When you're in the reporting biz and you cover the courthouse, you come across many different people who diverse roles in the legal process.
Not only do you meet lawyers, prosecutors, judges, bailiffs, court administrators, etc., but also all those other folks who round out the legal machinery in the county.
Just yesterday we ran into one of those guys who work for firms that prepare debt claim cases for companies such as Midland Funding and ABC Legal and Michael Scott, the famed debt-claim attorney.
Our friend told us that in conversation with his colleagues in the serving business, the word has gone out that Justice of the Peace Pct. 2, Place 1 Linda Salazar had stopped accepting filings by their clients until after the start of 2019. Apparently, he said, employees from ABC Legal – who handle credit card claims such as student loans and credit card collection cases filings with the JP courts – had been turned away from Salazar's office with at least two boxes (at 50 per box, about 100 credit claims) of filings for the company.
"They said that they were overwhelmed with work and that the JP was not taking any more filings for this year until 2019," he said.
And not long ago, a landlord coming down from the second floor of the Cameron County Levee Building ran into us at the county tax office and said he had tried to file an eviction claim against one of his tenants only to be told that Salazar's staff had told him she was not accepting evictions claims either until the beginning of the year.
"The clerk told me that the office just had too much work already and that I could go to the other two JPs on the same floor," said the man. "They turned away another guy while I was there. As it is, the eviction process can take months between filing and to finally have the deadbeat tenants removed. Now it's going to take much longer with one less JP working the cases."
Interestingly, one of the Midland Funding credit claim cases that Salazar did not turn away was one in where her son Mark Anthony Cortez was being sued for a $3,000-plus debt back in April. After he announced as a candidate for the board of the Brownsville Independent School District, news of the debt appeared on local blogs in September.
The fact that Salazar had sat on the claim for nearly six months and had not recused herself form hearing it because of the obvious conflict of interest forced Cortez to negotiate an agreement to pay with the creditors before the election. By then Salazar had transferred her son's case to her pal JP 5-1 Sallie Gonzalez in Harlingen to avoid the obvious questions about her sitting in on her son's case.
If it is true that Salazar is too busy to handle debt or eviction cases and the work is shifted to the other two Brownsville JPs on her floor, then it stands to reason that she will also be too busy to perform wedding ceremonies. The JPs perform wedding ceremonies as a side gig, collecting an average of $250 a pop.
Salazar is known as the "Cupid JP" because she averages about 600 wedding a year, bringing in about $120,000 in ceremony fees which the state allows JPs to keep for themselves. The county does not get any fees apart from the couple's $82 payment for a wedding license to the Cameron County Clerk who issues the licenses. On the other hand, the county keeps all filing and court fees for debt claims and evictions.
The question will be: If Salazar is too busy to take eviction and credit claim cases, then she should also be "overwhelmed with work" to take weddings. Will she?