Telling Lies
Our investigation of the ambulance company answering 911 calls in Pasadena, Texas landed us right in the middle of a hotly contested mayor’s race. The mayor’s buddy is running to replace him, but he’s got a real problem TELLING LIES.
“Hey Rex” Wayne Dolcefino said.
“How you doing?” Rex Lindberg asked.
“I’m doing good,” Dolcefino answered.
This guy says he wants to be mayor of Pasadena, Texas.
A big oil industry town southeast of Houston.
“We’re not doing any interviews out here,” Lindberg said.
“You don’t wanna do interviews anywhere,” Dolcefino said.
“I’m on vacation,” Lindberg said.
“You’re on vacation?” Dolcefino questioned.
“Yeah, I’m on vacation. I’m out here working,” Lindberg responded.
But he was working to get elected at a polling location off Spencer Highway the day we found him.
“Let’s keep going,” said Lindberg in campaign ad.
“That’s Rex, always going the extra mile,” said Jeff Wagner in campaign ad.
He’s the right-hand man for the current mayor, Jeff Wagner.
He’s the third highest paid employee in the city, making $170,000 a year. Wagner and Rex even got busted once swiping anti-corruption political signs.
“Hey, you ready to go?” asked Lindberg in campaign ad.
“Let’s go,” said Wagner in campaign ad.
The mayor talks a lot about what running buddies they are.
And boy, is Lindberg been running from us for nearly two weeks, despite it being the final days of the campaign. And it took just 27 seconds before he said this.
“I think what I’ll do is I’ll have you arrested if you don’t get away from me,” Lindberg said.
“You have me arrested?” Dolcefino asked.
“Get away from me,” Lindberg said.
“Why are you going to arrest me? Cause I’m asking you questions?” Dolcefino asked.
“Get away from me,” Lindberg said.
“Are you that important?” Dolcefino asked.
“This is harassment,” Lindberg said.
“This is harassment?” Dolcefino said.
“This is harassment,” Lindberg said.
This was only the second time I even talked to Red Lindberg in my entire life.
We had tried nine days earlier before a city council meeting.
“Wayne Dolcefino. Good to see you,” Lindberg said at city council meeting.
“How come you didn’t call us back? We wanted to talk to you,” Dolcefino asked.
“I haven’t talked to you,” Lindberg said.
“I know, we called you a bunch of times,” Dolcefino said.
“Did you?” Lindberg said.
It was Lindberg who told us to call him the next day.
“Call me tomorrow,” Lindberg said.
“Ok, I plan to,” Dolcefino said.
“And of course, we did. Multiple times. And Mr. Lindberg – Rex – he kept ignoring us. We are not a huge fan of wannabe politicians who seem to be afraid of that transparency thing,” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
During our interview turned confrontation, Lindberg told us he would talk to us, but only after the election was over.
I run an investigative media company; it doesn’t work that way.
“You’re running for mayor, don’t you think the people have a right to see you answer these questions?” Dolcefino asked.
“Talked to me afterwards,” Lindberg answered.
“No, I think people need to know this before they vote,” Dolcefino said.
What was the question that got us threatened with an arrest?
Pasadena is expanding its convention center. It will cost at least $50 million in new debt for taxpayers. I bet that number will get bigger.
The initial contract with Way-Tech is being handled by a director of construction named Ernie Flohr, he apparently came out of retirement just for this project. His son is the project manager.
But the city’s economic board added $5 million on the deal to a company called SER construction. One of the guys who runs it is Rick Ramos.
“Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but you know where Mr. Ramos lives… right next door to Mayor Wagner, in a town of about 150,000 people,” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
“Did you know the mayor’s next-door neighbor got the convention center contract? Did you know?” Dolcefino asked Lindberg.
That’s when he threatened to call the cops.
“I’m out here doing what I need to do and you’re interrupting. Just get out of here. Nobody wants you here,” Lindberg said.
Then Lindberg told me the real reason he was so nice to me that day on the campaign trail, was because I had been mean to his buddy the mayor, at a council meeting.
“Mayor I’m disappointed in you and the city. I’ve known you a long time and for the last year and a half your city has been fighting me in an investigation of Acadian Ambulance,” said Dolcefino at city council meeting.
The Wagner administration had fought us when we first asked about Acadian Ambulance back in December of 2023. They have had the contract with the city for a long time.
Months later the attorney general ordered the city to cough up response time records.
And it was only then that we found out the city had no response time records.
They had lied to us for months.
This April we asked to see if Pasadena was now monitoring the safety and performance of their 911 ambulance service, like they were supposed to.
“Kind of important, don’t you think? But we got silenced from Pasadena City Hall,” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
I’ve known Mayor Wagner for decades, since he married the widow of a Pasadena cop, Jeff Ginn, who was gunned down in 1991.
