When the city commission voted to establish the Audit and Oversight Committee and the Internal Auditor’s Office to investigate whether certain actions by the city's departments had violated city policy, it had two main targets.
One was to investigate whether city policies had been violated with the $2.3 million purchase of the Casa del Nylon and the practice of using a private ambulance service by the Brownsville Fire Department.
With its implementation, the committee's inclination to investigate the real-estate speculation that resulted in the purchase of the overpriced store at the corner of Adams and E. 14th lost vigor and shifted to the fire department under the direction of former fire chief Carlos Elizondo.
That resulted in the release of an audit by the committee that showed that Elizondo - with the nod and wink of former city manager Charlie Cabler - had repeatedly used the private ambulance service to the detriment of the city's EMS.
The audit, in turn, triggered an investigation by the Cameron County District Attorney's Office into Elizondo's tenure that resulted in nearly a dozen criminal charges. He was accused of theft and misapplication of fiduciary duty over allegations he stole from the firefighters association and made political contributions after he had been removed as treasurer of the firefighters' union.
Later, he was charged with 11 counts of computer security breach. Those charges stem from his alleged unauthorized entry into the Brownsville Fire Department's Emergency Reporting System after the city suspended him because of a previous indictment.
Elizondo has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The justification for the establishment of the Audit and Oversight Committee and the Internal Auditor’s Office then was that Cabler had failed to act on reports that landed on his desk documenting the diverting of lucrative patient transfer calls from the city's EMS to Intercity Ambulance for Medical Emergency Transport, a company with known ties to Elizondo.
Once the city hired a new city manger, the former city commission majority decided that there was no longer any need for a commission-led Audit committee and that the function should be returned to the purview of a professional city manager. They voted to abolish it over the objection of commissioner Neece, who along with former commissioner Cesar de Leon had championed the idea.
Now that it seems the commission will reestablish the Audit Committee, should Purchasing's De Luna and the folks over at Inspections be looking over their shoulders to see where the ax will fall?
And if the committee is revived, where will that leave Bernal, whose responsibilities and obligations under the city charter would seem to overlap those to be performed by the commissioner-led committee?