For two years, Brian Rep. Kennedy was Chair of the Financial Oversight and Audit Committee (FOAC) of the City of El Paso and served alongside Reps. Alexsandra Annello, Joe Molinar, and Art Fierro.
Under Kennedy’s leadership, FOAC discovered that Gassandra Hernandez and Claudia “tu gas es mi gas” Rodriguez helped themselves to $11,985 of taxpayer-funded gasoline. Both were subsequently reprimanded by the Ethics Review Commission.
Kennedy also led the effort to audit the P-cards and the 380 agreements between the City of El Paso and developers, many of which failed to meet their financial and employment targets.
When Annello resigned to run for State office, Josh Acevedo took her place on FOAC.
Now that the Vendido Caucus has seized control of City Council on a title wave of Oligarchy campaign contributions, Mayor Renard Johnson is replacing Kennedy, Molinar, and Fierro with Alejandra Chavez, Deanna Maldonado-Rocha, and Ivan Niño. See items 16-19 of the agenda for the next City Council meeting.
Thus, all four members of FOAC will be rookies with little financial acumen or administrative experience while the veteran City Council reps–Fierro, Limon, and Canales–will be completely excluded from the auditing process.
What does this mean for the internal system of checks and balances within our City?
It means that FOAC will no longer conduct audits that could harm the interests of our local business elites and that the committee could potentially be weaponized against opponents of Johnson’s agenda.
In other words, it will be open season on the taxpayers of El Paso.
Enjoy your weekend.