Judge Yahara Lisa Gutierrez, El Paso Times darling, was just elected to be the presiding judge of the 65th Judicial District Court. She unseated long time Judge Fred (Alfredo) Chavez. Judge Chavez was well known for not playing favorites. In fact, he was one of the few judges who was truly independent. He made his calls despite the clamoring in the press (which often gets the facts wrong) and without regard for who the lawyers were. He once basically told Texas state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh where to go. He would take his time on a case and consult the law. He was respectful to all litigants and people loved to go before him. His court, the 65th handled all juvenile cases, all CPS cases, 1/3 of the family law cases and, at one time, it also had a criminal docket. Judge Chavez gave up the criminal docket many years ago.

Judge Yahara Lisa Gutierrrez, who had been a long time employee of County Attorney Jose Rodriguez, friend of Eliot Shapleigh, ran against Judge Chavez last primary election and won. She ran while still in the employ of Jose Rodriguez as a prosecutor. She ran on the platform that Judge Chavez had been sanctioned for keeping alcohol in his chambers (which many of the judges do and so what?) and that he had not tended to his family law docket. Her contention was that the families of El Paso needed a judge who would not neglect their family law matters. It sounded so good to so many people.

What Judge Gutierrez and the El Paso Times failed to tell the voters while they were clobbering Judge Chavez for keeping a decanter of liquor in his chambers was that then candidate Gutierrez had actually been ARRESTED for DWI. According to police records, then assistant county attorney Ms. Gutierrez was traveling approximately 90 per hour, early in the morning on I-10 by the Sunland Park exit. The police pulled her over. She smelled like alcohol. She told the police she was unemployed. They asked why she had a bunch of cards in her purse that said she was an assistant county attorney if she was unemployed. The police say Gutierrez said that she had worked as a clerk (not as a lawyer) in that office but that she no longer had a job. Gutierrez was in fact employed as a lawyer by the County Attorney's Office at the time of her arrest. Her mug shot from that arrest is so fantastic it should be held up as the classic DWI mugshot; she sported the tosseled hair, lazy eyes, smirk and all. The Diario of El Paso ran a front page article, with the mug shot, on Gutierrez' arrest entitled, "Candidate for Judge may have lied to the Police."

The El Diario should run a new article that reads, "Judge may have lied to Voters."

One of Judge Guiterrez' first acts in office (remember she was sworn in in early January 2009, just thirty or so days ago) was to transfer (unload, dump, abandon) her entire family law docket to the 171st District Court. "Taking care of your family matters" to Judge Guiterrez means dumping them on another judge. Did you as a voter think when she was giving her stump speeches and the El Paso Times was trumpeting her platform that when Gutierrez said she wanted your family matters to be taken care of that she was actually going to do it herself? Is that what you believed? What do you think now?

It takes a tremendous amount of gall and guile to tell the voters that your opponent is bad because he is "slow" with the family docket and that you should be elected, that you will speed things up, that you will roll up your sleeves and get cracking, only to take the bench and before two weeks have passed transfer that same family docket out to another court. But then it also takes a lot of gall and guile to cast stones at a judge for keeping alcohol in his chambers, which is not against the law, when you yourself have been arrested for Drunken Driving. --And yes, Judge Gutierrez' DWI charges did go away, not enough evidence or something like that was the reason.

Who do you have to thank for this? Answer: The El Paso Times. They destroyed Judge Chavez day after day, article after article, all the while leaving out who and what Yahara Gutierrez is-including the fact that she just recently got around to becoming a US citizen. So the next time you write out your check for your subscription to the El Paso Times, keep in mind that keeping that newspaper afloat and reading its contents is the equivalent of bombing the court house and giving yourself a lobotomy before you go into the voting booth.

This is just a short post to let you know that this is my new website. I will be posting soon!

This week El Pasoans witnessed a particularly brutal attack on El Paso County Judge Anthony Cobos once again from the ink droppings of Charlie Edgren, et. al., who sits on the editorial board of the El Paso Times.-Read on because I will tell you a true story from the mouth of a friend of Charlie Edgren about Charlie Edgren.

