85% OF THE JOB IS BEING THERE, ANGELA BURTON

By Juan Montoya
What happens if you don't show up for work two days in a row?
In most cases, the employer will tell you not to let the door hit you on the butt on your way out.
In the case of the Cameron County Workforce Commission, two absences and you're out.
Well, guess what, at least five out of the 25-member board is now in that precarious situation and facing ejection from the job-training and child-care services dispensing board overlooking a $21 million budget.
The WC has had two meeting since the beginning of the year and Brownsville Chamber of Commerce Chief Executive Director Angela R. Burton has missed both of them.
Burton was just appointed by Mayor Tony Martinez on September 25, 2012, to fill the term that started July 1, 2012, and ends June 30, 2016. Now, Martinez is said to be a stickler for meeting attendances, although he has been known to cancel meetings when he can''t make it, which is often, as we hear.
Will he crack the whip on Absent Angie? Or will his Catholic faith induce him to practice forgiveness to this wayward child?
Others include  Eddie B. Long, the Business Manager/Financial Secretary for the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 823 located in Harlingen, appointed by Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos; Sandy Lee Galvan,  Brownsville owner of Baby Belle Toys and More dba Santana's Wigs & Hair Extensions, appointed by former Brownsville mayor Pat Ahuamda; Marcos Cardoza, Treasurer, Lion's Club  located in Brownsville, Texas, also by Ahumada; and Erendira Torres Tejada , a Early Head Start Director, also appointed by Cascos.
With unemployment in Cameron County in the double digits and retraining seen as one of the few ways to make local workers competitive in the job market, we would think that someone with a stake in the game to offer interested industries a competent workforce, Burton would be champing at the bit to be there when it counts.
Alas, perhaps the border buttermilk receptions proved too much of a distraction, or the Mr. Amigo festivities entice too much with the taquitos de ojo for Angela to tear herself from her cheerful duties to the drudgery of uplifting the skills of the local workforce and providing child care to single mothers and working families?
On Thursday, when the Workforce board meets for its monthly meeting, will the commission stick by its attendance rules, or just shrug it off with a nod and a wink?