AT TSC, KIKO CONTINUES TRAGIC COMEDY OF ERRORS By Juan Montoya Did anyone perchance get to see the televised meeting of the Texas Southmost College board of trustees? If you did, you are still scratching your head like we are are on the item dealing with the temporary consultant that President Lily Tercero hired for the transition from a partnership with UTB to independent accreditation. That was in November 2011 that Dr.Leonardo de La Garza came on board as a consultant to Tercero, just a month after she herself was hired in October. And now, three years later, this temporary consultant has become a de facto fixture of the Tercero administration when the average life of a consultant doesnt extend for more than six months at best. Hired in November 2001, de La Garza was – and still is – a vendor and associate of Dynamic Campus, an IT firm which specializes in selling Ebooks and Information Technology (IT) to school districts and entities of higher education like community colleges and universities. By all measures, De la Garza moved fast. By May 2012 – some six months later – De la Garza had steered a $1 million IT contract to Dynamic Campus, the computer firm for whom he had worked for more than three years before. Then, on September 2012, four months after the $1 million pact, the company locked three segments of IT services to Dynamic Campus for an additional $10 million extending into 2015 with an option for another three years. Who would have thought that from November 2011 to September 2012, De la Garza would have landed more than $10 million in contracts to his former employer? That was on top of his consultant fees which have cost TSC taxpayers more than $200,000 since his hiring. Among the fees included in the total is a $2,000 monthly retainer and a $1,500 fee for expenses every time he visits Brownsville and the TSC campus. At Thursdays meeting of the TSC trustees, the item that read Discussion and Possible Action on Dr. Leonardo de la Garzas contract, took man interesting turn. Placed there by trustee Adela Garza, the discussion took an interesting turn. There was a healthy discussion on a line-by-line analysis of de la Garzas employment where trustee Trustee Trey Mendez explained the temporary nature of the consultants contract to other trustees. After an open debate, a Kiko Rendon called for a vote on ending the contract and four trustees – Dr. Rey Garcia, Kiko Rendon, Ed Rivera and Art Rendon – voted to extend it. Garza, Mendez and Hinojosa voted against. The vote by Art Rendon turned out to be the swing vote and he went with the three eventual majority. Then things took a bizarre turn. Instead of discussing the consultants contract and how long the temporary gig was going to last, trustee Garcia read a resolution from a prepared text. In it, the whereas extended the full page and extolled the virtues of Tercero and De la Garza. Garcia asked that the trustees approve the resolution he had prepared. In fact, none of the trustees had a copy of the ad hoc resolution penned by Garcia. Despite calls for a ruling on the propriety of taking a vote on an item not listed on the agenda, board president Kiko Rendon quickly gave his assent to the vote, a clear violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act (TOMA). This has become par for the TSC board. At their October 16 meeting, a negative vote on a motion by Garcia to stop the annual membership payments by the community college to the shadow government called United Brownsville, Kiko Rendon became – in the inverse – a vote to approve the possibly illegal payments. The same thing happened last night. Rendon allowed a vote on Garcias fawning resolution and a majority – Garcia, Kiko Rendon, Ed Rivera and Art Rendon – voted to approve. Only Garza, Mendez and Ray Hinojosa voted against approving the resolution saying it was out of order. Again, Art Rendon was the swing vote again and chose his three allies on the previous vote. Why did Kiko Rendon allow the vote on the resolution to take place when there was no such resolution listed on the boards agenda for the meeting? And why didnt Frank Perez, the boards attorney, stop the board from taking the illegal vote? Art Rendon – who replaced Rene Torres as trustee without an opponent – voted for the resolution in praise of the virtues of Tercero and de la Garza. Coincidentally, Perez was Art Rendons attorney in his Whistleblowers lawsuit against his employer, the Brownsville Independent School District, charged that BISD trustees had also violated the TOMA as part of their allegations on the violation of his civil rights. Rendon was reinstated at his job, got back pay, and a nice lump of change in a settlement. Was the fact that his former client is now a trustee instead of a plaintiff make a legal difference? Does the majority ignore the possible impropriety of the college president having a paid consultant who was also a vendor for the IT services he sells the college? Is it a conflict of interest for a vendor to have a direct say in what IT contract services the college awards? And her former boss as well?
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 22:25:36 +0000
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