BEWARE OF EX-BROWNTOWN P.R. GEEKS BEARING GIFTS...

By Juan Montoya
One was the former chief of staff for Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr.
Another was a Talking Head for a local television station who went off to make his name (or not) in the state capital and then, once the charm resulted in lower ratings, opened his own public relations firm in Big Bad Austin.
And still another was a former newspaper gal in Brownsville who sought her calling as a public relations shilling goods and services in Austin.
All three – Buddy Garcia, Ronnie Oliveira and Lisa Marie Gomez – have latched on to the Liquefied Natural Gas industry and have descended upon us bearing "gifts" such as jobs, clean industry, and future nirvana using their ties to Brownsville as their hook.
Oliveira is a double dipper. Leaning heavily (and melodramatically) on his Brownsville roots (father a cop, mother a teacher) and his cousin the Texas State Rep. for the area (get it?), he was able to wrest a lucrative $140,000 public relations "branding" contract over other firms which were ranked above his proposal.
When the online poll on his design turned out 80 percent against, he nonetheless convinced our city commissioners (Mayor Tony Martinez, Rose Gowen, Deborah Portillo, and John Villarreal) to approve giving him the gig. Oliveira said he was well worth it because he was not only going to provide the city with his lackluster logo, but also sacrifice himself to be the cheerleader for the city in the branding campaign.
We are not worthy.
LMG, in the other hand, is shilling for Annova LNG using the fact that she was raised in Brownsville and worked for the newspaper there as the sentimental umbilical cord.
"Job! Jobs! Jobs! is her mantra. She knows hunger when she sees it.
And Buddy, what can we say about Buddy, is adept at using the political influence of Lucio's senate position to twist arms as his boss taught him in the years they spent together giving away the South Texas farm in Austin (for a slight fee, of course).
As far as we know, neither of the three have won any Pulitzers, although reading their glowing resumes in their websites, they make themselves out to be mavens of the highest order.
All they want is for us to believe them that – since they spent time in Brownsville stepping on the lowest rung of the professional ladder – this entitles them to come bearing dubious gifts upon the skeptical peasants. They are asking the people here to accept the potential of environmental disaster, unsightly gas flare towers, possible groundwater contamination and the threat of natural gas explosions a scant few miles from populated areas.
Why should the people take their spiel at face value?
"Because we're from Brownsville," they shout in unison even though the last time any of these snake oil salesmen lived down here was decades ago.
The ringmaster is Garcia, of course. He is the pivotal money man hired to line up the proverbial ducks in the water for the LNG billionaire corporations to set up shop on the Brownsville Ship Channel in return for their 30 pieces of silver.
So far the Trojans have not been as pliable as those of yore. Laguna Vista, Port Isabel and South Padre Island have said "nyet." An the Cameron County commissioners tabled Annova's $25 million tax break request as did the P.I. ISD on Annova's $195 million tax abatement application.
Maybe they like their water and air clean so that their children and their children can enjoy them without looking over their shoulder at the belching flames from the smokestacks or the chemicals leeching into the waters that provide the habitat for fish and fowl.
What price tag can you put on those "gifts"?