GET BACK TO WHERE YOU ONCE BELONGED, GET BACK MIKE!

By Juan Montoya

Remember Mike Gonzalez, the totally ineffectual CEO of the shadow government called United Brownsville?

Come to think of it, remember United Brownsville?

It all started when former City of Brownsville Mayor (now PUB counsel and Cameron County Judge) Eddie Treviño pushed through a city-funded $1 million study called Imagine Brownsville that morphed into the beast we knew as United Brownsville.

The coordinating committee for the group was composed of none other than former banker IBC's Fred Rusteberg, then-UTB President Julieta Garcia, Martinez, and former banker cum academic Irv Downing. These trio picked Gonzales to head their shadow government in April 2011.

However, since neither the academics nor the bankers were willing to foot the bill to fund their United Brownsville Trojan horse, they were able to go to at least eight public entities for $25,000 a piece in annual "membership" fees to pay Gonzales, the former mayor of Kyle, Texas, and his "staff."

For the better part of seven years, these public entities chipped in their annual $25,000 apiece and included: The City of Brownsville, the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation, the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation, the Brownsville Navigation District, The University of Texas at Brownsville, Texas Southmost College, the BISD, and the Brownsville Public Utilities Board. Only Cameron County has refused to fork over the $25,000 "partnership" fees to this bunch.

Over the span of seven years, these entities paid United Brownsville more than $1.4 million to "have a seat at the table" and pay Gonzales. The number of jobs created for the people of Brownsville? Just Gonzales' and his secretary Debbie Portillo, who was later pushed to run for city commissioner by Mayor Tony Martinez, as far as we can tell.

And while United Brownsville was supposedly encouraging civic engagement, Mike never bothered to register locally to vote. In fact, neither did his wife.

Now we have been informed that Mikey is back home working the political angle there again. In the photo at right, the former Kyle mayor Gonzales is seen at a birthday party for a candidate for mayor there Travis Mitchell which was held this weekend.

The party was held at at the home of current mayor Todd Webster. There is a Brownsville link here, we are told. It seems that Webster graduated from high school in Brownsville.

The man on the right is is Will Conley, the commissioner for Pct. 3 until a few days ago. He resigned to announce he is running for County Judge since the person holding that post announced recently that he has leukemia and probably will step aside.

Conley, by the way, is the chairman of CAMPO, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO) is the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Bastrop, Burnet, Caldwell, Hays, Travis, and Williamson Counties.

After all, it's all about positioning, isn't it?