This anonymous caboose along railroad tracks in downtown Crystal city, Texas, has been stripped of all identifying railroad marks, but has become the center of political controversy in Crystal city, Texas.
From the San Antonio TX Express News: (
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"S.A. attorney leads from the caboose in Crystal City
By Gilbert Garcia -- September 18, 2014
In a span of about five minutes, I saw two James Jonases Wednesday night in Crystal City.
Jonas, the disgraced former Republican lobbyist from San Antonio, held court at the annual budget meeting for the tiny Zavala County town, where council members haggled over the cost of office furniture, but never mentioned the $216,000 annual salary that Jonas receives to serve as city attorney/manager.
After the meeting, I approached Jonas to ask for a copy of the budget that the council had unanimously approved. He glared at me and said there were no copies available.
When I pressed Jonas on the issue, he responded with a snippy “Good day,” and stormed out of the Memorial Library meeting room.
A moment later, Jonas returned, and while he looked like the same gangly, curly-haired 52-year-old man who had just brushed me off, he sounded like he'd popped some happy pills in the meantime.
Standing alongside his ebullient wife, Rhonda, a smiling Jonas proceeded to give me a smooth sales pitch on the transformation that he's spearheading in this blue-collar town with a population of only 8,000.
The pitch went like this: Yes, he got the city attorney job without following the required application process; and, yes, his pay is nearly half of the city's general-fund budget; but it all makes sense, because he's doing innovative things such as improving the city's animal-care services (a major issue for Rhonda) and seeking outside grant money for local infrastructure improvement.
“What this council wanted was a different type of city manager,” Jonas said. “Somebody who was not going to say the status quo is OK.”
Jonas even showed me his driver's license, as a way of rebutting whispers that he may not be living up to the terms of his contract, which requires him to be a resident of Crystal City.
Jonas is registered to vote in Zavala County, and he lists his mailing address as the site of City Hall in Crystal City. His stated place of residence is an old rail caboose donated years ago to the city. Given Jonas' appreciation for the finer things (and the fact that, at his lobbying peak, he brought in $550,000 a year), some Crystal City residents — including former Mayor Frank Moreno — doubt that he's spending much of his leisure time in the caboose.
Jonas' kids live in San Antonio with his ex-wife, and he maintains a home here. But he can't stop raving about the caboose.
“We're remodeling that facility,” he said. “It's the coolest thing in the world. When the caboose was first put here, representatives from the agriculture industry would come in, and it would be their overnight place.”
No matter how optimistic his message, Jonas exudes the wounded quality of a former high roller who has been humbled and must serve a penance if he wants to work his way back to the top. It's kind of like seeing televangelist Jim Bakker after he lost the PTL Club, spent five years in prison, and tried to regroup with a new wife.
Jonas faced a fairly dramatic fall of his own, going through an affair and an ugly divorce, serving three months in Bexar County Jail for falling $120,000 behind in child-support payments, and seeing his lucrative legal work dry up.
Crystal City has been his life raft, and he dominated Wednesday's budget meeting, which was surreal on a few levels.
For one thing, I was one of only four people to attend a meeting that would determine how this fiscally challenged city will pay its bills for the next year.
Also, council members seemed obsessed with budget minutia such as the price tag of a chair for a city employee (“What does she want, a recliner?” cracked Councilman Gilbert Urrabazo), but completely ignored Jonas' hefty paycheck.
Mayor Ricardo Lopez was a timid nonfactor. Councilman Roel Mata, a Jonas ally, went out of his way to humiliate Lopez after the mayor adjourned the meeting and quickly stood up.
A smirking Mata asked Lopez why he appeared to be in a hurry to leave. When Lopez tried to placate him by returning to his seat, Mata gave him the stink eye.
“You just disrespected us,” Mata hissed.
If it sounded like a middle-school playground feud, one thing is certain: In Crystal City, Jonas rules the playground."
And it doesn't end there: (
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"Ousted chief, city manager sue Crystal City
By Gilbert Garcia -- Dec. 14, 2014
When Crystal City hired Johnny Vasquez to be its police chief in 2012, no one seemed to mind that he lived outside the city, in the town of Uvalde.
Two years later, it suddenly became a cause for termination.
Vasquez filed suit Monday against Crystal City in Maverick County District Court, alleging that his firing constituted a breach of contract and a violation of the state’s whistleblower act. Alex Zepeda, who lost his job as city manager for refusing to ax Vasquez, joined the lawsuit with a petition filed Thursday.
By an amazing coincidence, Vasquez’s residency emerged as a problem for Crystal City council members at the same time he launched an investigation into apparent judicial irregularities from Crystal City Municipal Court Judge Xavier Espinosa.
Early this year, McCreary, Veselka, Bragg & Allen, an agency that collected unpaid municipal tickets for Crystal City, reported to the council that Espinosa had dismissed 110 of the 191 unpaid tickets on which they were trying to collect, at a cost of $33,225 in uncollected fines, according to an article by San Antonio Express-News reporter John MacCormack.
Four of those dismissed tickets were written to Councilman Gilbert Urrabazo.
Vasquez referred the ticket-dismissal case to the Zavala County district attorney’s office, and, before long, the Texas Rangers started sniffing around.
That outraged Urrabazo, Mayor Pro-tem Rogelio Mata, and Mata’s brother, Councilman Roel Mata. They prodded Zepeda to fire the police chief, using the excuse that his lack of residency in Crystal City was impairing his job performance.