For quite some time now, Charlie Edgren has been able to pass himself off as respectable, honest and as a "fiscal conservative." I am not really sure how he has achieved this. He has written editorials on how we need to tighten our belts and then he turns around and savages the few representatives we have who consistently oppose higher taxes. For example, is Edgren for the plan known as "Stealing of Private Land Downtown to be Developed by the Friends and Family Members of Joyce Wilson and City Rep Beto O'Rourke at Tax Payer Expense" or is he against it and therefore supports the lonely voices of Eddie Holguin, Melina Castro and Rachel Quintana? Because if Charlie Edgren, the respectable, the honest and the fiscal conservative is against the above plan to steal private land, why is he so hateful toward the three city reps just mentioned who are against the plan? Or does Edgren just tell his friends out of the side of his mouth that he is really for the wretched, overburdened taxpayer and against the plan but that he just PRETENDS to be otherwise in print because he writes what the powers that be tell him to write so that he can keep his pitiful job at his dying and decaying newspaper because he is that hard up?

What I am about to tell you is a true story. Last year, around this time, a friend of Charlie Edgren's called my friend and supporter Stuart Leeds and asked Stuart if he could arrange a lunch so that the three of us could get together and talk about the DA's race. This friend is an attorney and very aware of the systemic problems with the DA's office and with Esparza. The three of us met at Cafe Central. The friend said that he knew Charlie Edgren very, very well and that I should get him on board. The friend said that he had told Edgren all about the DA's offices' problems and that Edgren said that he knew there needed to be a change at that office.

I said that I did not want the likes of Charlie Edgren or his paper connected to my campaign and that in fact Edgren had already written a critical piece about me alleging, without citing any law or code of ethics, that I had been unethical in buying up domain sites such as Jaime Esparza.com and having them linked to my campaign website. I went on to say to Charlie's friend that in my opinion, Charlie Edgren had worked at the El Paso Times way too long to be respectable in my book and that given all the corruption in this town and lives wasted by the hands of my opponent Edgren was nothing but scum to write such a piece about me. And that now in light of the fact that Edgren had information directly from the mouth of his old friend on how bad DA Esparza's office is and how Edgren agreed in private that Esparza needed to go, Edgren and his piece on me were all the worse.

The friend then said the following, "Charlie told me he wrote that piece on you because they made him do it."

"They made me do it." "They made him do it." What do you think of a person who does bad things because "they made him do it?" I hear this lame language and I cannot help but wince thinking of the many examples of human beings who have gone to their deaths because they refused to do bad things, even at the end of the barrel of a gun. How many people sit in cold dank cells across the earth because they refuse to do bad things. How many people? How many brave souls?

So when you read anything penned by Charlie Edgren about anyone you really have to wonder, "did they make poor Charlie do it." Or was Charlie's friend lying about that? I personally believe Charlie's friend. I believe that Charlie told his friend "they made me do it." What I don't know is whether or not Charlie lied to his friend when he said they made him do it. Did "they" or didn't "they" make him do it? But who cares which way it is? Anyone who would say that shouldn't be trusted with a shovel to dig a ditch let alone with a seat on the editorial board at the only English daily newspaper in town. And why would we as a society and as individuals ever think that a grown man could use that as an excuse anyway? True or not true.

Anthony Cobos can defend himself. He used to vote right on tax issues. His current legal woes have left him so vulnerable and crippled that I can no longer trust him. He sure voted badly when he voted to keep El Paso County Medical Examiner Paul Shrode on eventhough he had lied on his resume. Cobos is so afflicted with criminal allegations that he is afraid to do the right thing and challenge District Attorney Esparza and Esparza's friend and ally and El Paso Times darling, commissioner Veronica Escobar. Cobos also is not intellectually or educationally equipped to combat his enemies. Having said that, it is hard to watch the likes of Charlie Edgren, who is also no mental giant, take his low life shots at Cobos and others, not allow them a response, and then cower behind the locked doors of his rag of a newspaper and not recount to you what Charlie's old friend had to say about him.

Here is a letter I have written to the head of the screening division at the District Attorney's office. His name is John Davis. Mr. Davis is named in the Brandon Moon lawsuit for various alleged ethical violations that resulted in Mr. Moon spending years of his life in prison for a rape he did not commit. (See blogs on Moon) While I know that the import of my letter and the ethical problems laid out in the letter will mean nothing to Mr. Davis (he is Jaime Esparza's right hand man) maybe a grand jury will feel differently.

