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| NEWS > 24 April 2007 |
Other related articles:
Whistleblowers or Lamplighters
Snitch! Tattletale! Squealer! Aren’t these amongst the most loaded words from our childhood, words having terrible connotations and associations of being ostracized, negatively judged and being a bad friend?
I recently came across a small group of 13-year-old boys who got into trouble with their parents because another friend stole something (a cigar of all things) from a convenience store while they were waiting outside. They did not know he was going to do it and admonished him when he told them.
Later in the day, while the boys were still together, the cigar fell out of the bo... Read more
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 Article sourced from
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Monitor - McAllen,TX,USA
24 April 2007
This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.
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Ethics panel: McAllen violated
McALLEN — The long-fought war between the city and its largest police union wages on, even as Mayor Richard Cortez coolly declared victory Monday on at least one front.
Last week, a state ethics panel threw out a complaint from officers that claimed the city illegally used public funds to pay for advertisements attacking union officials.
According to the Texas Ethics Commission, McAllen did not violate state law by purchasing the ads.
“We knew that those were going to be the findings,” Cortez said. “We were never concerned about this.”
The decision ends a minor battle in the months-long dispute between the city and the union over officers’ payment packages and future contract negotiations. Since October, the sides have argued their cases in local media, lawsuits stuck in multiple courts and on the ballots for the city’s upcoming elections.
The fracas began with a series of three ads that appeared in The Monitor between December and January.
The first compared base pay for first-year police in several Rio Grande Valley cities and claimed McAllen officers received the most.
The second outlined a history of salary increases for the department over the past three years.
And the third took on union president Mike Zellers directly, comparing two apparently contradictory quotes on the police pay issue.
Officer David Ramos, a 29-year veteran of the McAllen Police Department, filed the complaint with the ethics panel in January with the support of union leadership.
But the Texas Ethics Commission refused to classify the ads as political, because they did not overtly advocate a stance on a particular issue, according the panel’s report
“The city used a loophole here,” Zellers said. “Technically, the ads may not have been political, but they were clearly going after officers.”
While Zellers expressed disappointment in the commission’s decision, its report did answer one remaining question surrounding the ads, he said — who paid for them.
Since they first appeared late last year, city leaders have been reluctant to identify their origins. Cortez said he had no direct knowledge of the ad campaign during a January interview.
But according to the panel’s report, the advertisements “were ordered by the (city) and paid for using public funds.”
City Attorney Kevin Pagan said Monday that an outside attorney developed the advertisements as part of a public relations campaign in response to the ongoing union dispute.
“I don’t think there’s ever been any question of who paid for the ads,” he said. “But it seemed pretty obvious to us that they weren’t political.”
BACK TO THE BATTLEFIELD
With one battle ended Monday, both sides quickly deployed their resources to other fronts.
City attorneys argued they had not exhausted all legal options at the Texas Supreme Court in a lawsuit over ballot language.
Union members seeking a charter amendment that would force future contract negotiations into binding arbitration sued the city earlier this month, claiming the wording the city proposed to put before voters was biased.
In March, a state district court judge agreed, ruling the propositions could not appear on the ballot in their current forms.
In response, the City Commission voted to pull the propositions off the May 12 ballot and appealed the decision to the state’s highest court — a decision that infuriated officers.
“They will do anything they can to stop this from going before the voters,” Zellers said.
But Pagan described continued discussion on the topic moot because the city has already received ballots from mail-in voters.
“This election is already out of the starting gate,” he said. “I don’t know what they expect us to do.”
A state district court has yet to hear arguments in another lingering lawsuit, in which Zellers claims city officials never intended to bargain with the union in the most recent rounds of contract negotiations. Cortez has vowed to appeal that case to the Texas Supreme Court, if necessary.
Buried under all these recent conflagrations lies the matter that started the conflict in the first place — an unresolved dispute over the officers’ latest contract.
On that issue, the city and the union may have finally found some common ground: This fight won’t be over any time soon.
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