OLIVEIRA AND LUCIO SR. MIDWIVED "PARTNERSHIP" FARCE

By Juan Montoya
As the taxpayers of the Texas Southmost College break away from the disadvantageous "partnership" with the oil-and-gas-rich UT System that they –the poorest residents in the state – subsidized for 20 years, it is helpful to remember who gave the legislative nod to this travesty.
Starting in 1991, with the likes of TSC trustees Mary Rose Cardenas, Tony Carnesi and David Oliveira cheering from the sidelines, the initial partnership agreement was enhanced to the satisfaction of the UT Regents year after year until the college district taxpayers and students were literally paying through their noses to support the ever-growing demands from Austin.

In fact, the initial agreement stated in no uncertain terms that "nothing in this agreement will be interpreted to provide for the inclusion of TSC facilities in the space inventory at UT for UT formula funding purposes."

That's right. Neither UTB-TSC nor UT-Pan Am were invited to the banquet where the other schools in the system shared in fabulously wealthy proceeds from the Permanent University Fund's millions derived from gas and oil leases.
To Oliveira and Lucio, that was fine with them.

I remember the late State Rep. Henry Sanchez fuming at the agreement language and fretting as he scratched his right forefinger which itched from a tropical fungus infection: "There is no money to fund the university in this agreement. TSC is going to have to pay for it all."

At the time, no one fully understood what Sanchez, a six-term state rep was talking about. He was reveiled by the powers that be supporting the giveaway of TSC and its assets to the UT System. He even started a newsweekly – Crossroads – after the local daily refused to accept his continuous flow of editorials against the agreement. Even then, the Cardenas contacted potential advertisers in the business community to sabotage the enterprise.

Up until today, some of his children blame his outspoken efforts to correct this anomaly as the cause of his death from a ruptured aorta.

Now, as the burden on the TSC taxpayers and its students has become all too clear, we have come to grasp the full implication of his warnings. Now we know that except for the campuses at UT-Brownsville and UT-Pan American in Edinburg, all other 13 campuses are funded under the "UT formula" with the proceeds of the incredibly wealthy oil and gas leases managed by the Texas General Land Office for support of the UT and Texas A & M systems.

Listed among the top responsibilities to the "partnership" was the college's obligation to "retain all the statutory responsibilities including the levy of ad valorem taxes and the satisfaction of payments on bond indebtedness."

The rapacious documents also called upon TSc to "provide through lease the use of buildings and facilities necessary for UT to perform this agreement."

In other words, as Henry clearly saw back then, it was the responsibility of the college district to provide the local tax base and incur debt through bond issues to provide the buildings and campus for the mighty UT System to simply walk in and place a UT plaque on the facility and claim it as their contribution to higher education for the illiterate masses of Brownsville.

No one then, not State Representative Rene Oiveira, not Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., not Mary Rose Cardenas, not Juliet Garcia, not Fred Rusteberg, not David Oliveira, raised a note of protest to the brutal rape of the TSC taxpayer and students.

In time, these "obligations" have resulted in the encumbrance of $100s of millions in debt, the highest tuition and user fees for local students in the nation and the limiting of educational opportunities for the poor in South Texas.
In fact, the 2011-2012 TSC budget contains a "transfer of $51 million" to UTB out of a total of $63 million in revenues. Inclused in this transfer is part of Garcia's preposterous $336,000 salary.

The axiom that education is the ladder to success was deemed a farce by this clique when they effectively removed the bottom rungs of this salvation by placing education beyond the reach of those that needed it the most.

Only the election by the people of four trustees to the TSC board – Adel Garza, Kikpo Rendon, Rene Torres, and Trey Mendez – prevented the total destruction of TSC when they rejected the Garcia-Putegnat-Oliveira-Lozano-Robles plan to totally dissolve the district and hand its $200 million in assets to the UT System.

In fact, it took the TSC trustees like Adela Garza lobbying in Austin before the House's Committee on Higher Education to prevent a bill sponsored by Oliveira in the House and Lucio in the Senate that maintained the status quo from prolonging the local agony.

Oliveria was told in no uncertain terms by the committee's chairman ditch the bill he had field and to to come back with one that protected the rights of the college district.

Oliveria has announced that he will seek yet another term in the Texas House. If we continue to listen to his siren song, that would make it 30 years that he will have kept that seat. Lucio Sr. says he wants to continue doing it to us at the Texas Senate as he has since he first got there in 1991, the year he sponsored the "partnership."

Will we let them?