GARCIA'S PROPAGANDA MACHINE CENSORS COLLEGIAN

By Juan Montoya

When we received the email from The Collegian reporter requesting documentation for the post where we informed our handful of readers that Juliet Garcia had awarded her office a $38,776 raise hidden under transfers from Texas Southmost College to the TSC-UTB partnership of which she has been the only president, we were more than glad to help out a colleague.

After all, here was a budding journalist who saw her school's leader – on the eve of Garcia going to testify before the Texas Legislature on the impact of their proposed cuts in education – acting very unaustere in her personal fianances. While she wailed before the solons on the impact of the cuts on her TSC-UTB partnership, she knew her nest egg had been passed by a TSC board that didn't know it would end up in her UTB budget as a supplement to her already bloated salary of $321,000. The Texas Comptroller reports that for the budget year 2010-2011, Juliet's salary is listed as $336,451, all of $270,506 coming from TSC, revealing a nice raise for herself of more than $25,000 this time around.

We had expected to meet with the young bloodhound to provide a hard copy of the incriminating increase to Juliet's salary and spoke a few times arranging a meting place where the information could be passed along.

After a few days passed the emails and the telephone calls ceased and we figured that either her editor had decided there was nothing to the story, or that she had somehow been dissuaded from pursuing the lead.

It wasn't until we read the latest issue of The Collegian that we found the byline of our intrepid reporter covering the travails of the partnership agreement to be voted on this Thursday at the meeting of the TSC board that we saw the familiar byline under an article outlining Dr. Robert Robles' efforts to force the TSC trustees to accept the UT System (read Juliet's) proposals to dissolve the district and hand over its assets to UT.

So, colleague, if you're out there, we can understand your position. Therefore, we want to accommodate the curious and are again posting the offending document on line. If you click on the graphic above, the numbers will become more legible and you can see the budget transfer from TSC to Juliet's line item (salary) for yourself.

In the same issue of the Collegian we find a front-page article outlining trustee Robert Robles' campaign trying to line up the troops against the majority of the trustees to try to convince them that they are standing in the way of progress buy not acceding to Juliet and her supporters to give away the college to the oil-and-gas- rich UT System.

The Robles siren song is a song filled with empty phases and melodious sounds. If you give away the district that this community has supported as a way to educate themselves out of poverty, we will lower taxes and lower tuition.

But we see where Robles forgot to say that the UT System would not absorb the $65 million in debt the district owes. Given amortization costs and interest, this figure will more closely approximate some $102 million before the bonds are paid in 2034.
Only then, and only until then, would the district finally be "united" with UTB. However, the TSC taxpayer will probably feel a lot better because after the $102 million is paid, he will have nothing in return. No district, on in-district tuition, nada.

This Thursday, during the meeting at Gorgas Hall, Juliet's troops will be out in force. They have organized themselves and purchased full-page ads with their appeal to save UTB.

However, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and we understand that the reaction to Save TSC grows stronger and will be in force at the meeting, too.

Democracy isn't neat and tidy. In fact, sometimes it's downright messy. But out of that debate – a debate that Juliet and her cadre did not envision or want – will emerge the message that we don't want to do away with the college district that has served us so well. Juliet will learn that we want a four-year degree-granting institution as well, but not at the cost of giving away the farm in the process.

We were sold down the river once in 1991.

Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us. See you at the barricades.