EL PASO, Tx., September 10, 2025: Former City of El Paso Chief Financial Officer, Carmen Arrieta-Candelaria is returning to El Paso. In a statement, officials with the Fort Worth Independent School District announced yesterday that Arrieta-Candelaria will be leaving her post at the school district later this month to return to El Paso.
Arrieta-Candelaria served as El Paso’s comptroller from 2008 until she resigned in 2014..
Arrieta-Candelaria was the city’s financial officer when the city moved out of the city hall building it owned and purchased the El Paso Times building to make way for the baseball stadium where the Chihuahuas currently play. In June 2012, the city committed to building the stadium where the city hall building stood after MountainStar Sports Group secured the Chihuahuas Triple-A baseball team. The city demolished the city hall building the following year for the stadium. Although the ballpark stadium was budgeted for $50 million, by the time it was finished, the cost had increased to $60 million by 2013. In addition to the rising cost to build the stadium, higher interest in the bonds used to fund the project increased the cost to the taxpayers by $17 million.
Arrieta-Candelaria was also the financial officer when voters passed the 2012 Quality of Life bonds that led to the controversy over the proposed entertainment venue that was planned for the Duranguito neighborhood footprint. After the voters approved the 2012 bonds, the city discovered that there wasn’t enough money to cover the various projects the voters had approved.
In 2012, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) took over the board of trustees of the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD) after former EPISD Superintendent Lorenzo García pleaded guilty earlier in June to charges stemming from a cheating scandal over state-mandated teaching accountability testing. Arrieta-Candelaria was appointed by the TEA as one of the temporary board of managers to oversee the school district.
When the city began looking to appoint its second city manager after Joyce Wilson announced she would be resigning, one of the candidates presumed to be the city’s next city manager was Carmen Arrieta-Candelaria. She was one of the four finalists when Tommy Gonzalez became the city’s second city manager. Arrieta-Candelaria resigned from the city shortly after Gonzalez’s appointment and went to work for Integrity Asset Management, an El Paso property management firm.
The TEA dissolved the EPISD Board of Managers and returned control to the board of trustees in 2015.
In May 2016, the newly reconstituted EPISD board of trustees named Arrieta-Candelaria as the school district’s deputy superintendent of finance and operations.
The following year a controversy over the appointment of a consultant by EPISD’s Superintendent, Juan Cabrera, to oversee a bid contract arose. The consultant, Scott Himelstein, oversaw the 2016 $669 million EPISD bond program. Cabrera put blame on the hiring of the consultant on Arrieta-Candelaria. She denied she was to blame for the controversy.
In late May 2021, EPISD released an internal audit looking into the use of service contracts by the school district. The audit found that the contracts appeared to favor vendors and that there was evidence of financial waste. Carmen Arrieta-Candelaria and Chief Academic Officer Tamekia Brown were placed on administrative leave as the result of the internal audit. Cabrera had resigned the previous November after he was implicated in a scheme to defraud California charter schools.
On January 4, 2022, the Fort Worth Independent School District announced that it had hired Arrieta-Candelaria as its new chief financial officer.
Facing a takeover by the Texas Education Agency, the Fort Worth ISD announced yesterday that Arrieta-Candelaria resigned. She is expected to assume her new duties as the county’s Director of Budget and Finance later this year.
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The post Former El Paso Financial Official Carmen Arrieta-Candelaria Returning to El Paso to Serve as County Director of Budget and Finance appeared first on El Paso Herald Post.
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