Shapleigh Requests State Audit Of EPISD
EL PASO, TX – State Senator Eliot Shapleigh asked the state auditor to perform a financial audit of the El Paso Independent School District after the latest guilty plea in the FBI’s ongoing public corruption investigation.
Shapleigh made his request in a letter sent to State Auditor John Keel on Monday. “It is also our duty as Texas officials to ensure state funds and other resources have not been misused,” said Shapleigh.
EL Paso is in the midst of a public corruption investigation that has implicated several school district, county and private sector officials.
Last Friday, local architect Bernardo Lucero Jr. pleaded guilty in federal court to charges associated with fraudulent contract activities at EPISD. Lucero admitted to helping an elected official secure a $25,000 home improvement loan by providing false and fraudulent information to a federally insured financial institution, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. He also admitted to conspiring to provide services to an elected EPISD trustee in exchange for favors from the trustee on the part of his official capacity.
Court documents state Lucero worked on a $25,000 project at the home of Katherine E. Mena, the daughter of EPISD Trustee Sal Mena Jr. Mena has been implicated in the FBI’s investigation and his offices were raided by the federal agency in December of 2006.
Lucero’s firm was the lead designer of the new Harry S. “Hut” Brown Middle School on El Paso’s West Side, as part of a $207 million bond EPISD voters approved in 2003. The firm was also paid $343,526 for its work on the fine-arts addition at Riverside High School, as part of a $250 million bond YISD voters approved in 2004.
“Over the next few years, El Paso has key bond issues that must pass. Unless people trust public servants with public monies,” stated Shapleigh, “they will not vote to invest…so, now is the time to root out corruption to restore public trust.”
