It looks to us like The El Paso Times does not want Ms. Acosta to win election as mayor of El Paso.
The other day they published a headline article titled “Acosta denied filing claim with city” with the subtitle “Mayoral candidate retired after settlement”.
While the issue raises questions with us about what was done we find it interesting that the Times was essentially silent about her retirement settlement for the last eight years.
Now that she is running for mayor they seem to see the need to make her look bad.
According to the article Ms. Acosta entered into a settlement with the city while she was a department head. She evidently filed a discrimination claim and the city felt that paying her off was necessary.
Instead of entering into a settlement and paying her with city general funds the people running the city at the time decided to foist the financial damages upon the city employee pension fund.
From what we have been able to learn the city raised her salary for the last thirty days of her employment so that she could draw a larger retirement check from the pension fund.
So much for taking care of the retirees.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Glad you refreshed the memory of Ms. Acosta’s past wheeling & dealing with the City. Many people in El Paso have short memories or possibly never knew the story. Now she wants to be mayor? Sorry, there are consequences to your actions, Ms. Acosta. I only wish that the City could have written a ban from running for public office into its settlement with her. The City made a mistake and she made a bigger one.
LikeLike
This post is unfair to the Times. The Times originally reported the story 13 years ago and referenced that story again in October of last year when Acosta announced her mayoral candidacy. Acosta disputed the facts in the October story, which resulted in the most recent story. So, she’s choosing to keep the story alive and causing the Times to have to restate all the facts. It’s not the Times fault that Acosta can’t get her own story straight.
If the City jacked her pension, it seems to me that they sent the bill to all taxpayers and gave the cash to THE retiree.
$90,000 a year in retirement, starting at age 51? The real story here is that city employees get those kinds of pensions. On top of her city rep salary, taxpayers have paid her more than a million dollars over the past decade for doing nothing.
If local government can afford to pay those kinds of pensions, we should all get city or county jobs. No wonder they don’t care about rising taxes.
LikeLike
This news story was covered by the Times about 15 years ago. Now that Emma is running for Mayor as the candidate with the most city knowledge out of the whole group, the Times and its handlers decide to bring this up again. Emma won 3 elections to represent district 3, the last one was unopposed .Could it be that she was doing her job and taking care of her district ? Yes !
LikeLike
Ms. Acosta certainly knows how to work the City policies to her advantage. Whether that means she should be mayor is another question entirely.
LikeLike
Name one policy she has worked on to to help herself personally? Again, residents of district 3 have elected Emma 3 times to represent them.
LikeLike
Spoken like a politician. Getting elected and doing an effective job are two different things.
Also, you’re looking at the wrong scoreboard. El Pasoans have a long history of electing and re-electing some incompetent corrupt politicians and hiring incompetent, corrupt executives.
LikeLike