By Juan Montoya
Hopefully this is a lesson for the trustees of the Texas Southmost Colleges who have been hot to trot to keep giving $25,000 of the public's money to "have a seat at the table" on the United Brownsville agenda.
This morning we learned from the local daily that United Brownsville "President" Michael Gonzales "moderated" the legislative session attended by local leaders and Texas Reps. Rene Oliveira and Eddie Lucio III.
Oliveira took the time to say he was running for reelection because, apparently, after 34 years there he still hasn't accomplished the goals he set out to complete. Given the state of his district's economy and the educational attainment here, it might be a couple more decades before he considers the job done.
"It would be wrong for me to walk away," he said.
Oh, c'mon Rene. We will manage without you, we're sure. Take a walk, please.
Lucio III, the heir apparent to his daddy the state senator, also handles his public position like a family heirloom. The Lucios, you see, feel entitled to the public jobs, and trading of influence and the public trust in exchange for exorbitant "consulting" fees to line their pockets.
And then there's "President" Gonzales, a president no one elected, but one who is entrusted with managing the annual "membership" fees totaling $200,000 which are collected (and given) dutifully by eight publicly-funded entities in return for being allowed (as TSC trustee Ed River says) "a seat at the table."
Well, the seat at the table apparently doesn't mean a thing despite United Brownsville's "ambitious" legislative agenda.
When Gonzales asked about some line items that TSC had requested through United Browsnville from this biennium, he was schooled by Oliveira, the state rep fifth in seniority in the House, on the way the sausage was made in Austin. He told Gonzales that those types of requests aren't typically handled by the the legislature.
He said Rep Jimmie Aycock, head of the House committee on public education had turned him don saying: "If I do it for you, I have to do it for every junior college."
So much for having a $25,000 yearly outlay for a "seat at the table" with United Brownsville. Its "president" doesn't even know how the educational outlays are done in Austin.
We have often ranted about how this non-elected organization and its United Brownsville Coordinating Board (IBC President Fred Rusteberg, UTB President Julieta Garcia and UTB VP Irv Downing) have hijacked elcted government and installed themselves as a shadow government with its supporting cast in entities like the Unted Brownsville board, the Brownsville Economic Development Council, etc.
The principals in this ongoing Ponzi scheme haven't created one job for a Brownsville resident and instead have funneled the public's money on bogus studies like the one pushed by Julieta's son Oscar Garcia Jr., now allied with Jacob's Group. So far, he has raked in $185,000 for Phase I of a Small Area Study and is hankering after Phase II at a cost of $407,000.
The upshot of this legislative session meeting was "Austin has already given you the UTRGV so stop asking for more."
In other words, you've had your crumbs, now get off the table.
8 comments:
We all thought the Trustees had better sense than to fork over 25 k to a bunch of con-artists. Whose idea was this? What a rip off ! To think that these people had ant better sense is shattering. I called the info office and no one knows anything.
We continue to see evidence that "United Brownsville" is merely a group of non-elected, well to do elitists who take tax dollars and produce "NADA" for this community....but seem to take care of themselves and their families. We have an elected Mayor and City Commishion that seem incapable of managing the city, and prefer to defer to non-elected self servering elitists. And yet, the citizens are too ignorant and apathetic to oppose this situation.
The at the county level you have Dan Sanchez who wants elected officials to decide their on pay raises. He wants the old Dumbokratic Party back in power. We need to keep local citizens in charge here. Dan Sanchez wants to be County Judge. if he gets any fatter, there will only room for his fat ass at the commissioner's table.
Really, Rene? Walk away. Please, walk away.
He's not doing shit for our community, or any local community. He sponsored the bill that took away Denton's city government power to try and regulate the fracking industry up there, the one that's shaking all their houses right out of their property values.
All René la Rana does is collect 600 K from vested interests to represent us Nacos in Brotown. Nos da atole con el dedo .
Just a duplication of the same services to advertise brownsville, lets see hmm how many loco nonprofits do this already? City of brownsville does its own ads, brownsville edc, the other brownsville edc, port of brownsville, brownsville chamber of commerce, brownsville vistors bureau etc etc etc oh i almost forgot united brownsviille too. Que bonito, and all at taxpayers cost. Isnt that special? Have a nice day cca
Please, how many Brownsville entities pitch money to this organization? And of these, how many use our tax money ?
You know who wouldn't pay was Carlos Cascos. Smartest politician around.
It's all a racket iF you are not fully informed. In mob language it's protection money. In La Mania language it's La Cuota.
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