Interim City Manager, City Attorney gone
Whirlwind of Pharr Activity
Stop the presses. The Pharr interim city manager and city attorney gone the same day?
Monday, during a regular city commission meeting?
Indeed, interim CM Anali Alanis resigned Monday (see related story this page), saying she wanted to spend some personal time with family and reflect on her future, while City Attorney Patricia Rigney resigned for unknown reasons.
Two weeks ago, the city agenda included this wording: “Consideration and action, if any, on Ordinance appointing, reappointing General Counsel and City Attorney for the City of Pharr.”
Rigney wasn’t, however, at that city commission meeting. Filling in for her at the city commission dais was city prosecutor and former county DA Ricardo Rodriguez, representing the Ricky Rod Law Group.
Clearly something was in the wind.
At this week’s city commission meeting Monday, another item was listed, which seemed to indicate that some discussion had gone on between Rigney and the city subsequent to the previous meeting: “Attorney consultation pursuant (to the Texas Government Code) to receive legal advice pertaining to a contract claim for payment under an employment contract with former City Attorney Patricia Rigney and related legal issues.”
And that was that. Named city attorney in 2015, Rigney was no longer director of the city’s legal department.
Interim CM Leaves, Too
After the former city manager, Andy Harvey, resigned last September, and then ran for Pharr mayor this spring, losing to Ambrosio “Amos” Hernandez, M.D., his job was taken over by Anali Alanis who told the mayor and city commission Monday that she was leaving her position effective July 1.
No internal problems, she said, she just wanted some personal/family time to herself.
The city commission thanked her for her service, and now it’s in need of a new administrative leader.
Still, it takes some time to digest: Pharr’s interim city manager and city attorney both gone.
Rigney vs. Wylie
They used to work together well, City Attorney Patricia Rigney and Deputy City Manager Ed Wylie, including his time spent as interim city manager. Then they didn’t.
The friendship break came out in written format in late September 2021 when Rigney wrote a letter to the mayor and commissioners, explaining her supposed problem with Wylie.
Number one, she wrote the commission, she had had a meeting with HR approximately four weeks prior, which included the presence of one assistant city manager (presumably Alani Alanis), to address the issue: too much sexual innuendo and unprofessional conduct on the part of Wylie. In fact, Rigney wrote, that last meeting had been her fourth attempt in the presence of two city administrators to change his behavior.
What did she get in return, she asked. Retaliation by Wylie to the point of keeping her entirely outside the sphere of influence even though she is city attorney.
“He has insulted and demeaned other directors and staff,” Rigney wrote. “This must stop. His actions towards me are clearly retaliation. Other employees have been suspended or terminated for less than what Edward Wylie has done,” wrote Rigney.
A year after Rigney wrote her letter to the commission, Wylie was moved to deputy city manager, and Alanis named as his replacement, interim city manager.
The reason given at the time — Wylie didn’t live in Pharr, and according to the city charter, a Pharr city manager must live in Pharr. Alanis, however, was a city resident.
The final break between them, though, Rigney and Wylie, presumably based on Rigney writing a formal letter to the mayor and city commission, produced some more fractures inside city hall after it became public information.
For Wylie, last January (2023), early February was no doubt the worst month in terms of stress, one would think, anxiety, because that’s when two local media outlets (The Progress- Times and The Monitor) each published a story about a Pharr city employee (neither newspaper story named Rigney) who had written that letter of complaint against Wylie back in September 2021. The one that contained all of the salacious parts. The city had tried to shield the written letter from requests for public information, claiming it contained “sensitive” information (the name of the complainant).
Indeed, Pharr asked for an opinion from the Texas AG, who eventually ruled with the requestor: the information (Rigney’s complaint) is indeed public info. The city will, however, redact the name of the complainant.
This all took place during the start of “Amos” Hernandez’s third campaign this spring for mayor, which again proved successful, but the Rigney-Wylie stories were relentless to a degree.
The city sued the AG, arguing that the AG’s ruling contained some ambiguity, but someone messed up along the way — one of the city’s outside attorneys somehow, some way, attached Rigney’s original letter of complaint to the lawsuit, making it public and relatively easy to then access.
So there the letter was with all of its accusations made against Wylie, with most of the salacious alleged comments and memes made by him, directed at Rigney, speaking about her looks, etc. talk of a bikini. The sort of stuff, as a guy with a family, would make you want to pull the curtains and shut off the cell.
For his part, Wylie had to suck it up, because there was no way he could tell his side of the story. No way for him to rebut what Rigney had written to the commission, and besides, she was escaping most attention since the two published media stories (The Monitor, The Progress- Times) kept her name confidential. Unless someone was in on the know inside city hall, no one could tell who the complainant was. The heaping on upon Wylie’s head continued. Those who didn’t like the guy traded around the news stories that included the salacious texts from him to Rigney with their lewd innuendo, but nothing from her to him, and some people who knew her said she was no weak sister. She could give as good as she got, and Wylie and Rigney had always joked like that until she wanted him gone. At least that’s what the Wylie supporters were saying off camera, so to speak.
Letter Made Public
The actual letter that Rigney had written to the mayor and the city commission got on a Facebook page known for taking regular swipes at the mayor and some on the commission. Whoever administers the page got a copy of the original Rigney complaint against Wylie, dated Sept. 28, 2021, and posted it online May 17. Now it is simply not available for public view. Don’t know why. Someone complained? Who knows.
That sexual-harassment allegation had hounded the mayor, as already mentioned, but it also hounded Wylie, who by April had already decided the whole city hall/media drama was no longer worth the hassle of staying at a job he loved, working as a full-time city employee, which had dated back to 1994.
Presumably working with Rigney on a daily basis, with the public allegations that he had sexually harassed her still thick in the air, was too much. Hard to say. Wylie never gave a solid reason for his decision to retire in April.
A month later, however, May 2023, the city hired him as a consultant with a two-year contract worth approximately half of what he was making as interim city manager and deputy city manager.
That bit of news was also used on social media to claim dysfunction inside city hall, not to mention some alleged insider cozy deal. The mayor’s detractors were having a field day at his expense. Still, he won reelection as the city’s mayor for the third time.
Last but not least about the Rigney-Wylie sex-harassment claim: The city did conduct an outside investigation (third-party attorney) into Rigney’s sexual- harassment complaint against Wylie, but couldn’t uncover all there was to see because both of them mainly communicated with one another via their private cells, not their work phones, which the city couldn’t access without their approval.
Wylie reportedly said he might be willing to give the city access to his private cell, all of the texts between them, as long as Rigney did the same, which wasn’t the case. She allegedly declined, and so then did Wylie.
Case closed?