What you should also keep in mind as you read this letter is that the prosecutor in question, Allic Sahualla, has a few months on the job and look how he is already viciously and vindictively wielding his power, power that you the public have given to him. Can you imagine this guy unchecked in two/three years. Jaime Esparza is growing an army of more Jaime Esparza's. I have decided to publish this letter to my readers so that they can see what we put up with from Esparza's DA's office every day of the week and so that people like Mr. Sahualla, who make the decisions that they do, get the full public credit for those decisions.--For my client's privacy, I have referred to her as Jane Doe.

November 21, 2008

Mr. John Davis
Head of the Screening Unit
District Attorney’s Office
500 E. San Antonio, TX 79901

Re: Jane Doe


Dear Mr. Davis:

I represent Ms. Jane Doe. Ms. Doe was set for trial on XXX, 2008 in County Criminal Court at Law No. One, on all three of her cases. One of those cases involves an allegation regarding my client’s 15 year old daughter. When I arrived for jury docket call on jury trial day, assistant district attorney Allic Sahualla told me that he wanted to dismiss the cases but that he wanted to make sure that that was ok with the daughter/victim. He said he had not been able to get a hold of her. He said that the cases should be dismissed. He also had not subpoenaed the daughter/victim and trial was that day. He told me that if I brought the victim/daughter in and he could confirm that a dismissal was ok with her, he would dismiss the cases.

I then sent my client to go get her daughter out of school and to bring her to court to talk to Mr. Sahualla. Mother and daughter returned about an hour later. I was present for the interview. Mr. Sahualla started grilling the daughter on details in the police report. The daughter told him three times that everyone was in bed when the police arrived and not as recounted by the police in their report. (You should know that what the police did to that family that night was a travesty. The grandmother called me at home, late and hysterical over the police abuse of her daughter and granddaughter. And keep in mind that the police arrested this very same daughter/victim that night and hauled both her and her mother off.)--After listening to Mr. Sahualla interrogate the daughter on the police report, I took over the questioning and asked the daughter if her mother had assaulted her in any way and she said, “No.” I asked her if she wanted to press charges against her mother and she said, “No.” I asked her if she wanted the cases against her mother to be dismissed and she said, “yes.” She and I then left the room.

Mr. Sahualla followed me into the court room and told me, “Now, I am not going to dismiss the cases.” I then overheard him telling the judge in her chambers in a conversation I was not invited to, that he was going to send the cases back to screening to be felonized. These were the same cases that one hour before this same prosecutor, Mr. Sahualla, was going to dismiss because he thought they were stupid and he even said so. Now he wants to felonize them. This is the very definition of vindictive prosecution. Why? The answer is because Mr. Sahualla was angry with me. And a prosecutor’s anger does not probable cause make, especially when the complainant has just told you three different times that no crime had occurred and especially when this same prosecutor had not subpoenaed this essential witness for trial that day. He didn’t care about the cases and as a result was not prepared to try them. He never intended to try them.

Mr. Sahualla advised the court yesterday that all three cases had been sent to screening to be felonized but that two had been sent back and would stay misdemeanors and the third is sitting in your screening unit. I guess even your unit could see there were no felonies on at least two. Why couldn’t Mr. Sahualla see that? He is a lawyer. Or is he blinded and struck dumb by dishonesty and rage?

Should my client’s case(s) be taken before a grand jury, please give them this letter. The grand jury needs to know that the case(s) was going to be dismissed outright at the misdemeanor level but that an immature, and possibly unethical prosecutor is letting his anger and ego and personal animosity toward me get the better of him and that that is why the case(s) is before them as a grand jury. It is a fact that Mr. Sahualla was going to dismiss the cases before he lost his temper with me. It is a fact that he had not subpoenaed the victim for trial, and trial was that morning and he had no intentions of trying the case. Mr. Sahualla even had the dismissals filled out and ready to go before he spoke to my client’s daughter. I saw the dismissal forms sitting in the files, and they better still be there as they are evidence. The grand jury may want to call Mr. Sahualla as a witness to ask him for the dismissals and why he now thinks that they should consider charging a citizen with a felony when he thought the cases were unworthy of prosecution at even a misdemeanor level. I certainly intend to call Mr. Sahualla as a witness for trial before a petit jury. The jury needs to hear about this.

Please put this letter in the file and show it to any reviewing authority.

