Sullivan City hires city attorney
Jay Peña. Courtesy photo.
This article originally appeared in the May 31 edition of the Progress Times.
The Sullivan City City Council hired Jay Peña as its city attorney last Tuesday evening.
Peña practices with law firm Pope & Peña, which has served as Rio Grande City’s legal counsel for a couple of years.
Sullivan’s been without a formal city attorney since the former person to hold that position, Frank Garza, abruptly resigned in early May.
Law firm O’Hanlon, Demerath & Castillo, which the city hired for special projects shortly before Garza’s resignation, has served as counsel in the interim.
“He is a problem solver,” Sullivan City Mayor Alma Salinas said of Peña Tuesday. “We look forward to working with him.”
Despite being about 116 years old, Sullivan City’s seen most of its growth in the past 30 years.
It’s still not a large city, but it’s grown and it’s growing — which Peña said attracted him to the job.
“I know it’s got a lot of potential,” he said. “If it was a city that let’s just say was at its pinnacle of growth, that’s a type of position that I probably would have really thought twice about. But because this one was in the position that it’s in and it has a lot of room for growth and all of the opportunities that it does, it poses significant challenges that really appeal to me, they really do.”
Peña says he’s got experience that will help the city capitalize on that potential. He primarily deals with business litigation, consumer litigation and municipal litigation.
“I litigated cases that concerned the Open Meetings Act, that concerned some of the administrative process,” he said. “I’ve been in litigation against some of our local municipal entities concerning employment law. You name it.”
Although Peña’s not a household name in Hidalgo County, he’s been fairly active in Starr County politics for several years.
Peña ran twice unsuccessfully for mayor of Rio Grande City and currently sits on the Rio Grande City Grulla ISD Board of Trustees.