In a Feb. 24 letter to Vasquez, Zepeda wrote: “Council has requested numerous times that I terminate your employment. I have informed them over and over again that you have not violated any of our policies or procedures and that I do not have a reasonable cause to dismiss you. They have responded by telling me that I should 'find a reason.’”
At a raucous March 3 council meeting, Rogelio Mata repeatedly shouted at Vasquez and interrogated him about his residency, his out-of-town travel, and the ticket-dismissal investigation.
“What’s the deal with this case?” he asked, before noting that the Texas Rangers were “all over” the town. “Is there a citizen besides the municipal judge involved in this that could be hurt?”
Vasquez refused to comment.
On March 6, Zepeda responded to council complaints about Vasquez’s residency by signing the police chief to a new contract, which kept his base salary at $42,000. The contract provided him job security — in the form of a severance package of a year’s pay if he was terminated within two years — in exchange for Vasquez’s commitment to relocate to Crystal City by the end of the year.
Three days later, the council fired Zepeda, and four days after that, the police chief was also terminated.
The prime beneficiary of Zepeda’s ouster was James Jonas III, a former Republican lobbyist who fell into disgrace after he had an affair that led to an acrimonious divorce, and ended up serving three months in Bexar County Jail for falling about $120,000 behind in child-support payments.
Jonas, with the help of Rogelio Mata, already had landed the job of city attorney, even though he had not applied for the job. With Zepeda out of the picture, Jonas also became city manager.
He is receiving $216,000 a year, an outrageous salary for a town with about 8,000 residents.
Jonas’ contract calls for him to live in Crystal City, which he says he does (in a historic downtown rail caboose), although he maintains a home in San Antonio and has a San Antonio address on his registration with the Texas Bar Association.
Vasquez’s original contract made no such requirements of him, yet the council repeatedly harangued him about it.
Vasquez and Zepeda learned the hard way that in Crystal City the only thing they dismiss faster than tickets is an inquisitive municipal employee."
And the pot keeps simmering: (
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"Caboose complaint could derail Crystal City manager
By Gilbert Garcia -- August 20, 2015
James Jonas III’s caboose could be in trouble.
Jonas, 53, the former high-flying Republican lobbyist who fell on hard times before landing a $216,000 job as city manager/city attorney in the tiny Zavala County town of Crystal City, faces an investigation by the State Bar of Texas.
At issue is a 2014 voter-registration application in which he listed a downtown Crystal City rail caboose as his place of residence.
The city-owned caboose became a point of contention among Jonas’ Crystal City detractors because many of them don’t believe that the attorney — who maintains a loft/office in San Antonio — actually lives in Crystal City, and residency was a condition of his 2014 hiring for the city manager job.
Jose Mata, a Crystal City resident, filed a complaint with the State Bar on June 15, alleging that Jonas committed perjury on Aug. 18, 2014, when he listed the caboose’s location as his address on the voter-registration form.
In his complaint, Mata says Jonas “willfully and knowingly provided false information” to the state on the voter form. Mata also says, “This caboose is not a residential caboose, it is also not in a residential area,” and its interior is in a “dilapidated condition.”
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Jonas’ defense rests largely on the issue of intent. He argues that if he intended to eventually move into the caboose, his voter application form was accurate, even if he didn’t live in the caboose at the time.
To back up his argument, Jonas submitted a 32-page response to Mata’s complaint and loaded it with affidavits from council members and other city officials, proclaiming that he intended to move into the caboose and that last September the council was preparing to consider a lease agreement between the city and Jonas for him to pay $1,000 a month in rent to live there. (Jonas said the renovation costs for the caboose would have been split between him and the city).
Jonas told me the issue was tabled at a Sept. 23, 2014, City Council meeting because his adversaries had mobilized against the idea of him renting the caboose.
“There is still a level of opinion in this town regarding the role of Anglos,” Jonas said, by way of explaining some of the hostility he has received.
The strange thing about the residency issue is that when I spoke with Jonas last September after a City Council meeting, he created the impression that he and his wife, Rhonda, were already living in the caboose. When I asked him if he resided there, he smiled and nodded.
“We’re remodeling the facility,” Jonas said. “It’s the coolest thing in the world.”
He had reason to create such an impression at the time, because skeptics such as former Crystal City Mayor Frank Moreno were already voicing their suspicions that Jonas didn’t live in Crystal City.
These days, with the caboose no longer a rental consideration, Jonas lists his address at a location near the animal-rescue center created by his wife.
His critics have included former City Manager Alfredo Gallegos, who told me last year, “There is no way Crystal City can afford his salary, unless we do no infrastructure.”
Those critics are appalled by the fact that a town with a population of only 8,000, and an annual general-fund budget of about $500,000, gave the city manager position to someone who did not apply for the job and paid him $18,000 a month, plus $500 a month in expenses.
Jonas’ contract also left the city on the hook for a $72,000 lump-sum severance payment if he’s ever fired, and it required Crystal City to raise its tax rates if the city ran out of money to pay him.
Jones argues, with all the skill that made him a $550,000-a-year lobbyist (before divorce, child-support delinquency and a short stint in Bexar County Jail derailed his career), that he’s a change agent who is doing several jobs at once. He points to the animal-rescue center as an example of the progress he’s bringing to the self-proclaimed “Spinach Capital of the World.”
For all his surface enthusiasm, however, he sounds weary of the fight, whether it manifests itself at City Hall or in complaints filed with the State Bar.
“This whole situation (in Crystal City) has been a real point of sadness for me and my family,” Jonas sighed. “I’ve been working really hard since 2010 to rebuild my career.”
With his response to Mata’s complaint, Jonas is pulling out all the stops to make sure the career rebuilding effort continues."