Sincerely,



Theresa Caballero

This is a blog about Edmund Archuleta's Half a Million Dollar a year "public servant" taxpayer paid salary. Mr. Archuleta is the head of the El Paso Water Utility, aka the Public Service Board (PSB). The El Paso Water Utility is one of the wealthiest water utilities in the nation holding about 28,000 acres of land. It sits in one of the poorest counties in the country and he who controls the water utility controls the price and development of land. The PSB is a division of the city, regardless of what anyone says. Ed Archuleta has been the manager of the water utility for over 20 years now. Under his reign, we have seen El Paso become an oven hot, cemented in nightmare, and water rates have become so high people are afraid to take baths. I haven't even touched on the fraud that is Ed Archuleta's monument to himself at taxpayer expense, our multi-million dollar desalination plant that is operating at less than 1% capacity.

The politics of water is just that, Politics. When Ray Caballero was mayor, he declared, with the full support of Ed Archuleta, a drought and decreed that no one could water their yard for more than 2 hours a WEEK! This was really an effort to control the price of land and its development disguised as "drought control." Several months later, Caballero lost his bid for re-election against Joe Wardy. Joe Wardy took office and lifted the watering ban. And then lo and behold Ed Archuleta did a complete volte-face and declared that there was enough water until the second coming of Christ. And not one drop of rain had fallen.

Recently, Archuleta has gone to city council and asked that they impose an "impact fee" which would be a tax added to the price of a new home. This in turn would make it harder for first time home owners to get a home. This in turn would mean that fewer homes would be built meaning fewer people working. El Paso ratepayers also have to pay a new storm water fee to pay for water run off. This fee/tax has amounted to thousands of dollars a month for many businesses. Some of these businesses have laid off employees to make ends meet.

Below is an analysis of Ed Archuleta's employment contract done by a friend of mine. Archuleta's salary and benefits add up to over HALF A MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR not to mention what he has cost the El Paso taxpayers in business with his monkey business. Keep in mind that while Archuleta suffers from delusions of grandeur and calls himself a "CEO" like he is some Wall Street tycoon, he is in fact a government employee charged with running a water utility and serving the people of El Paso. Also keep in mind that very few people in the private sector in El Paso make this kind of money and the average citizen has to choose between grass for his/her kids and keeping the lights on, thanks to Ed Archuleta--I have appeared, to no avail, over the years at City Council and the PSB asking that Archuleta be fired. The reasons are too numerous to list here. Archuleta's actual contract will be posted by Martin later on today.

The total value of Archuleta's contract is $2,032,000 for 4 years of work, which comes to:

$508,000 per year.

(Math):
Annual numbers:
$225,000 base
$50,000 bonus
$50,000 additional
$32,000 annually to city pension account
$20,000 annually to 401(a) retirement account
$6,000 annual car allowance
(insurance and other fringe benefits not calculated)
$383,000 total (each year from July, 2007-July, 2011)

X 4 years
$1,532,000
+
$50,000 annual deferred compensation each July, 2012-2021 (years not under contract for any services)
$500,000 (10 years of pay)

X 10 years
$500,000
=
$2,032,000
/ 4 years

$508,000 per year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Red Oak Consulting is the "expert" Archuleta hired to do a wage survey to justify this latest increase for the board. Red Oak as you will remember is also the "expert" Archuleta hired to justify the illegal storm water fee and the illegal impact fee that the PSB approved--obviously if you do what Archuleta says, you get to be paid a lot of public money and declare yourself an "expert" on all subjects!

Red Oak's "wage survey" includes comparisons of "CEOs" from 8 "other" entities. They are the following:

