District 3 city Rep. Emma Acosta said she has found the proof to clear up questions raised recently about where she lived in the months leading up to the special election to fill the City Council seat she won in 2008.

Acosta’s challenger in the May 9 elections, District 3’s former Rep. Jose Alexandro Lozano, has repeatedly charged that Acosta had not been living in the district for the required six months when she was elected.

As evidence, he has pointed to three job applications Acosta filed through the county’s Internet job line on Dec. 3, 2007 showing her address on Hockney Street in District 7.

If Acosta had been living on Hockney at that time, it might have meant she was not qualified to be elected as the District 3 representative because she had not lived in the district for the full six months.

Acosta bought a house on W.H. Burges Street on Nov. 2, 2007 and has insisted she moved in to the house immediately. That would mean she had lived in the district for six months and eight days by election day, May 10, 2008.

On Friday, Acosta said she was able to confirm through the county’s Information Technology Department that she had filled out a personnel profile in the county’s online system on Aug. 1, 2007.

So, she said, when she logged onto the county’s on-line job application site on Dec. 3 of that year and typed in the titles of the jobs she was interested in, the computer system automatically filled in the address and other blanks in the application forms with the information she had input four months earlier.

“I knew I had created a profile, but I didn’t remember when or how,” she said. “You can create it months in advance, and then, when you see a job opening, you just go in and type the name of the job and your name, and it fills everything in, your address, resume, everything.”

The document from the county came from an Information Technology Department programmer and appears to show her profile was originally created on the evening of Aug. 1, 2007.

Asked to comment on Acosta's assertion, Lozano declined to address it, saying, "I'm no longer interested in what you journalists say or gossip about."

The controversy over Acosta’s address is one of several issues that have arisen in the race that are not related to the larger questions arising in the city elections or the particular issues involving the two candidates themselves.

Evidence has surfaced that Lozano obtained copies of Acosta’s county job applications from County Judge Anthony Cobos, who has become involved in several city races.

Acosta has lodged an ethics complaint against Cobos for allegedly using county equipment for political purposes in obtaining copies of her job applications which Lozano has sought to use to challenge the legitimacy of her candidacy.

“I am disappointed that in light of the FBI investigation that’s going on in the county judge’s office with him being the target of the investigation that they are still using county resources for political purposes,” Acosta said.

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To reach David Crowder write to dcrowder@epmediagroup.com or call (915) 351-0605, ext. 30