Editor's note: Changes were made throughout this story in a rewritten version posted at 10 a.m. today

El Paso County Judge Anthony Cobos lost in court Monday on every significant issue he and his lawyers raised in a lawsuit to stop the county’s ethics commission from hearing an ethics complaint against Cobos.

City Rep. Emma Acosta filed the complaint against Cobos in April alleging that he violated the county’s code of ethics by using his office to obtain a job application she filled out in 2007 and then gave it to her challenger, Alexandro Lozano, to help him and hurt her.

Language in the county’s Ethics Code appears to declare such conduct unethical.

In all, Lozano used copies of the job applications Acosta filed electronically on the same day for three county jobs in December 2007 in an effort to convince voters that she had not lived in District 3 long enough to be elected in 2008’s special City Council election.

Judge Brock Jones, a retired state district judge from Ozona, sifted through the motions, testimony and arguments presented by five lawyers and, ruling by ruling, dismembered the case lawyers Stuart Leeds and Teresa Caballero presented for Cobos.

Jones ruled that Cobos’ lawyers incorrectly sued the county’s board of ethics, which, as an agency of the county, cannot legally sue or be sued.

If Cobos wanted the stop the ethics board from hearing Acosta’s complaint against him, he should have sued El Paso County.

The temporary restraining order Cobos obtained two weeks ago to stop the ethics board hearings expired Monday, and Jones made it clear that if Cobos wanted to seek a temporary injunction to block action by the ethics board, then he would have to file a new lawsuit against the county.

Cobos, through his lawyers, has refilled his suit naming the county, but that recently filed case was not before the court Monday.

Cobos was not available for comment after Monday’s hearing.

The judge also found that Cobos improperly sought to sue the ethics board in his official capacity as county judge without first getting Commissioners Court’s permission to file such a suit.

Ironically, those are the same two mistakes that city Rep. Melina Castro made in 2005 when she filed a lawsuit in her capacity as a City Council member against City Attorney Charles McNabb. The visiting judge who heard Castro’s case dismissed it on grounds that she should have sued the City of El Paso, not one of its employees and that she couldn’t sue in her official capacity without City Council’s permission.

Castro’s lawyer in that case, Travis Ketner, went on to become Cobos’ chief of staff in January 2006. Six months later, Ketner became the first person to plead guilty to charges in the FBI’s public corruption investigation.

Judge Jones also denied Cobos’ motion to disqualify the El Paso County Attorney Jose Rodriguez and his office from representing the ethics board.

Caballero and Leeds had argued that Rodriguez’s office should be disqualified from any involvement in the case because of its actions.

First, Rodriguez’s office had advised the county’s Human Resources Department that the copy of Acosta’s job application was a public document could be released. The department forwarded that advice via email to Cobos, who officially released the document to Lozano.

Then, after providing that advice, Rodriguez’s office withdrew as the legal adviser to the ethics board, citing a potential conflict of interest arising from the fact that the assistant county attorneys involved in the advice and consultations over the job application could be called as witnesses. At last month’s initial hearing on Acosta’s complaint, Assistant District Attorney John Davis served as legal counsel to the board.

Then, Caballero and Leeds contended, Rodriguez’s office refused to represent Cobos in the ethics case itself. And then, Rodriguez’s office stepped back into the case to defend the board of ethics against the legal action brought by Cobos to keep the board from hearing Acosta’s ethics complaint.

Cobos’ lawyers charged that all of Rodriguez’s actions were political, but First Assistant County Attorney Joanne Bernal argued to the judge they had no law to back up their demand to disqualify Rodriguez’s office from representing the ethics board in court.

“The disqualification is a legal issue, and what you have not heard are legal arguments,” Bernal said, addressing Jones.

On the stand, Rodriguez said all of his actions were based on the law, that his office is duty bound to represent the ethics board as a county entity but is not obliged to represent Cobos because he was acting as a private citizen when he sued the board, not as an elected official.

As a government law office that represents all county officials and agencies under law and the state Constitution, Rodriguez said the office could represent conflicting sides in as legal matter but only both were operating in their official capacities.

Rodriguez contended that Cobos may not have been acting officially when he provided Lozano with copies of Acosta’s applications for county jobs.

“You don’t like Judge Cobos, do you?” Leeds asked Rodriguez, eliciting an immediate objection from Bernal, which Jones sustained.

Caballero and Leeds repeatedly tried to draw out testimony from witnesses to show that Rodriguez and Cobos are political enemies, but Jones supported objections to such testimony as irrelevant to the case at hand.

After the hearing, Cobos' new lawsuit

After the hearing, Rodriguez told reporters that the county board of ethics is now free to hear the complaint Accosta filed against Cobos.

Still pending, however, is the new lawsuit that Cobos has filed against the county.

“It’s basically the same allegations that were made against the board of ethics: That the board of ethics has failed to respond to the judge’s request for the production of documents and to answer some of the questions the judge had,” Rodriguez said, “That’s No. 1.

“And No. 2, that in any event, the new ethics legislation that was passed by the Legislature is presumably going to become effective in the fall and that, therefore, there is no need for this board of ethics to continue with its proceedings involving the complaint against the judge.”

But, the future of the ethics commission is still uncertain, Rodriguez noted.

“The governor hasn’t signed the legislation,” he said. “He may veto it for all we know. If it’s signed by the governor, it goes into effect Sept. 1.

“But then whether or not the ethics commission becomes operative depends on Commissioners Court in fact creating it or calling for an election by the voters.”

* * *

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