The Edinburg city council may be reconsidering giving voters the opportunity to choose whether or not to remove or suspend elected officials who are indicted on a felony.
The council is holding a special meeting Friday afternoon during which they’ll discuss whether to nix the upcoming special election that would let citizens decide whether to amend the city’s charter so that elected officials would be removed or suspended upon felony indictment.
By a 3 to 2 vote, the council voted to order the election in October after former Councilman Gilbert Enriquez pushed for the measure.
Enriquez is running for mayor against current Mayor Richard Molina who was previously indicted on 11 counts of illegal voting, a second-degree felony, and one count of engaging in organized election fraud, a first-degree felony.
While the amendment is not retroactive, it would affect Molina if he were re-elected in November and is still under felony indictment, according to Molina. Edinburg City Attorney Omar Ochoa did not return calls seeking comment.
Though he is challenging Molina for mayor, Enriquez insisted his motivations for supporting the amendment were not political.
“What this is, is a measure to bring back integrity to the city of Edinburg and hopefully allow more people, more qualified individuals, to seek a position of an elected office within the city of Edinburg,” Enriquez said. “I don’t see this as a political issue, I see this as a common sense issue. I mean, why would any taxpayer, citizen, constituent in the city of Edinburg want to have an indicted, a felony-indicted elected official representing them and the tax dollars?”
If the constituents were to reject the measure, Enriquez said, the council members wouldn’t have anything to worry about but urged them to give the citizens the opportunity to make that decision.
“And so, I’m very disappointed that Councilman Garcia would even bring this back,” Enriquez said, referring to Councilman Johnny Garcia who requested to place the item on the agenda for Friday’s special meeting.
When reached by phone on Thursday, Garcia said he would not be commenting on the issue.
“Tomorrow we have the meeting at noon and people can watch it,” Garcia said.
The special meeting will be held at the Edinburg city hall, located at 415 W. University Drive, at noon.