“So back in April, I called Mayor Wagner to ask for help. He said someone would call me. But he didn’t,” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
Weeks later I wished the mayor Happy Easter in a text message. But I added my frustration: ‘Still no call jeff. What’s the deal’
Then I found out the city for the second time was going to fight releasing Acadian complaints and response time records again.
That’s when I went to city council to call the mayor out.
“We busted them for falsifying response time records in two cities,” Dolcefino said at city council meeting.
“Go investigate Acadian Ambulance and leave me alone,” said Lindberg at polling site.
But if you believe Rex, we already got the records we asked for this time.
“Because the city for the second time fought our request for ambulance records,” Dolcefino said.
“You’ve got the records,” Lindberg said.
“Are you aware of that?” Dolcefino asked.
“You’ve got the records,” Lindberg said.
“That’s a lie,” Dolcefino said.
“You’ve got the records,” Lindberg said.
“That’s absolutely false,” Dolcefino said.
Uh, Rex. Here is the city letter trying to keep the records a secret. But I bet you Pasadena still doesn’t have them.
But wait a minute, Rex says he has seen the records, so he knows Pasadena has them.
“I saw the repose time records two years ago, when we redid their contract,” Lindberg said.
“You saw the response time records. So if the city claims they don’t have response time records then they’re lying to me,” Dolcefino said.
“We sat down with them and we went over all the stuff that needed to be done. Just get the records. I don’t have them in front of me Wayne, you know that,” Lindberg said.
“But you have seen them?” Dolcefino asked.
“I have seen-uhm, had a meeting with the people when we talked about the response times,” Lindberg responded.
That’s very different. I’m sure Acadian brags about their response times.
“But if the city doesn’t monitor the records, they simply are not protecting the folks in Pasadena,” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
“Nobody in this city is hiding anything. We never have and we never will,” Lindberg said.
“What does Cavalier Concepts do?” Dolcefino asked.
“I don’t know anything, that’s your business. I don’t know anything about Cavalier Concepts,” Lindberg said.
“They’re on your campaign report,” Dolcefino pointed out.
“That’s right, they are,” Lindberg said.
Rex has reimbursed thousands of dollars to Cavalier Concepts for money they spent on his campaign gold tournament fundraiser, computer software, but he’s sure testy about talking about them.
“How can a man like you, that does all your homework, how do you not know what they do? How do you no know what they do?” Lindberg asked.
We know what cavalier claims to do, campaign consulting.
But you don’t often see politicians spending money on that kind of stuff after they become lame ducks. When they can’t run again for mayor.
But Jeff Wagner has been literally draining his campaign account with large payments to Cavalier, $300,000. One payment for even 50,000 grand.
The owner of the company is this guy, Chris Cortinas. The $77,000 a year digital manager for the city of Pasadena. He ignored our phone calls.
And his boss, Johnson Joy, he ignored us too.
Google that guy you’ll find he abruptly resigned in a corruption scandal while he was working for HUD during the first Trump administration.
“Nobody’s hiding anything, Wayne,” Lindberg said.
“Well, that’s not true,” Dolcefino said.
“Nobody’s hiding anything,” Lindberg said.
“Really?” Dolcefino said.
Just as Rex was falsely claiming the city was turning over the records we wanted.
We were being notified the city was now going to refuse to let us see, guess what, Rex Lindberg’s phone records.
The city also now claims that Mayor Wagner, he hasn’t made a single phone call in the last eighteen months.
Sure, something stinks in Pasadena.
But Lindberg’s opponent promised a forensic audit if he’s elected. We’ve offered to help.
“Shame on us if we don’t understand that there are problems within City Hall,” Thomas Schoenbein said.
Councilman Thomas Schoenbein actually sat down with us, promising transparency. That, my friends, is the right answer.
“I agreed to talk to you because, number one, I care about our city, and I think we should be an open book when it comes to what’s happening in our city,” Schoenbein said.
Rex was offered the same chance to sit down with us. Instead, we had to go find him.
“I do want to be the mayor, I will be the mayor in spite of you” said Lindberg pointing at Dolcefino.
“Those are the people that want you here. Those are the people paying you,” said Lindberg pointing at the folks campaigning for Shoenbein at the polling site.
“They’re not paying me,” Dolcefino said.
“Yes, they are,” Lindberg said.
“That’s absolutely not true,” Dolcefino said.
Check Schoenbein’s campaign records, Rex. You’ll see they haven’t paid me a single penny.
“We just want the city of Pasadena to be an open book for the people who live and pay taxes there. As I always say; if you don’t vote, you can’t complain. Saturday is election day,” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
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