REARRANGING THE DECK CHAIRS ON COWEN'S GBIC, COB

 Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Call it a grotesque game of musical chairs.

We'll move this person here, that one over there, and yet everything remains the same. City of Brownsville bureaucrats move from one highly-paid position to another, the city commission goes back on their word, and the economic development efforts of the city remain stalled.

The latest move happened this past Tuesday during the meeting when acting city manager Helen Ramirez was relieved of her other position as director of the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation (GBIC) and made interim city manager starting August 1. As such, she inherits the position that former city manager Noel Bernal held until his departure for greener pastures in Colorado.

His pay when he left? Would you believe $225,000? Ramirez, as one of his assistant city managers, was drawing $195,000. 

Her replacement will be Constanza Miner, business development director for the at the GBIC, who will now become its director. It is noteworthy that city commissioner Roy de los Santos has been the moving force to disentangle the mess and insist that the GBIC board return to being an autonomous economic development organization. 

And the commission – which did away with the GBIC board members and replaced them with city  commissioners and had promised that new members would be appointed – is now apparently dragging its feet in delivering on their promise since commissioner John Cowen has chosen to remain the chairman of the GBIC.

You remember Cowen. He was on the old board when former GBIC director Mario Lozoya was attempting to attract a steel mill to to a site next to the Cameron County Sheriff's Office near the Rucker-Carrizalez Detention Center but lacked a few properties to close the deal.

Cowen asked Lozoya to give him private briefings on the property acquisitions needed to bring the plan to fruition and the information somehow leaked out and Lozoya found out that the needed acreage had been snagged by Patricio Sampayo, Cowen's buddy on the Brownsville Housing Authority and a land speculator 

In short, it was Cowen who was the prime suspect for sabotaging a project for the high-tech steel mill by Dynamic Steel which would have brought the $1.9 billion environmentally-friendly plant and 600 high-paying jobs at $75,000 a year by relaying inside information that reached the ears of his pal.

The city's tax base would have doubled if the plans for the steel mill would have gone through. A week after Cowen was given two private briefings by Lozoya, the GBIC realtors found that Sampayo held the option on three parcels of land totaling 141 acres which were critical for the plant's construction. 

But Sampayo was asking for $25,000 an acre where before GBIC could have acquired it for $19,000 an acre. GBIC refused. The potential profit of the land scheme? A neat $864,000.

If it hadn't been for land speculation, the lack of real-estate for a suitable industrial park to attract industry, and the entrenched attitude that if a certain few people can't profit economically from projects they won't happen, the city's residents would have benefited and added taxes would have doubled the city's tax base.

Instead, officials from Steel Dynamics are opening the steel mill on a sorghum field outside Sinton where before they had said Brownsville was on the top of the list to bring the plant here on land that the GBIC was acquiring.

Even more cynical was the fact that Cowen voted to authorize the hiring of special counsel and auditor to investigate land transactions under Lozoya since it was Cowen who was the most likely suspect in leaking the information on the steel plant. The audit found that there was no "there" there in the land transactions under Lozoya. But there was never an investigation into the alleged Cowen-Sampayo collusion on the land deal.

After Lozoya was pushed out of the GBIC by Cowen, Nurith Galonsky and Rose Gowen, it reached our ears that state an federal investigators had sat down with him to hear about the players and the events that took place in the botched land deal. 

Now Cowen as chair of the GBIC board says that the organization and the city will conduct national searches for city manager and GBIC director.

"In the meantime, GBIC is on sound footing and we'll well positioned to carry projects forward," he told the local daily. "I don't think we'll miss a beat with Connie in the interim role."

In past statements to the local daily, Cowen said that "We continue to get a lot of calls from companies that want to expand or develop in Brownsville," he said. "I think it's a good time to invest in Brownsville."

All those prospective companies planning to come to Brownsville were recruited by Lozoya with the full support of former GBIC board members Pedro E. Cardenas, Vice Chair, Sandra Duran, Esteban Guerra, Dennis Sanchez, Treasurer, Nico Schaefer, Secretary,Graham Sevier-Schultz, chair, and Jason Wolfe who were replaced by the city commission.

Since the commissioners appointed Asst. City Manager Helen Ramirez to replace Lozoya, the only "accomplishment" that has been reported by the GBIC – established to create good paying jobs for local residents – was the hiring of OUTSIDE consultants at $450,000 to help Ramirez. An interesting, if not corrupted, application of the economic development concept.

Placing Cowen at the head of the GBIC is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. What other inside info is going to find its way to the ears of his land-speculator pals?

Yes, John, especially with you reigning over all the GBIC deals as its chairman and her direct supervisor. Sweet.