Questionable Taxpayer Paid Trips by Officials Common Near Texas Border

Two council members, the wife of one of them, and the municipal judge from the border city of Hidalgo traveled to Brazil at the tune of almost $18,000 using public funds.

While the judge and the wife reimbursed the city, council members Sergio Coronado and Noe Reyes claim the trip was to experience that country’s culture in preparation for a festival, McAllen’s The Monitor reported.

City officials justified the expense to the local newspaper, saying the trip allowed the city to prepare for its yearly festival. Each year the city of Hidalgo holds Border Fest, which honors a different country each time.

The Monitor quotes Coronado calling the trip “a sacrifice” that he made for his community.

The news about the Hidalgo trip comes just days after Breitbart Texas reported on a trip by members of the Donna ISD school board to Las Vegas in order to attend a leadership conference featuring Hillary Clinton.

It was during that trip that one of the school board members, Tomasa “Tammy” Ramos, married her boyfriend who happens to be the brother-in-law of that school board’s police department.

That police chief named Roy Padilla is the brother of Joe Padilla, a former sheriff’s commander who is now in federal prison for taking bribes from a Mexican drug trafficker with ties to the Gulf Cartel.

Donna is the same school board that, in addition to a series of political witch-hunts and questionable moves, hired a convicted felon as their school attorney paying a retainer of $300,000 a year for a school district with about 15,000 students.

As previously reported by Breitbart Texas, the area known as the Rio Grande Valley has been a hotspot for public corruption, which has led to the FBI setting up a public corruption task force that has already brought down various public officials.

One of the cases that still has to be decided includes the former housing director for the city of Hidalgo, who, along with her secretary, has been charged with taking bribes in exchange for favors at her department.

Follow Ildefonso Ortiz on Twitter and on Facebook.