July 14, 2008
Normally, what goes on at City Hall in the 10th floor offices of the mayor and city representatives is pretty mundane and doesn’t rise to the level of public interest.
But last week, District 5 Rep. Rachel Quintana lost her third administrative assistant, a young woman described as a sharp and ambitious with degrees in philosophy and political science from UTEP and a desire to serve her community.
She quit on short notice after working for Quintana for less than a month.
In contrast, there has been little or no turnover in the other representatives' offices since they took office, with one exception that comes to mind. District 1 Rep. Ann Lilly fired her original assistant over his alleged misuse of the office credit card. And, I believe, there has been one retirement.
For the most part, people like working in the city reps’ offices. Dealing with constituents concerns and public policy issues and keeping the reps organized isn’t a bad job. If you’ve got a good boss, that is.
So what’s going on in Quintana’s office that has caused one assistant after another to run away? With a few phone calls last week, I netted accounts that were uniformly unflattering.
Quintana is an intensely private person who seems to worry a lot about what people know about her. And people say she is as hard to work with as she is to work for. Those are strange traits for a community politician.
A FedEx delivery person, she came out of nowhere as a candidate last year with no record of political or community involvement. She dodged public appearances to explain what she was running for and against.
Quintana won a runoff in which fewer than 1,400 people participated out of 42,700 registered voters in the East Side district.
Since getting elected, Quintana has consistently refused to answer questions about her actions, her statements or her votes. When it comes to the electronic media and the press, she takes no calls and returns none, even on routine matters.
Two exceptions that I know of: She interviewed with Diario of El Paso months ago and a did a TV interview on the latest monsoon flooding last week.
I did call her office about the matters I intended to raise in this commentary and left a message asking her to call me. She didn’t. Never has.
As far as leadership on City Council is concerned, Quintana is, well, pretty irrelevant.
This is a woman with a UTEP degree in public relations and organizational communication. Yes, public relations. Oh, and a minor in criminal justice. Go figure.
Her claim to fame is the fact that she is the first El Paso City Council member in at least half a century to face a criminal charge on par with forgery for actions while in office. (Editor's note: the forgery charge is a Class A misdemeanor, not a felony, as this article previously initially indicated)
She's been indicted for allegedly forging the signature of a former boss at FedEx to gain a plane ride for herself and her daughter last October. She supposedly used her City Council ID card in the process.
Quintana has never sought to explain what happened to the public in general or her constituents, except to say it’s all political. Rather than seek a quick trial to clear the air and prove her innocence, she has sought delays, which El Paso judges are happy to grant.
Now, she wants a change of venue to someplace far, far away because she doesn’t trust an El Paso jury.
She’s on her third lawyer too. Ironically, he's a former El Paso Times reporter.
Delays, change of venue, three lawyers? Geez, you’d think this were a murder case!
Once upon a time, Eastside voters stayed with Westsiders in going to the polls and taking an interest in affairs in the district.
Something has happened to dull their interests, it seems.
Quintana’s district meetings are poorly attended, I am told, and phone calls to the Eastside rep’s office are relatively few compared with the other offices. Ditto email with questions, requests, complaints or compliments.
Where is the Eastside, the mighty, mighty Eastside?
In trying to fill her vacant office slots, Quintana has brought in people “off the street,” who could not be hired because their background checks turned up arrests and outstanding warrants.
She recently tried to bring on Oscar Gonzalez, the city’s first neighborhoods liaison during the Wardy administration who ran for the District 2 city representative in 2005. But he didn’t make it through the screening process either, evidently because of personal complaints against him while he was at City Hall.
So, calls to the Eastside office often go unanswered and unreturned. There is a “hole” on the 10th floor and everyone there seems to know it. Her office is isolated. Quintana is isolated.
“It’s a weird office,” one former assistant says.
Four members of City Council, the mayor and three city representatives, have faced unsuccessful recall petition efforts or threats of them in the past year or so over the Downtown plan, a proposed extension of Lee Trevino and the stormwater utility.
No recall rumblings elsewhere. Quintana’s term ends in 2011.
Meanwhile, there’s a job opening on the 10th floor.
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To reach David Crowder, write to dcrowder@epmediagroup.com or call (915) 351-0605