Former city rep. accuses mayor of withholding ballpark bonds report

Former City Rep. Ann Morgan Lilly is urging the public not to rush to judgement against City Manager Tommy Gonzalez and she criticized Mayor Oscar Leeser and the current council.

“As it stands, the mayor and council are not legislating or focusing on implementing projects important to the community’s future. This is unhealthy and not good government,” Lilly wrote in a letter published in the El Paso Times.

The former city rep., who termed out of office last summer, accused Leeser and City Attorney Sylvia Firth of withholding critical information from the city council.

“The mayor and city attorney deliberately withheld the Braden report on the bond sale even though it would have shed light on all actions and could have avoided the pressure to change financial advisers.”

Lilly did not return calls seeking comment.

The report Lilly referenced was prepared by the city’s bond counsel, Norton Rose Fulbright, and was publicly released late last year after ABC-7 asked for it through an open records request. The firm prepared the report in the fall of 2013 at the request of Leeser to show what led to the delay in the sale of the ballpark bonds, which landed the city with an unfavorable financing deal.

The report shows former City Manager Joyce Wilson purposely delayed the sale of the ballpark bonds for the 2013 mayoral election, demonstrating the bad ballpark financing deal was not the fault of the city’s financial adviser, First Southwest.

Gonzalez has been scrutinized for authorizing the search for a new financial adviser at the suggestion of City Rep. Larry Romero during a public meeting without a vote from council directing the move. Gonzalez has said he believed the entire council wanted the search because none of them objected to Romero’s suggestion and had in private before expressed concern over the handling of the ballpark bonds by First Southwest.

“Had we known the whole story this would have been cleared up a long time ago,” City Rep. Michiel Noe said on “ABC-7 Xtra” last month.

Noe said the city attorney briefed the council on the Norton Rose Fulbright report but only skimmed over the information and did not give copies to the city representatives. He said he was unaware Wilson had delayed the sale of the ballpark bonds, despite the briefing.

“We were told part of the story apparently what they thought we needed to know,” Noe said.

City officials said Tuesday that Leeser was out of town and unavailable for comment, but Firth has before told ABC-7 she thoroughly briefed the council on the findings of the report and also spoke about it publicly in a council meeting. She said she didn’t give the council members copies of the report out of concern they would leak it to the media. Firth said the report was not publicly released before because it contained classified and sensitive information about ballpark contracts during construction protected under attorney-client privilege. She said those issues were moot once ABC-7 requested the document last month because the ballpark construction has been finished.

In her letter, Lilly also accused Leeser of trying to make Wilson look bad.

“This and other external audits were an effort on the part of the mayor and some council members to discredit the previous administration,” Lilly wrote.

Leeser has publicly said it was “unfortunate” that the decision was made to delay the ballpark bonds but has not openly criticized Wilson. When asked in December about the intent for the report, Leeser said, “It kind of spurred my mind. I want to ask more questions. I want to see what happened. And why we did what we did and that’s why I asked Ms. Wilson and I said I want you to give me a report and she was very honest and gave us a report and a timeline.”