EDINBURG — An Edcouch alderman’s fight to prevent his removal from the city council took a substantial hit Wednesday after a lengthy injunction hearing before state District Judge Fernando Mancias.
Edcouch Place 5 Alderman Lorenzo “Lencho” Cabrera took the city to court in May when he filed for a temporary restraining order to prevent the council from considering his removal.
Cabrera filed for the TRO after seeing that his removal had been placed on the agenda without explanation.
But it was that lack of explanation — and a concession made by his attorney in court Wednesday afternoon — that means Cabrera’s fate on the council could be put up for a decision as soon as the next city council meeting next Thursday.
“Would that satisfy your concerns, Mr. Muñoz, if he provides that kind of due notice for the specifics?” Judge Mancias asked Cabrera’s attorney, Jonathon Muñoz, as the three-hour long hearing drew to a close.
Mancias was referring to an issue that Muñoz had spent a significant amount of time debating with Edcouch City Attorney Orlando “O.J.” Jimenez.
The argument centered over whether the city had given the alderman sufficient notice to prepare for his potential removal — whether the city had given Cabrera due process — after posting about his potential removal in meeting agendas using very generalized language.
“Discussion and Possible Action on Removal of Alderman Lorenzo “Lencho” Cabrera from the City of Edcouch Board of Alderman (sic),” stated copies of the agendas for the city’s April 21 and May 5 regular meetings.
That language deprived Cabrera of any idea why the city wanted to remove him from office, Muñoz argued, citing Sec. 22.077 of the Texas Local Government Code.
“The governing body may remove a municipal officer for incompetency, corruption, misconduct, or malfeasance in office after providing the officer with due notice and an opportunity to be heard,” the statute stated, in part.
Muñoz argued that the agenda captions were too vague to satisfy the law’s “due notice” requirements.
But Jimenez, the city’s attorney, argued that that section of the statute didn’t apply to Cabrera at all.
Instead, Edcouch had sought to remove the alderman under Sec. 22.009 after accusing him of misappropriating funds.
“A municipal officer who misappropriates money in a special fund created by the municipality… is guilty of malfeasance in office,” Sec. 22.009 stated, in part.
The malfeasance accusation goes back to a trip Cabrera — and other city officials — took to Austin for a Texas Municipal League conference in 2019. Edcouch issued checks to attendees for their per diem and travel expenses if they used their own vehicles to make the 300-mile drive.
Jimenez argued that the money qualified as coming from a “special fund” since it was specifically earmarked for travel.
Cabrera was one of the people who received a check, but officials allege he wasn’t entitled to the mileage reimbursement because he had traveled to the conference as a passenger in the assistant city manager’s car.
The discrepancy wasn’t noticed until last fall, when an unnamed employee reported the alleged misuse of funds to City Manager Victor Hugo de la Cruz during the course of a fiscal audit.
De la Cruz testified that he had attempted to contact Cabrera regarding returning the mileage money, which totaled less than $300.
He also testified that he first thought Cabrera may have allegedly kept the funds as an oversight rather than malfeasance.
But the sum soon became the center of a much larger spectacle. Within days, the issue had morphed from an oversight to very public allegations of theft by a public servant.
On Oct. 6, 2021, Cabrera was arrested. Shortly after, De la Cruz and Jimenez held a news conference about it.
Seven months later, the allegations spawned the city’s attempts to remove Cabrera, though that fact was not immediately clear at the time of the April 21 city council meeting.
At the time, neither the city manager nor the city attorney would speak about why Edcouch was pursuing Cabrera’s removal.
The meeting wound up being canceled after Cabrera and two other aldermen failed to show up. Instead, the city was hit with notice that the trio was suing Edcouch for failing to place items on the agenda — including an item to sever Jimenez’s legal services after he had submitted, then rescinded, a letter of resignation.
When Cabrera’s removal was again placed on the agenda for the May 5 meeting, he sought — and was granted — the TRO enjoining the city from taking any action against him. That TRO remained in effect until Wednesday’s hearing.
During the hearing, Cabrera testified that he felt the accusations, the criminal charges and removal attempts were all part and parcel of the same issue — retaliation for a shift in Edcouch’s political tides.
Cabrera and de la Cruz were once close companions — both inside and out of city hall — with De la Cruz previously characterizing their relationship as a friendship.
But, last fall, Cabrera shifted his political allegiances to support a slate of candidates who were seeking to unseat Mayor Virginio “Virgil” Gonzalez and two aldermen.
The three candidates faced their own battle after having to take Edcouch to court just to stay on the ballot.
They prevailed in court, but lost at the ballot box.
Cabrera, meanwhile, was arrested just before early voting began last October.
“It was politically motivated. As you can see at the date when they charged me for that theft charge two weeks prior to the election,” Cabrera testified.
“I wasn’t running, but he was constantly going to Facebook slandering me,” Cabrera further stated, referring to videos that de la Cruz often shared regarding political issues via Facebook Live streams.
In the end, much of the political context surrounding the events that led to the removal attempt had little bearing on Wednesday’s hearing.
Nor did the arguments Cabrera’s attorney made over whether his client had been given due process or which portion of the statute applied to the case.
That’s because, at a critical moment, Muñoz admitted his client would have been satisfied if the agenda caption had simply been more detailed.
“If they had told him, ‘Hey, we’re seeking your removal for malfeasance in office,’ for a particular reason, citing those theft charges, that’s all well and good,” Muñoz said.
“We have no issues moving forward having that specific language to satisfy his request,” Jimenez responded a few moments later.
At that, the judge seemed satisfied with the compromise — one that would leave Cabrera vulnerable to being ousted by the rest of the council.
“OK, why don’t you give me an order providing that he will be given due notice on the 22.077 with the specifics as to why you’re asking he be removed. And all the commission or aldermen can vote on it,” the judge said.
However, if the council does vote to remove him, Cabrera — who testified that he intends to seek reelection this November — most likely will not be allowed to do so thanks to the very law by which the council will have used to enact his removal.
“On the complaint of a person who has an interest in the affected funds, the officer shall be removed from office and is ineligible to hold any office in that municipality after removal,” reads Sec. 22.009 — the portion of the statute that Edcouch says applies to Cabrera.
But the mayor needs a majority of council votes for that to happen. Given that Cabrera is aligned with Aldermen Joel Segura and Roberto Gutierrez in separate litigation against the city regarding the placing of items on meeting agendas, it appears the mayor doesn’t have the votes to remove him.
