MELLIE FUDGING THE LINE BETWEEN CITY, COUNTY TIME

By Juan Montoya
Remember the brouhaha that erupted when Melissa Zamora and Moses Sorola were trying to unseat former Brownsville City Commissioner Carlos Cisneros?
At the core of their charges against him was the fact that Cisneros – while on county time and on the payroll clock – was doing city business and that his boss John Wood was signing falsified time sheets indicating he was working for the county while he carried out city business.
That was one of the reasons – aside from a host of others – that led voters to oust Cisneros in the  runoff.
It was always debatable whether an elected city official should have been employed by another elected official, albeit with Cameron County. Inevitably, there arises the specter of a conflict of interest when issues pertaining to both entities arise.
The recent vote by the city commission to "donate" 71 acres of land to the UT System in an effort to entice the Regents to keep UTB in the downtown area  polarized local residents, with some saying it is a  necessary evil to give away public property to keep the "economic engine" of a university here while others say that one of the poorest communities in the state and nation should not have to give away its assets to have the oil-and-gas wealthy UT System do what it is supposed to do on its own.
Such is the case now that we have Zamora working for Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz as a sort of media liaison. Zamora – who actually made the motion to approve the donation – finds herself having to defend the critics who have cropped up on the Internet social pages.
The recent vote by the city commission to "donate" 71 acres of land to the UT System in an effort to entice the Regents to keep UTB in the downtown area  polarized local residents, with some saying it is a  necessary evil to give away public property to keep the "economic engine" of a university here while others say that one of the poorest communities in the state and nation should not have to give away its assets to have the oil-and-gas wealthy UT System do what it is supposed to do on its own.
But while the debate rages in the public arena and the blogosphere, no one expected that the comely commissioner would engage the critics on county time. Apparently, the line between city commissioner and county employee has been breached.
In a post submitted to a local Internet page, Melissa defends her actions as a city commissioner, apparently while she was working and getting paid by the county. The comments she made to that page are posted above.
The writer in the first snippet of the comment clearly states that she received the comment from Ms. Zamora at 4:29 p.m., a full half hour before the 5 p.m. closing time at the county. The, on the bottom part of the comment, she lists herself as the city commissioner for Pct. 3.
We don't know what freedoms or parameters of actions outside their duties the rest of the DA's employees have, but we would be willing to wager that participating in dialogue in the social pages is not one of the freedoms they enjoy, especially when they are on the clock with the county.
Ms. Zamora is listed as a "secretary" on the DA's salary schedule as Slot 85 and paid from the Fund 100-4750 commanding a $38,000 salary which is some $10,000 or more higher than the salary of other personnel also listed as "secretary."
There's no question that Mellie knows quite a bit more than the average secretary when it comes to the media being a senior account executive of a local promotions agency. But only a month or so into the job, it appears that the same line that is being fudged right now is one of the criticisms leveled against Cisneros way back then.
Are we on that slippery slope already?