Last month, Chief Administrator Betsy Keller appointed Carmen Arrieta-Candelaria as Director of Budget and Finance of El Paso County. There was no discussion of the hire by the County Commissioners Court since Keller was soley responsible for filling the position.
We cannot imagine a worse choice.
Arrieta-Candelaria has a record of financial controversy spanning more than 20 years. Her appointment reminds us of when Tommy Gonzalez became City Manager in 2014 in spite of his problematic record as CEO and City Manager of Irvine, Texas.
Arrieta-Candelaria earned her Bachelor of Accountancy and MBA at New Mexico State University. After a five-year stint as Associate Superintendent of Gadsden Independent School District in Anthony, NM, she joined the City of El Paso as CFO in March 2004, five months before Joyce Wilson was appointed City Manager.
The two of them worked as a team for the next 10 years, until Gonzalez replaced Wilson and hired Dr. Mark Sutter as the new CFO.
During their decade together, Arrieta-Candelaria and Wilson oversaw the demolition of City Hall, the construction of the insolvent Ballpark, the disastrous rollout of the Quality of Life Bond, and they implemented policies that increased deficit-spending and raised taxes. By the time they resigned in summer 2014, the City was in such a deep financial hole that there were only nine days of reserve operating funds remaining, with the threat of Chapter 9 bankruptcy looming.
Starting in August 2014, Arrieta-Candelaria worked briefly at Integrity Asset Management, a local property management corporation, as Chief Operating and Financial Officer.
In May 2016, she returned to the public sector, serving as Deputy Superintendent for Finance and Operations at the El Paso Independent School District for more than six years. Those were the dark days of Superintendent Juan Cabrera, who was mired in scandals. He and Arrieta-Candelaria promoted and then managed the bloated $669 million EPISD bond that was approved by the voters in November 2016, burdening the taxpayers with more than $1 billion in principal and interest.
Arrieta-Candelaria was placed on paid administrative leave in May 2021 shortly before the release of an audit exposing wasteful spending and vendor favoritism in academic services contracts.
She resigned eight months later, in January 2022, to accept the position of CFO at the Fort Worth Independent School District. There she managed 120 campuses, and 9,900 employees, and a $1.1 billion budget.
This past August, the TEA notified Fort Worth ISD that it would receive a failing FIRST (Preliminary Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas) for 2024-25. The following month the Fort Worth Report warned of a “potential takeover of the district due to persistent low academic performance.”
Although Arrieta-Candelaria presented a balanced budget to the Board of Trustees in May 2024, the first in at least seven years, the trustees went on to approve a budget with a $17.7 million shortfall, which has ballooned in the current fiscal year to $43.6 million.
This month Fort Worth ISD was taken over by the Texas Education Agency and is the second largest school district in Texas to be placed under conservatorship since 2000. In a recent letter to district leaders, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath wrote that “Multi-year unacceptable ratings represent a school district’s most fundamental mission failure, a complete inability to take necessary action, and the critical steps needed to educate students.”
Only in El Paso would an administrator with such a troubling record be appointed to manage the finances of our County. We asked Betsy Keller for comment but had not heard back as of the publication of this report.
KTSM was the only television network to report Arrieta-Candelaria’s appointment, but without citing a single fact from her controversial past, leaving their viewers completely in the dark. The short blurb in the Oligarchy Gazette (aka El Paso Inc) is even less revealing. Only the El Paso Herald-Post, a small operation under new management, bothered to investigate her record and tell the truth about her.
What can we expect from Carmen Arrieta-Candelaria going forward?
Since she is a proxy for Joyce Wilson and her cronies, we will likely see reckless spending initiatives, higher taxes, and more scandals. She will rubber-stamp the financial agenda of County Judge Samaniego and his supporters, including the Debt Plaza and other large capital improvement projects.
Hold on to your wallets!