SUDDENLY, GALONSKY WANTS TO "PROTECT" PUBLIC'S MONEY

By Juan Montoya

When Nurith Galonsky was appointed to the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation in October 2017, she didn't complain that the sales-tax funded economic development entity erred in hiring interim executive director Gilbert Salinas in November 2016 because it was not authorized in its by-laws.

Just a month before her appointment, the members of the GBIC had voted to cut ties with the Brownsville Economic Development Corporation and to hire nationally-recognized headhunter Jorgensen Consulting to find a permanent executive director.

When she came aboard, she said nothing, but participated in the executive sessions where its representatives told them how the search was coming along.

Then, as the process moved along, Jorgensen narrowed the search to three finalists to the position – including Salinas – and a majority of the five-member board seemed to be inclined to hire San Antonio-based Toyota director of Governmental and External Affairs Mario Losoya instead of Salinas.

In a June 21 meeting, a majority of the board authorized GBIC chairman (and city commissioner) Cesar De Leon, to negotiate a contract with Lozoya. The vote was 3-0 since Galonsky, infuriated that the majority voted against her choice, left in a huff and didn't vote.

De Leon and GBIC attorney Luis Hernandez met with the candidate and – after tweaking the contract – agreed to negotiated terms with Lozoya. They inked it on June 24, and the negotiated contract was brought back for approval to the GBIC board on June 26.

At that meeting, Galonsky and GBIC member John Cowen voted against the contract and the majority – De Leon, city commission Jessica Tetreau and Cameron County Treasurer David Betancourt – voted to approve it.

Miffed, Galonsky filed a petition for a Temporary Restraining Order on Wednesday, July 11, two days before Losoya was to take over as GBIC executive director. In it, she made some conveniently self-serving claims. She claimed that unless the TRO was issued by Associate District Judge Louis Sorola, the contract "exposes GBIC and the taxpayers to uncertain financial liability due to the vague, uncertain, and questionably enforceable elements of the contract."

Under the negotiated terms, Losoya was to receive a five-year contract with a $225,000 salary with an additional $30,000 if he met the benchmarks set by GBIC at the end of each year.

Galonsky said she found this objectionable because, as she told the local daily: "We are dealing with taxpayers' money...This is a very risky way to commit Brownsville's sales-tax revenue."

Gratuitously, the other "nay' vote, Cowen, alleged Lozoya could not be terminated for "non-performance, apparenlty oblivisous to the fact that while Salinas was at the BEDC his "non-performace" as CEO Jason Hilts' Tonto resulted in $100,000s in squandered public funds with little to show for their worldwide jaunts.

Martinez and a host of elected officials and bureaucrats travels the globe on the public dime GBIC paid the BEDC and nothing from Cowen then.
Galonsky, also an appointed member of the Brownsville Public Utility Board and an appointee to the city-manager search committee, apparently doesn't see the irony in her statements.

After all, she was content to have her father – Brownsville real estate mogul Abraham Galonsky – take $2.3 million from the city for La Casa Del Nylon, a shell of a building that remains empty and a magnet for the homeless of the city four years after the purchase of he useless building.

Mayor Tony Martinez convinced
the other members of the city commission to pay for the building using Certificates Of Obligation (COs), public-debt money, with the justification that the University of Texas System said it would buy it to relocate part of its campus downtown. Martinez knew that Cos didn't require voter approval. His assertion that UT wanted the property turned out not to be true and the taxpayers got the shaft.

Yet, nary a peep from frugal Nurith.

And as a member of the PUB, she has remained silent as the building of the promised Tenaska gas-fueled, electric-generating $500 million plant that was supposed to be constructed and producing 800 MWs of electricity by the middle of 2017 never has materialized.

Toward that end, the city commission in 2013 approved a 35 percent hike in electric, water and waste water rates. We're in the middle of 2018 and construction of the plant hasn't even begun and more than $100 million generated by the higher rates is piled in the coffers of the PUB where Nurith sits on the board.

And as far as the $225,000 salary for Losoya contained in the contract, Galonsky said it was way too high since the former city manager was paid $225,000 who oversaw 1,200 employees. Why doesn't she look in her own backyard at PUB? There, the top three executives have given themselves raises of $100,000 each over three years. PUB has a total workforce of 500 and provides only 46,000 industrial, commercial and residential customers with electric service.

Between 2013 to 2017 (since the rate increases have been in effect), CEO John Bruciak's salary increased by $109,169 from $184,059 to $294,028. After similar raises over the same period of times, Ass. CEO Fernando Saenz now makes $264,902 and Leandro Garcia makes $255,088. Where's the competence here when these three energy gurus all recommended that PUB raise rates to build the Tenaska plant?

Galonsky also complained that as secretary of the GBIC her signature was necessary to ink the Lozoya contract. But she was very selective in quoting the GBIC bylaws. She said in her TRO petition that: under Section 4.05 titles "President," it grants him the authroty to sign contracts "with the Secretary" which the board has authorized to be executed. Well, yes and no. What it actually says is:

 So if the majority of the board delegates the signing and execution to De Leon or "any other proper officer of the corporation" like the board attorney, her signature is not really needed and it's a valid contract, right?

The board, not an individual member, or in this case, a minority member (Galonsky), is considered a "constituted authority and instrumentality" under the Texas Development Corporation Act.

To read entire By-Laws, click on link: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=643034ff4a&view=att&th=16493251aa61a2b7&attid=0.1&disp=inline&safe=1&zw

The fact that she did not agree with the majority's choice for executive director is not enough justification to throw a log on the tracks and derail the economic development train. She is a member of the city manager selection committee. If she does not agree with a majority there on the selection, will she sue them, too?

(We have heard rtumnors that Nurith, Martinez, and other city officials involved in this debacle may be part of a lawsuit filed by private citizens tired of their shenenigans and waste of public funds.)

The majority of the board – under the direction of Jorgensen's Consulting – has made its choice after performing its due diligence. That their choice did not please Galonsky or her political godfather Da Mayor Tony Martinez should not be reason for this city's economic development efforts to be thrown back into the arms of the politically corrupt – and proven inept – clutches of the Brownsville Economic Development Council.

As far as the Texas Open Meetings Act issues, once the TRO is removed and the lawsuit makes its way through the courts, those issues will also be found to be baseless and this whole exercise a waste of taxpayers' time and money like her father and Da Mayor's Casa del Nylon.