A simple request

Congratulations to the people who were elected to their various positions on Saturday. Several public bodies across the Rio Grande Valley, ranging from city councils to school boards and port commissioners, have new people who could affect the direction their respective bodies take.

In some cases that's exactly what the public wants.

We hope the newly elected officials have been paying attention to the various polls and public comments, and read statements and letters that have appeared in our pages and elsewhere during the campaigns, and even before. They have sent a clear and consistent message. The public clearly wants officials who are honest, and who recognize the need to use taxpayers' money responsibly.

That is especially the case at the Port of Brownsville, where more than $25 million has been wasted on the promise of a bridge to Mexico that, it is increasingly apparent, officials never really intended to build.

What other conclusion can be reached when the several contractors hired to perform various duties or provide studies, impact statements and engineering diagrams never actually did them? Not a one.

What should the public think when the majority of the Brownsville Navigation District Board of Commissioners fought against the launch of investigations into the project, and especially into what happened to so much money, with nothing to show for it?

Why have the commissioners, their hand forced by lawsuits filed both from within and without, have been so quick to settle those suits?

The misuse - and, in some cases, outright theft - of taxpayers' money should count as a double sin in South Texas, which is one of the nation's poorest. People simply don't have that kind of money to throw away. These scandals don't only take money out of the pockets of people who can't afford to lose it, but they get nothing in return for their money when it is squandered.

Public officials and employees who use such money to only benefit themselves and their friends are stealing it just as if they had held a gun to taxpayers' heads. The only difference is that they took the money by deceit - promises to use it for the public good - as well as by force through taxation.

The navigation district is just the most obvious and most egregious example of wasted public money, but it certainly isn't the only elected board that misuses our taxes. We hope members of all governmental bodies see the example of the BND and hear the public's calls for honesty and responsibility from their public officials.

Every vote that is cast in an election is an act of faith. Those who capture the positions they seek should look at those votes as a contract: they are given the public's trust and authority to tax them, but in return are asked to be prudent and honest with that authority.

We pray that our trust will not be betrayed.