AUSTIN, Texas — An ex-aide to former Austin Mayor Steve Adler has been sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay $21,375 in restitution for taking payments from a nonprofit that won a federal contract he promoted.
Frank Rodriguez, 73, of Dripping Springs, left his job as a senior policy advisor to Adler after the Austin American-Statesman investigated his actions in 2017. He pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiring to misapply federal funds and falsifying records.
Rodriguez continued to apply for federal Affordable Care Act grant funding on behalf of the Latino HealthCare Forum, a nonprofit he co-founded and ran before he left in 2015 to join the mayor’s office.
The FBI said Rodriguez used his city job to influence the success of his own application, then benefitted financially from the application’s success.
Despite being a full-time city employee, Rodriguez wrote he would work full-time on the federal project and requested the nonprofit be provided approximately $750,000 in federal funds for Affordable Care Act enrollment services for three years, the U.S. Department of Justice said. As a result, the nonprofit was initially awarded approximately $190,000 in September 2015.
In December 2015, Rodriguez entered a “consulting agreement” with the nonprofit, which allowed him 10% of the September 2015 funds. Rodriguez ultimately received $21,375 in “consulting fees,” which was never disclosed to the city of Austin while he was a city employee.
According to the Department of Justice, as a city employee, Rodriguez routinely advocated that the nonprofit be provided city business, provided it with confidential city information and disparaged the nonprofit’s principal competitor for city funding.
Rodriguez later falsely testified under oath at a city ethics commission hearing that the money he had received from the nonprofit was reimbursement for work done prior to becoming a city employee.