, Phil Cowen and Minerva Peña voted against.
Just two days later after that meeting, Zendejas told the Brownsville Herald that "board attorney Baltazar Salazar approached her in June saying some board members wanted her out and if she didn’t leave they would fire her."
And now that she doesn't have Rodriguez to run interference for her, how long do you think it will be before this new majority goes through the predictable process of ditching Esperanza? And when the axe falls, how long will it be before she takes the BISD to federal court and demands her $305,000 yearly salary times 3 ($915,000) plus millions in damages?Now Rodriguez and Elizondo – rejected by the voters – can thumb their noses at the board and enjoy their sweet revenge. But the cost will not be borne by them. It'll be the taxpayers of the district that will pay for their personal vendettas and caprichos.
The same recipe for disaster happened in the TSC-Tercero case. On April 28, 2016, trustee Ed Rivera voted to extend Tercero's contract one more year which was seconded by Dr. Rey Garcia. Voting in favor of extending the contract were Kiko Rendon, Art Rendon, and Trey Mendez. The late Raymundo Hinojosa abstained, and only Adela Garza voted against it.
When the then-TSC majority voted to extend, they already knew that in September 2016 she had failed to obtain windstorm insurance with board approval in compliance with state law; allowed TSC checks to be stamped with signatures of people who were no longer trustees;failed to timely search and fill the position of vice president for finance and administration; failed to inform the board of the ailing nursing program and its pending suspension; and had refused a board member’s request that he personally sign and review checks in the amount of $10,000 or more and did not comply with a request for information sought by another member.
But who cares? Le the new board members and the remaining board majority they considered their personal enemies worry about the coming storm.
Rivera did not run for reelection that year and neither did Kiko Rendon, but they joined Garcia to carry the vote for Tercero's extension. Garcia would go on to lose his election two years later.
Is it any surprise that Kiko Rendon, Garcia and Rivera testified on behalf of Tercero in her federal lawsuit just concluded? Now they can do the cock-of-the-walk impersonations and feel smug in the belief that they stuck it to Adela, Mendez and Ruben Herrera.
But guess what guys?
Federal judge Andrew Hanen removed the sitting trustees from liability in Tercero's lawsuit. The ones you stuck it to was the taxpayers of the community college district.
The money verdict – if it follows the predictable pattern – will be whittled down in the appeals and negotiation process and will probably cost TSC taxpayers $2.5 million at best. But the attorneys' fees meter will keep on running.
The real cost will be borne by the people who live in the district, the same people you begged for their vote to put you on the TSC board. And this is how you choose to repay them?