INGRATE UTB SHOULD THANK TSC TRUSTEES, TAXPAYERS

By Juan Montoya
As Rene Oliveira, Eddie Lucio, Juliet Garcia and their minions engage in group hugs, patting themselves in the back and giving each other high-fives because the Texas Legislature approved the UT System's proposals to consolidate the UT Brownsville and Edinburg PanAm campuses and fund a medical school, they should show some gratitude toward other quarters.
They should genuflect and thank the four Texas Southmost College trustees who cut them off from the taxing entity's tit and weaned the UT System to fend for itself the way it should have done some 22 years ago when it hid behind the sham "partnership" with the community college to renege on its obligations.
When Adela Garza, Rene Torres, Kiko Rendon and Trey Mendez drew the line in the sand of the banks of the Rio Grande, the UT Regents knew the jig was up and they would have to pay their own way. Shucks!
Lucio (and his heir apparent Lucio III) and Oliveira got the news loud and clear from TSC supporters during one of their rare appearances before the common folk in Brownsville.

After 2015, the "University of the Americas," the "Super University," the Community University," or whatever other "groundbreaking" monikers that Garcia, Michael Putegant, Wayne Moore, or other of those overpaid underachievers might have used to cloak the highway robbery they perpetrated against the residents of the college district will come to an end.
There will be no more $50 million a year "transfers" to UTB from little TSC. There will be no more $640,000 murals that the administration wanted to pay from bond money until they were discovered. There will be no more overpriced grandiose buildings with the names of local luminaries tacked on to appease their vanity. There will be no more "easy" bond money to be drafted against the community college's ledger.
And, somehow or another, the UTB and Garcia will probably be like the tenant who leaves without paying their rent. Only this time is not for a few piddling thousands. UTB has stuck TSC with back rent arrears somewhere near $15 million and it keeps getting higher.
What's $100 million for a med school? That's only two years of "transfers" from TSC to UTB. And that $100 million will be spread over 10 years.
And before the general jubilation subdues, let's look closely on where the rest of the cash to run these new and improved "Super Duper" citadels of higher education will be found.
We'll take a haphazard guess. How about a Rio Grande Valley-wide taxing district? Bet your tax statement on it.
From the Daily Texan, we get a clue.
"In January, UT System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa told the Senate Finance
Committee that the System will seek $10 million per year in state general revenue funds to assist the consolidation and the establishment of the medical school.
The UT System is not currently seeking state funds to pay for the UT-Austin medical school, which will use revenue from the regents, the regional Seton Family of Hospitals and property tax revenue collected by Central Health, Travis County’s hospital district. At the Senate Finance Committee meeting, Cigarroa said the Rio Grande Valley does not have the tax base necessary to support such an arrangement.
Rep. René Oliveira, D-Brownsville, who filed the bill, said the city may have to create a special taxing district that would help fund the medical school but that the school would have to seek revenue from additional sources such as philanthropic funds.
“We cannot raise the kind of money you could raise in Austin or El Paso or Houston or Dallas, so we are going to have to be creative about other kinds of funding packages,” Oliveira said."

The participation of UTB and PanAm in the Permanent University Fund occurred only when Garcia's plan to absorb the assets and property of the college was foiled by a populace-backed majoritynof the TSC board said "no" to the UT System takeover of the 85-year-old community asset called TSC.
If they hadn't delivered, they well may have faced a MALDEF-style lawsuit as they did in Prarie View when they denied the predominantly black campus entry into the PUF.  Faced with the prospect of facing the U.S. Office of Civil Rights in court for excluding the blacks from the PUF pie, they blinked.
The same could have happened here if we didn't have such weak-willed, milquetoasts for political representatives.
Oliveira said it was "our turn." No, Rene, our turn was 22 years ago before the big boys from upstate came in and – using the lacayos like you and Lucio and Garcia and the Cardenas – got a free ride compliments of the poorest people in the country and y'all  willingly facilitated the seduction and rape.