Denver Water--has 1,115,000 ratepayers compared to 188,000 at EPWU, however their manager has a base salary of about 60% of Archulettas ($225,396 base, no bonus and 3% 401(k) match vs. Archuletta's $508,000)
El Paso Electric--a publicly-traded, privately-owned corporation that has nothing to do with public utility comparison. Still, their manager makes $500,000/year but has almost twice the ratepayers (350,000 compared to 188,000) as EPWU and an operating budget that is 10 times larger ($800 million for EPE vs. $77 million for EPWU)
Louisville Water Co.--Has over 4 times as many customers (810,000 ratepayers vs. 188,000 for EPWU) and Louisville manager gets paid $185,000/year plus an $18,500 bonus. Curiously, Louisville Water is able to serve 4 times more customers than EPWU with about half the employees (450 vs. 800 for EPWU)
Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Water Co.--Close to the same customer amount (165,000 vs. 188,000 for EPWU) and their manager makes the reasonable sum of $134,000/ year. Their manager also gets a 5% bonus ($6,700 annually) and a 3% COLA increase every year. Again, Albuquerque is able to serve about 88% of the ratepayers with 69% of the employees (550 vs. 800 for EPWU)
Miami-Dade Water & Sewer--Their manager makes "between a range of $138,049-$244,913," presumably a heavily-incentive laden contract. He gets a $1,500 additional annual bonus, plus a little more than $10,000/year for insurance and deferred compensation. Miami-Dade has 330,000 customers for sewer and 412,000 for water compared to 188,000 for EPWU. Miami-Dade also has an operating budget of $425 million annually compared with $77 million annually for the EPWU. Miami is the most expensive city to live in the southern half of the United States, east of the Mississippi.
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission--I read this and figured THEY MUST BE KIDDING TRYING TO COMPARE US TO SAN FRANCISCO!!!!! Aside from having one of the highest costs of living in the United States (the median home price there was $847,000 in 2007 when this contract was signed vs. $132,000 for El Paso in 2007), SAN FRANCISCO PUC ALSO HAS 2,400,000 CUSTOMERS COMPARED TO 188,000 AT EPWU!!!! .....but guess what, ARCHULETA STILL MAKES MORE THAN THE SAN FRANCISCO MANAGER! $508,000 vs. $251,166!!!
San Antonio Water System--415,000 customers vs. 188,000 for EPWU and their manager makes $275,000 (no bonuses) vs. Archuleta's $508,000.
Greater Cincinatti Water Works--Close (20% more) customer base (235,000 vs. 188,000 for EPWU) and their manager makes the reasonable sum of $132,804 (no bonus). Also has fewer employees (637 vs. 800 for EPWU) to serve 20% more customers.

Also of note, Archuleta's prior contract was renewed by the PSB by then El Paso mayor Ray Caballero and the PSB on May 14, 2003--AFTER Caballero had lost the election miserably to Joe Wardy, literally days before Wardy took office at Caballero's last PSB meeting. The prior contract was set to expire in December of 2003, but Caballero extended it to December of 2005, not allowing Wardy the opportunity (as every other mayor had) to review and either extendmodify,or cancel the agreement with Archuleta. The contract was renewed twice by Cook and the current PSB, once on July 1, 2005--shortly after Cook took office and then on July 1, 2007 Cook and this PSB agreed to this hum-dinger of a contract we have now. It should also be noted that when he had the opportunity as mayor and sitting at the head of the PSB, Mayor Wardy failed to fire Ed Archuleta. (He was too busy being a big shot, attending West side wine and cheese parties, taxing El Pasoans to pay for the White elephant the Plaza Theatre and imposing a city manager form of government on us.)

It's all too hard to believe that this PSB could look at this "wage survey report" and come to the conclusion that Archuleta was UNDER-paid in 2007 and voted to give him this kind of a raise. He makes more than double the city manager makes at the entity that creates and owns the EPWU and all its assets. More evidence that the PSB is allowed to operate in a closet here, while all the media just passes by and looks the other way. The median HOUSEHOLD (most "households" in El Paso have more than one wage earner) income here is $37,700. It is criminal that Archuleta makes MANY TIMES that amount. I'm sure in this "study" Red Oak tried to find some of the highest paid managers of municipally-owned water utilities in the country--and if true, Archuleta tops them all! This is the kind of alleged public corruption that should truly be investigated.

Note: The press does not report on these things because the reporters utimately hope to be hired on at these government agencies as their spokesperson. Christina Montoya of Channel 9, KTSM, just got a job at the PSB as its spokesperson. The media and the press walk hand in hand in this muck. There should be rules of ethics preventing any member of the press from getting a job with a public entity for a certain number of years. Maybe then they'll do their job and report on this kind of abuse instead of covering it up and then asking for a job from them. Shame on Christina Montoya who was at 9, KTSM, for years and boasts that she made editorial decisions on what stories they would cover and which ones they would not. And we wonder why we are where we are.