The First 100 Days for Tony Martinez as Mayor of Brownsville

     Tony Martinez could not have had an easier act to follow.  The previous mayor was combative to citizens who came before the commission, called the commissioners his "blocking linemen," while designating himself the "quarterback."  He waged a very public fight to throw city money away on a one-sided deal with a startup airline fronted by a convicted racketeer.   Pat Ahumada's job was there for the taking.
     The Martinez campaign,  run by a San Antonio firm using the slogan "Believe in Brownsville,"  transformed the city into a veritable sea of blue signs.  Tony easily won the sign war, the slogan war and ultimately the mayorship without a run-off in a five man race.  It was a clear mandate with high expectations.
     But we knew nothing about Tony because during the campaign he said nothing of substance.  His message was that he had been a lawyer for 40 years, put several children through college and believed in Brownsville.  We knew he had some money so we thought that personal calabaza might not be a temptation.  We crossed our fingers.
     The biggest challenge, in fact the paramount issue for Mr. Martinez was to deal with the unbelievable corruption, back door deals, calabaza, rewarding of contracts without bids, the criminal theft of millions of dollars of taxpayer money from our city.  If we include the county, that corruption has cost Brownsville and Cameron County 100 million dollars in the last 25 years!  Not only can the poorest county in the United States not afford that, but think what that money could have done for our region!
      Millions of taxpayer dollars have been squandered by the BDEC, GBIC and PUB boards.  Recently, we learned that 30 million dollars were thrown down a rat hole for the Weir Project by PUB.  Add to this the millions lost with Titan Tire, the 21 million squandered by Lucio and Oliveira on the Railroad to Nowhere at the Port of Brownsville and you may come to this realization.   When you add the inflated cost of the sports park and other hugely inflated contracts for surveillance, the final cost over the last quarter century may very well have been $100,000,000. What could Brownsville and Cameron County have accomplished if this money had been properly spent?  Could downtown have been revitalized with parking garages?  Absolutely!  Could a convention center have been built?  Certainly!
      Getting these boards under control and stopping the corruption was Tony's biggest, most important challenge.   So, when Tony circumvented established procedure, orchestrating the reappointment of two disappointing old heads to the boards, it was beyond disappointing.  But he went further.  He tried to put into motion a method of operation that would allow some shadowy, unelected board to screen and nominate potential board members in the future.  Some speculate he was referring to United Brownsville, an entity that rips off Brownsville taxpayers for salary if nothing else.
     Tony literally sucked the lifeblood out of this town with the above underhandedness.  But he was not done.  He wanted to not only literally, but also symbolically castrate Brownsville.  The previous mayor at the instigation of the unethical city attorney Mark Sossi had banned the broadcast of public comment at city commission meetings.  Tony had an opportunity here to display skills, deal with dissent, criticism in a scholarly, professional way and restore free speech principles to the city of Brownsville.  He chose the low road.  When Commissioner Zamora introduced a motion to restore free speech to the citizens of Brownsville,  Martinez  dispatched or permitted his pit bull Sossi to put forward a lame power point against the proposal.  Then he personally added words that pierced the collective gut of Brownsville:  "I want to do what the previous administration did on this.  It seems to be working well and I'd like to continue it."   That was enough to sway the newbie, disoriented, swing vote Commissioner Vasquez-Chavez to vote conveniently with the mayor, killing the proposal.
     You may have noticed that no mention has been made of the 5.6 million dollar debt inclusion, coinciding with a restructuring and debt extension.  I'm not even mentioning the 6.11% proprosed tax increase called a non-increase.  None of that even matters if Tony is not willing to get the corruption under control.