Edinburg appoints associate municipal judge

EDINBURG — The city now has a backup plan in the event that Municipal Judge Hector Bustos is unavailable to attend to residents’ traffic tickets or the bond hearings for defendants arrested by Edinburg police.

That’s because, after months of back-and-forth — including some tensions that spilled over from private discussions into the public view — the Edinburg City Council has appointed its first associate municipal judge.

The council unanimously agreed to appoint Vanessa Rae Flores to serve as associate judge, with all the same powers and authorities that Bustos, the elected judge, holds.

Flores is an Edinburg attorney who has been practicing law since late 2013, according to the State Bar of Texas’ website.

She earned her law degree in May 2013 from Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law.

Flores’ primary practice areas include criminal, family, immigration and juvenile law, according to her Bar profile page. She also practices personal injury law.

She previously worked as a prosecutor with the Hidalgo County District Attorney’s Office before partnering with her sister and fellow attorney, Desirae Dietz.

Together, the two women operate the Law Office of Flores & Dietz, which they have dubbed “Double Trouble Law” on the firm’s social media accounts.

Flores’ appointment comes after months of debate among city leaders over whether they should imbue themselves with the power to appoint associate municipal judges.

The debate further revolved around the question of whether the council should make such appointments without the sitting judge’s input.

But Bustos has rarely attended council meetings when his court — and his performance — have been the topics of discussion in recent months.

And it was his allegedly frequent absences from the court that were the driving factor behind the discussion to begin with.

This summer, city leaders contemplated putting a number of charter amendment proposals on the November ballot, including one that would have given the council the power to appoint associate municipal judges.

At the time, the Edinburg City Charter only allowed for temporary or “visiting” judges who were unpaid and limited by state law to serving only in Bustos’ absence.

In other words, they could not attend to the city’s judicial matters at the same time that Bustos was also holding court.

Edinburg City Hall on Monday, Jan. 13, 2020, in Edinburg. (Joel Martinez | jmartinez@themonitor.com)

But Bustos’ attendance at the court was sporadic and unpredictable, according to concerns expressed by Place 4 Councilman David White.

“The PD is not being serviced, our community is not being serviced, our citizens aren’t being serviced when you come up to see your ticket and you can’t see the judge,” White said during a July 16 council meeting.

“You come back at 3, you come back at 4, you come back another time, you come back another day. So you just plead guilty and that’s it. Pay your fine and leave. And that’s not the way it’s supposed to be operated,” he said then.

Bustos did not attend the meeting.

But other members of the council expressed concern about usurping Bustos’ authority to make his own decisions at the court.

Place 2 Councilman Jason De Leon likened it to a president’s ability to name his or her vice presidential running mate.

“You want somebody to be able to carry on your vision if you’re not there,” De Leon said.

He also expressed concern that future councils could use their appointment authority to play politics and meddle with the court if they happened to dislike the judge.

White countered that that precise concern is why he had favored the ordinance as it existed in July.

“If you really want to know who pushed for the ordinance the way it sits right now is me, because the ordinance that we had under Molina allowed Molina to appoint (other municipal judges),” White said, referring to Richard Molina, who served as Edinburg’s mayor at the same time that White served as police chief.

“We had a big issue with the municipal court when I was there as the chief … it was a fricken pain in the butt because those two (appointed judges) would just countermand the judge who had been elected,” White said.

Ultimately, the council voted down the effort to include the matter of associate judges in November’s charter amendment election.

Then a month later, during a September council meeting, a similar effort to pass an ordinance that would empower the council to appoint associate judges also failed.

Finally, the council approved the ordinance by a 3-to-2 split vote when they revisited the matter on Dec. 3.

De Leon, along with Place 3 Councilman David Salazar Jr. joined White in voting to pass the ordinance. Mayor Ramiro Garza Jr. and Place 1 Councilman Dan Diaz voted against.

Bustos did not attend the Dec. 3 meeting, but he was there on Tuesday.

As the council took the matter to a vote without discussion, Bustos sat quietly in the last row of the seats and left soon after they made their decision.

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