FEW RUN INTERFERENCE FOR GARCIA JR.'S "BILLIONS".

By Juan Montoya

Last Wednesday Oscar Garcia Jr. brought his dog-and-pony show and Small Area Plan which had been turned down by the Brownsville Economic Development Council.

Garcia Jr. was a member of the Brownsville Public Utility Board before he jumped ship and now works as project manager for Jacobs Management. He jumped just in time to hook up with Jacobs and snare $185,000 for performing a study of the study.

No mention was made of the Phase I work product (Small Area Plan) that was merely a rehash of the $445,000 master plan paid by the Port, PUB, the city and the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation.
It is doubtful that any of the commissioners have even seen that plan, and with a basketful of catchwords, buzzwords and a regurgitation of issues like heavy manufacturing, light manufacturing, logistics hub and building a new and improved  another economy, the presentation was that of a new nirvana for Brownsville.
At $185,000 paid to Jacobs Group of which Garcia Jr. is a project manager, there are 45 pages of the 90 page report made up of photocopied index cards. That's right, index cards with arrows and scribbles.
The workshop session was interesting in that Garcia Jr. was presenting for Phase II of the study of the study with a further study which we already covered.
He insisted that City staff asked Jacobs to do this presentation, which sounded a lot like “and a voice came to be from the clouds and I was surrounded by a great white light”. He failed to mention that further funding for this project was already turned down by BEDC and continued as if the horse still lived.
What he didn't say was that his Phase II SAP will cost the GBIC another $407,000 because the PUB and the Port of Brownsville (like the BEDCC) wanted no part of it anymore.
Julieta is now in the former digs of Father Armand Matthew who provided firebase support during the storming of the Bastille when she was busy saying, “Let the UT system have the cake!” Most notable use of the Center for Civic Engagement at the Cueto building during this period was the concentrated shelling of Trey Mendez by that priest who was so much a part of Valley Interfaith.
In a curious repeat of history, later in the meeting Project VIDA had a presentation that was billed as “Year-end report” like it had some required significance to be presented but the 14-year veteran of this scam corrected that title saying “we are in the middle of or fiscal year and this is more of a progress report” The fact that VIDA has been around for twenty years was mentioned and will be addressed later in this article.
Somewhere along the way the mission of VIDA seems to have changed. When it started the focus was on putting students into the nursing program. No mention of that anymore. She did mention the target of serving 32 students was expanded to 88 through leveraging (Juliet’s favorite word)
It is not surprising that spreading the base for this expenditure was really needed.
Using the $250,000 they get from GBIC every year the 32 student number equates to $7812 annually per student. That would be great if they paid the student’s tuition, but that is not what happens. You can bet they get all the “financial aid” they can for each student which means student loans and debt. Using their number of 88 students (through leveraging, of course) you get $2840 per student, per year.
That sounds a lot more reasonable, doesn’t it? Of course it does because it was meant to sound reasonable and it might have been except for one glaring omission: GBIC is far from the only organization they clip for those same students.
Last year the City of Harlingen finally saw through what was going on and finally quit funding them. When Jim Barton tried to ask VIDA to identify these students, the director at the time suddenly resigned.
Here is what the International Monetary Fund has to say that directly relates to things like Project VIDA:

Conclusions and Some Pragmatic Suggestions for Policy Formulation

Together with efforts to mobilize revenue, public expenditure policy is at the core of any successful effort to achieve efficient and equitable adjustment. Focusing only on revenue policy is not enough. Nor is it sufficient, even from a macroeconomic perspective, to focus only on the level of public expenditure. Public expenditure productivity has critical implications for fiscal adjustment, particularly as the competition for limited public resources intensifies. Public expenditure policy issues, including those relating to the efficiency of public expenditures and public expenditure composition, are vital for efficient and sustainable fiscal adjustment.

Conclusions
The following conclusions can be derived from the consideration of the economic implications of unproductive public expenditures.
Proper public expenditure analysis requires proper statistical data.
Ideally, the authorities should collect in a timely fashion the relevant comprehensive data on economic and functional expenditure components and subcomponents that encompass all proper public entities, including local governments and extra-budgetary institutions. In addition, data on expenditures in each functional category should be broken down into their economic components. Other types of data (for example, detailed social indicators) are also required for effective public expenditure policy analysis. The statistical data being collected now are far from adequate.
The IMF report was addressed to countries but as they say, all politics are local. The IMF could have done this analysis simply by examining VIDA and our public entities relationship with them.
Now for the kicker: Twenty years ago, VIDA was at GBIC and clipped them for $180,000. At the same meeting Oscar Garcia, now with Jacobs Engineering, clipped GBIC for the exact same amount of $180,000 for a wordy empowerment project called Gentenet. The only person empowered was Oscar Garcia and nobody ever demanded that he give the money back. Now Oscar and VIDA are at the same City Commission meeting with hands out again. Oscar was there for a dead project and VIDA was there hoping that nobody can add.
During the meeting that followed the workshop, Tony Martinez got sworn in as did District 1 commissioner Ricardo Longoria.

There is always a touch of the maudlin when Longoria is involved. This time it was no different. He hauled in half the barrio and commissioner Cesar De Leon provided the touch of comedy when he brought in the neon sword that Rick was holding when someone took his photo au natural and posted it on the Internet.
After 357th District Court Judge Juan Magallanes pronounced each of them the best thing since sliced bread, both sat at their seats where they will continue to rule the roost for four more years (sigh!).
It is unknown whether the BEDC and the GBIC will take the bait on Garcia Jr.'s $407,000 proposal for yet another study of the study of the study. But this is the first time we hear that the city staff is pushing for the funding of the plan and begged him to bring it before the commission for its blessing.
We'll keep an eye on Garcia Jr. and his buddies to see what their next move to get the loot will be.