THE PORT, CAMPIRANO, LAUNCH PR BLITZ; SHUN WORKERS

By Juan Montoya
Following a full-page ad Sunday where Port of Brownsville CEO Eddie Campirano extolled the breathtaking advances that have made the port the little engine that is bringing economic nirvana to this blighted region, we were regaled Tuesday with a "news" article regurgitating the same drivel.
Hold still my beating heart as we recall the "findings" of the 2012 study the port paid Martin Associates to determine the port’s economic impact.
Here's are the highlights:
*a record amount of cargo (7.1 million metric tons) moving through the port
 *21,590 jobs generated by vessel and cargo activity
*11,230 of them having direct impact on the local and regional economies.
* Number 4 among the nation’s top 25 Foreign Trade Zones
* Number 2 in Texas
* a "boost" in operating revenues from $12.6 million in 2008 to $15.2 million in 2012.
Now, notice he didn't say that there were 11,230 jobs at the port. And notice that he didn't say that 21,590 jobs were generated in the area by port cargo activity.
In fact, that the Port of Brownsville ranks Number 4 among the nation's Foreign Trade Zones could just be a consequence of the fact that we are one of the few ports actually close to a foreign country, in other words, of geography.
As far as being the Number 2 Foreign Trade Zone in Texas, let's look at Number 1, which we assume is the Port of Houston.
*tonnage: 12,601,195 tons in 2010, making the Port of Brownsville not just Number 2, but a rather distant Number 2 at 7.1 millon.
* direct Jobs: Houston counts 198,000. Notice Campirano did not mention this statistic. It would be somewhere below 5,000. He did mention indirect jobs (21,590). The Port of Houston? How about 393,147.
Campirano said that the port’s maritime operations produced some $2 billion in economic activity in the state, while the amount of income and local expenditures generated for 2011 is estimated at $771.3 million, resulting in $134 million in local and state taxes.
My, my.
Our first cousin, the Port of Houston generated $31,800,000,000 in income and $1,300,000,000 state and local taxes. We got a go a ways to catch up, don't we?
However, the Port of Brownsville was very good to the local stevedores, brokers and warehouse operators. When the former boards of the port allowed Gulf Stream Marine, a nonunion stevedore, to do business here, the wages for local longshoremen plummeted as other stevedores followed suit and dropped theirs, too.
As a result, today the Port of Brownsville wages for that skilled and highly-dangerous work is the lowest of all the Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard ports in the United States.
The United States Maritime Alliance, Ltd. (USMX) reports that since 1977 it and its predecessor organizations successfully negotiated contracts with the International Longshoremen’s Association, AFL-CIO (ILA) without any disruptions to service.
The USMX reports that since then both industry and the unions have ekked out a decent living.
"ILA members on the East and Gulf Coasts earn an average of $124,138 annually in wages and benefits. In wages alone, they make $50 an hour, more than double the average hourly wage of about $23 earned by all union workers in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics," it reports.
In fact, the alliance and the unions have just inked a new six-year contract with no qualms about either making money.
How about our bright little corner of the Gulf?
The local ILA reports that because of the depressed wages fostered by the port commission and the stevedoring companies, their starting wage – for the same work they do in Houston and elsewhere – is about $9, with higher skilled operators paid between $12 to $15 per hour.
So if it's not the workers who are profiting at the port, who keeps the difference? Someone is making out like a thief, but it isn't the workers, is it? Why didn't the study include a section on that?
Gulf Stream Marine is the largest stevedoring company at the port. Its manager Mark Hoskins, Vice President of Operations fo Gulf Stream Marine, is the brother-in-law of BND board chairman John Reed.
By the way, Gulf Stream Marine has earned an unsavory reputation for chronically having workers hurt and killed unloading cargoes.
The plot thickens even more.

John Cowen, the brother of commissioner Ralph Cowen is the owner of Warehouse Properties, which rents warehouse space at the port. Ralph Cowen is the manager of the business and often embarrasses his fellow commissioners when he sidles up to prospective port lessees soliciting business for his family. Ralph's brother  is also a partner in a brokerage firm that does business with the port.
Warehouse Properties, by the way, contributed $5,000 to the candidacy of Deborah Portillo, Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez's candidate for District 3.
Commissioner Carlos Masso, a former Asst. DA under Armando Villalobos, met with the attorneys of Dannenbaum Engineering to iron out a $1 million "agreement" absolving Dannenbaum so that the DA could forget about the $14.5 million in unjustified charges to the port for the scandal involving the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. Masso ran against Luis Saenz for DA and lost.
Fellow commissioner Martin Arambula – who has stated he wants to run for Cameron County Judge – often accompanied Masso to Houston and elsewhere to meet with the Dannenbaum principals. Before that, Arambula was the darling of former congressman Solomon Ortiz and was the manager of a private security company that had the port contract until the criticism of Ortiz got too hot because he was getting security business from the ports here and in Corpus Christi while fighting for more money to go to Homeland Security.
Tito Lopez is the only one who makes no bones that he owns a trucking company that depends on the port cargo for his business.
All five commissioners, then, have a personal stake in the business of the port.
Yet, while all extol the virtues of the port's impact on the economy, nary a one says a thing about the depressed wages that are making some of their fellow commissioners and their relatives rich at the expense of depressed wages for the workers.
 But then again, while Campirano, the CEO, is drawing a $175,000 annual salary and a $8,400 auto allowance without any credible maritime experience in his resume, it wouldn't be good form to say anything about the unseen workers laboring in the dangerous, dark, sweltering holds of dirty ships, would it?
When you pay for a report you get what you want in it, don't you?
After all, it was Campirano and Reed who pushed through a report that focused on the alleged shortcomings of the Finance Department under Debbie Duke and called for her removal as head of that section. The main beef Reed seemed to have with Duke was that she was adamant about Gulf Stream Marine paying its share of the costs associated with doing business there like all the rest of the port's tenants.
The report, predictably, recommended Duke be removed.
 Then came the announcement that the Brownsville Navigation District was awarded the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA) certificate of achievement for excellence in finance, and singled out Duke for her outstanding performance.
That just about blew the Reed-Campirano effort out of the water. But then, as we said, when you order a report, you are given what you want.