GBIC-BEDC'S CLOAK AND DAGGER APPROACH TO ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

By Juan Montoya
How would you feel if you provided one of your workers with nearly $1 million to attract new business and then received a report like the one that City Of Brownsville Commission members received from Jason Hilts and Gilbert Salinas?
Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation (GBIC) consultants presented reports last week on "prospective business development projects"using code names like Project Frog, Project Ruth, Project Maverick, etc.
Short on details and long on blind faith, the commissioners heard a report from Jason Hilts and Gilberto Salinas, officials with the Brownsville Economic Development Council (BEDC), which GBIC contracts, to provide marketing for the city and attract industry.
The long skinny is that the carrot dangled before the commission members was that the projects have a combined potential worth of roughly $10 million and will "possibly" create 2,000 jobs.

Two or three months down the road, will anyone hold their feet to the fire and demand to know the outcome of these efforts? If the past record in any indication, we don't think so.

The two did not wear disguises for the presentation, although the tone of the meeting merited at least spectacles, a fake moustache and a trench coat.

The reason for the cloak-and-dagger was that they didn't want to scare away the potential clients or give away the potential mark for other nearby communities to get on the trail and offer a more attractive package, they said.

The potential job-producing prospectives were code-named Project Ruth, Project Media Luna, Project Richie, Project Pearl, Project Maverick, Project Blue Northern and Project Frog.

Hilts hinted that Project Frog, for example, needs "access to water," and that the company manufactures all terrain vehicles (ATV) that convert to amphibious ATVs, kind of "James Bondish."

One wonders what other goodies are in the spymasters' bag. Is there for example, a Project Bull or a Project Load of Crap? Or perhaps a Project Smokescreen?

There should be. We recall BEDC president Jose Herrera taking his dog-and-pony show around town extolling the virtues of his organizations' efforts to attract companies from outside the region to set up shop in Brownsville.

In a colorful chart, he outlined the outlays made to the different corporations. The "incentives" - some outright gifts of cash and others utility or tax abatements - were the inducements offered the firms for them to transfer their operations to the border.

After a time, many simply moved across the river and set up a maquiladora across the river.

Herrera did not think it queer that at the bottom of the top ten outlays to generate jobs were local existing businesses and industries. And basically, that's the main flaw in the GBIC-BDEC job development paradigm.

The last sector to be considered to receive assistance from locally-generated tax funds were the very people who were funding the effort: local businesses.

Sooner or later these corporations and local elected officials have to reexamine this economic development approach and come up with a different approach to prime the local economic pump. Instead of reaching out to outside interests and giving away the farm in tax abatements, free utilities, etc., and selling our local workers to the lowest bidder, they should figure out a way to focus all their efforts and invest in ourselves.

And lest Fred Rusteberg think this s a plug for his Imagine Brownsville-United Brownsville control apparatus, it definitely is not. Instead it should be transparent and accountable to the voters, not special interests like Fred's and his ilk.

If we do not, we'll continue to throw away our economic development funds and get reports from local economic-development corporations a la Inspector Gadget, complete with gizmos and smoke that vanish once their budget is spent on lavishly dining and wining smooth-talking industry reps after cheap labor and tax-free real estate and utilities.