Tomorrow’s City Council Work Session includes executive session item 7, titled “Complaint regarding elected City Official – Matter No. HQ # 1453 (551.071)(551.074),” with outside counsel Frank Garza attending.
While we cannot say with 100% certainty, we believe the item in question concerns City Rep. Henry Rivera of District 7.
According to Martin Paredes of El Paso News, Rivera’s wife Dora Oaxaca-Rivera is accused of gaining access to confidential files from a City computer, of accessing confidential information from Executive Sessions, and of impersonating her husband in her email correspondence with the City Attorney’s Office.
If this is true, there may be a violation of Section 33.02(b) of Texas law, which states that breach of computer security is a “state jail felony if the computer, computer network, or computer system is owned by the government or a critical infrastructure facility.”
Did Rep. Rivera knowingly grant his wife access to his computer and did she help herself to confidential information?
Paredes also affirms that a former Rivera staffer may have attempted suicide because of intolerable working conditions at his office.
The last we heard, back in September, the City Council accepted the preliminary findings of the investigation of Rivera and directed the City Manager “to arrange for the conduct of further investigation with a broadened scope.”
We are guessing that tomorrow is the day when the results of that “further investigation” will be presented to the full City Council.
In the interest of government transparency, we hope the allegations against Rivera will be revealed tomorrow in open session and that any resulting action by City Council will be thoroughly explained.