Editorial in El Paso Times calls City Manager Gonzalez “unfit for job”

El Paso’s city manager is under fire again.

The fall out from an El Paso Times editorial has the Borderland talking, including El Paso city representatives.

ABC-7 went directly to them ahead of Wednesday’s meeting where the investigation into Tommy Gonzalez is expected to take center stage.

Both Gonzalez and Romero are linked to the controversy surrounding the search for the city’s new financial adviser, a job that almost went to Noe Hinojosa. Remember, Gonzalez authorized the process to search for a new financial adviser without a vote from council.

Turns out, City Rep. Romero had before recommended Hinojosa for the job but didn’t originally disclose they had worked together. Gonzalez says he thought council was unhappy with the current financial advisers. He said he didn’t know they were not to blame for a delay in the sale of the ballpark bonds, which cost the city $22 million.

That decision was made by former City Manager Joyce Wilson — something we uncovered through an open records request.

Also under scrutiny, the city’s street repair plan. In 2012, council approved $210 million in debt to pay for street repairs. But then ABC-7 obtained information that showed streets not on that list were resurfaced. Some of those streets in Romero’s district.

Those speed humps outside Cathedral High School were also suggested by Romero, although Romero and Gonzalez say they were responding to constituent concerns.

Answering a city-hired investigator, Gonzalez said he didn’t know the humps violated city policy, but the El Paso Times reports city engineers warned him of the violation..

Bob Moore, editor of the El Paso Times, is not shy about calling for action. Some may recall the Times editorial a few years ago asking for the resignation of the entire EPISD school board.

Now, Gonzalez finds himself under fire from the Times.

“One of our key areas of emphasis for our editorial board over the last four years has really been on good governance issues,” Moore said, explaining why the editorial calling Gonzalez “unfit for the job” was written after seeing his responses to questions in an ethics investigation. “When you look at the answers the city manager gave to those questions from the city investigator, it’s just chock full of blame, evasion and passing the buck to other city employees.”

Moore said the times editorial board believes that’s part of a bigger problem.

“Seeing those answers he provided I think really pointed to the last straw of this dysfunction in city government that we’re seeing,” Moore said, “where there’s no leadership on big projects and everybody is side tracked and everybody is paralyzed.”

Several council members declined comment on the editorial, pointing to Wednesday Ethics Commission and City Council meetings where Gonzalez’s responses will be discussed.

“I’m assuming everybody is innocent until proven guilty,” City Rep. Dr. Michiel Noe said, “so I’m going to wait for the final report to come out before I decide to act decisively on anybody.”

But others agreed with the editorial.

“Anything we bring forward, I always hear nothing but excuses and a lot of sidestep,” City Rep. Claudia Ordaz said of Gonzalez. “I never hear him take any responsibility for any of the issues brought forward.”

Moore added: “This is not just the El Paso Times speaking. I think when you talk to people throughout El Paso, there’s a lot of frustration over what they’ve been learning. There’s no rush to judgement here. The information has been out there for a long time.”

Moore also said city council and Mayor Oscar Leeser share responsibility for what he called a “failure” and in the opinion of the editorial board, “It’s up to them to fix it.”