Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t
By Dalia Diaz
There is an idiom that goes a little like this “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”
You would think that someone with aspirations to become mayor, and really striking at a current mayor about how corrupt he/she is, would be elected to office and be better than his/her predecessor. But you would be wrong.
This is a real-life story and any actual reality with any person in Lawrence is purely coincidental – LOL!
Dan Rivera ran for the office of Mayor of Lawrence constantly complaining and reporting any alleged wrongdoing of the previous mayor. It was the reason that he won by only 80 votes the first time around. The second time around he won by a little over 200 because Mayoral candidate Jorge Jaime caved in. Jorge did not want to lose his job by being fired if Rivera won by a slim margin, which Rivera did win.
Many of my readers have read all the proven stories I have placed in Rumbo over the years in which we have found Mayor Rivera to be one of the most corrupt Mayors the city of Lawrence has ever seen. Yet, most major news reporting newspapers and radio/television station do absolutely nothing to expose this corruption. Why? The Democratic Party at its best, that’s why – or worst.
A few years ago I wrote about Pedro Ayala and Carlos Morel who were loaned for several months to work with the SEIU supporting certain democratic candidates. It has been very blatant the way in which Wendy Luzón worked in Juana Matias’ campaign last year.
It was just recently uncovered that Mayor Rivera has been using student interns who are or were working in his office to go and work in the field for democratic candidates’ campaign while getting paid with city local government funds. In the uncovering of this Rumbo investigation, it is also found that Mayor Rivera has allowed employees (employees hired by him) to join Democratic Party candidates in the field for canvasing populated areas.
One of them was Jonathan Rivera, a DPW employee. He was gone for six months working on Elizabeth Warren’s campaign. While he was out on leave, he hurt his knee in what I was told was a motorcycle accident and came back to work at a light duty job with health insurance and all the privileges. He is Kate Reilly’s live-in boyfriend, the mayor’s secretary.
The employees have gone from three to more than 12 months of absence without losing any pay, benefit, or entitlement. This is something that has never occurred in this city. And yet, it is happening people! Be enrage that your Mayor is allowing, and even set up, these campaigns so that employees of the city can go and support individuals such as Elizabeth Warren, Juana Matias, and other Democratic candidates in which Mayor and the labor unions endorsed.
He has several employees at his beck and call to run personal errands. People like Juan Tejeda, acting foreman at DPW who disappears for hours at a time. Mr. Tejeda is one of four employees who worked on the mayor’s house doing major repairs preparing it to be sold. I wrote about that mentioning them by name and never heard from anyone to tell me it was wrong.
Just recently he demanded employees of the City to be present for Governor Charlie Baker’s visit to the city at Terra Luna on a Saturday. It’s more like he forced employees to be present. Isn’t this exactly what he accused the previous Mayor of doing?
I am not really surprised Dan Rivera would default and let a capias issue for his arrest. He truly believes he is above the law.
These “thugs” masquerading as public officials are challenging me to do the right thing. Let’s face it, Mayor Rivera is nothing more than a corrupt individual learning the rules, and then breaking those very same rules for his advantage, or finding loopholes in those rules to take advantage of the situation.
Update on Part 3
Since the publication of Part 3 of this series on corruption about Eileen O’Connor Bernal on February 15, I have heard from attorneys friends of mine who offered some insights after complimenting my powerful and strong investigative reporting.
In their conversations I learned that attorneys know that anything they do in relation to courts, advice or counsel as an attorney in any matter that even “appears” to be representation – “is representation”. Just as the recent Licensing Commission meeting when Eileen Bernal was giving legal advice.
Because an attorney claims she or he is not acting as an attorney due to the lack of an appearance on file is an unethical conduct perpetrated by the attorney. The lawyer is supposed to know better and not act inappropriately.
