ARE CAMERON COUNTY OFFICIALS BEING DENIED THE MONEY TO FEED THEIR FAMILIES?

County Administrator Pete Sepulveda, Jr.

Following his Cameron County Commissioners Court appointment in July as Interim County Administrator, Pete Sepulveda, Jr. began to immediately earn his keep, his Mission Impossible, to show how underpaid, impoverished and disrespected Cameron County officials had become.

Showing his gratitude for the appointment, Sepulveda went on a personal fact-finding sortie to prove by comparison that the pobrecitos in county positions were not getting enough moolah to feed their families.

As the newly hired point man for the county officials' raises, Sepulveda claimed to the Brownsville Herald he'd consulted the Texas Association of Counties, yet the primary comparison seemed to be that the Hidalgo County Judge was seeking a salary hike to $118,000 annually, prompting the recommendation that Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino, Jr. should receive $119,000, an annual increase of over $48,000.

But, isn't that like comparing mangos to potatoes, to coin a new phrase, since the population and revenue stream of Hidalgo County is twice that of Cameron?

As per Sepulveda's "recommendation," the individual County Commissioners would each receive a $32,000 increase in salary, not a bad return on investment in appointing Sepulveda interim administrator.

County Commissioner David Garza

As for comparisons, Precinct 3-2 County Commissioner David Garza, told a SRO audience at the Commissioners Court Tuesday that comparing the work of Cameron County's Commissioners to that of their counterparts in Hidalgo County was disingenuous, since "we only supervise two employees, while they monitor over 100 employees each."

If the Commissioners Courts is serious about streamlining operations in line with other Texas counties, why not remove some of the dead weight existing in Cameron?

Why not eliminate the County Treasurer position, as some huge Texas counties, like Bexar(San Antonio) and Tarrant(Fort Worth) have done?  

County Treasurer David Betancourt

Cameron County Treasurer David Betancourt supervises three staffers to do payroll, yet Tuesday allowed an agenda item to proceed that would have given him an annual raise of $39,968 to $105,960.  Transfer those duties and put that money back into the budget.

Cameron County seems also way overstaffed in terms of Justices of the Peace and Constables, two sort of antiquated positions in county government.

Harris County(Houston), for example, has 16 Justices of the Peace for a population of 4.5 million, one JP for every 281,000 population.

Cameron County has 10 JPs to serve only 424,000, one JP for every 42,000.  No wonder our JPs can so aggressively occupy themselves with marrying, even planting staffers in the hallway near the County Clerk's office to steer newly licensed couples to their office.  They're underworked in comparison with other Texas counties.

While our constables do some good work, monitoring funeral traffic and safeguarding ballot boxes, we have too many for our population in comparison with other counties.

While Harris County has one constable for every 562,000, Cameron has a constable to serve just 84,000, almost 7 times as many per population.

Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino, Jr.

Lastly, in this carefully executed plan for Cameron County officials to orchestrate their own raises, County Judge Eddie Trevino lets us know that they're not forgetting the little people, county employees:    

“We are trying to implement it over a three year time frame but we are also looking at trying to implement it over a shorter time period,” stated Trevino.

Perhaps, if the Cameron County Commissioners Court had the nerve to slash some of the obvious salary fat from their budget, these county employees who actually do the county's work, could get adequately compensated.