Donna Drama
Disclaimer: The City of Donna is a great place. Lots of good people, good food, a good police force, even if the mayor did try to fire the police chief earlier this year, (another guy was waiting to take the job), so don’t let the following political story stain the city’s good name.
On a side note that needs no disclaimer, things are also going batty in nearby Edcouch, but look for that story later this week at anjournal.com. The city manager, Victor De La Cruz, is on paid leave, after being indicted at the federal level, charged with bribery (two grand), and for curious reasons, the city commission can’t land a quorum to discuss his continued employment, so the paid leave continues.
With the lucrative casinos shut down, Edcouch is back to being, well, relatively poor Edcouch.
No more Social Security checks to lift from the seniors.
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On to Donna, where good people live and the city and school politics over the past four decades have proven great fodder for newspaper copy.
Current Question: How can the mayor, David Moreno, and the city attorney, Robert J. Salinas, think it’s okay to file a lawsuit against two sitting councilmen, Ernesto Lugo and Oscar Gonzales, and list the city as one of the plaintiffs without a vote by the city council? Which was never done.
Yet, there it is in black and white at the county district clerk’s office:
Defendants: Oscar Gonzales and Ernesto Lugo.
Plaintiffs: Mayor David Moreno, Robert J. Salinas, and the City of Donna, even though Donna had no clue it was part of a court petition.
Until that is, a process server showed up at a city meeting Aug. 26th and handed Gonzales and Lugo a temporary restraining order signed by County Court-at-Law Judge Albert Garcia, which cut the meeting short.
The city council couldn’t discuss Attorney Salinas’s continued employment with the city, said the judge, in so many words.
Salinas and the mayor were making the claim that another councilmember, Jesse “Coach” Jackson, told the mayor that he, Lugo, and Gonzales had met in secret to discuss terminating the city manager, Carlos Yerena, and/or the contract with City Attorney Salinas.
Only one problem, according to Ernesto Lugo: The meeting never took place. (Source: ANJ.)
Now, in new court proceedings Monday, the temporary restraining order has been lifted, and the city has a meeting planned for this Friday.
Monday, Judge Garcia said his court didn’t have jurisdiction over the matter, and so moved the case to a state district court.
From here, the case will go nowhere. Councilman Jackson has said he never met with Lugo or Gonzales to discuss city matters, and the only time he met with Salinas and the mayor, the two were already drinking before he arrived to discuss relatively mundane matters. He said he never told the mayor that he, Lugo, and Gonzales had met in private to discuss city matters.
So again, Donna gets negative press while looking like something the Keystone Cops could have staged on a bad day.