San Benito CISD board member Orlando Lopez complained because the district hired an attorney to look into the media coverage of the district. He complained that the board was “using taxpayer money to pay a lawyer to scrutinize the district’s news coverage.” Apparently the Valley Morning Star contacted Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas to get her opinion on this.
What a hypocrite he is! Wasn’t he president of the board when then-Superintendent Nate Carman hired the law office of Thomas G. Rayfield and boycotted the use of the San Benito News by any department in the district for “defamatory statements published in the SBN April 24-30, 2020 regarding Dr. Nate Carman and the SBCISD?”
Where was Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, when Carman hired these attorneys to send cease-and-desist letters in 2020 to the San Benito News for its coverage of the district’s questionable decisions? From the VMS story, “In nearly 10 years as the foundation’s director, she said she had never come across a case in which public officials hired a lawyer to monitor news coverage. “I have not heard of a public entity hiring an attorney to scour stories looking for problems.”
Well, Kelley, you will be receiving this letter and all the evidence of Carman and President Orlando Lopez’s dealings with attorneys to end business with the San Benito News in order to force the newspaper to stop investigating and writing stories about that former board’s nefarious activities.
Let’s recall the headline in the August 31, 2020 San Benito News, which reads,” SBCISD Carman Threaten S.B. News with Libel Lawsuit.” The story continues, “Ed.’s Note: True to form, just as the board members of the SBCISD have limited public comment only to items on their agenda, its lawyers have now put the SB News on notice that they will be sued for libel if the board and administration think they have published information they believe is unfair to them and to the district and its administration and staff. … And were the lawyers acting on behalf of the entire board when they fired off the missive? Transparency has never been this board’s forte. Did Supt. Nate Carman and the board instruct the lawyers to write the demand letter and threaten it with the lawsuit? Was there a vote to do this? Attorneys for the San Benito CISD have demanded that the San Benito News and its corporate parent New Horizon Publishers ‘Cease and Desist’ allegedly libeling the district and its Supt. Nate Carman or face a libel suit.”
So, when he had the majority on the board, did Orlando think it was OK to hire lawyers to limit and stop news coverage at taxpayers’ expense? Of course he did. And for more than a year, the SB News received no advertising or news stories from the district. Does Orlando remember this, because the public does.
Wait until Shannon reads this letter to the editor and sees all the clippings of the events leading up to it!
Not only did the board, when Orlando was president, hire attorneys with taxpayer money to threaten a local newspaper investigating the decisions of the district, which is the obligation of any newspaper, but the board also voted to limit public comment and at one point even eliminated it altogether.
I suspect Lopez is getting very bad advice from his business associates in Hidalgo County who also have advertising deals with the former majority on the board, and it was they who referred him to a state organization where Orlando supplied them and VMS with only half the story. Unfortunately, Orlando, that is called lying. Wait until Kelley finds out she was used by you and the VMS to make comments based on your half-truths. Maybe she will send down an investigator to dig up all the rest of your half-truths and questionable acts?
Tomas Montemayor lives in San Benito.
