FOR COWEN, A LEGACY IS A MIGHTY HARD LOAD TO CARRY

By Juan Montoya
Carrying on a legacy is a mighty hard thing to do. And leaving a lasting legacy is even harder.

Just ask City of Brownsville Mayor John Cowen.

The Cowens, Phil, Ralph, etc., wear the legacy of their ancestors on their sleeve. During his campaign, mayor Cowen wrote that "two of my ancestors, William Neale and John S. Ford, served as Mayors of Brownsville in the mid-1800s during the early formation of our city. We are proud of their service and other members of my family that have served in various elected positions."

But idols have been found to have their feet of clay. Neale, for example, made a lucrative living chasing runaway slaves into Mexico and returning them to their owners. His dubious claim to fame is  outlined in "The Twin Cities of the Border," by Lt. W. H. Charfield written in 1893.

According to Chatfield, the captured runaway slaves "in most cases, however, they were glad to return, when their masters followed them to their lairs: and offered to take take them back to the "Old Cabin Home." Oh, yeah, sure.

It is also worth noting that his son, William Peter Neale, was one of the men that Juan Nepomuceno "Cheno" Cortina, had on his hit list when he and 75 followers took over Brownsville in September 1859. According to a pronunciamento, the younger Neale had wantonly killed innocent Mexicans and walked around free with impunity.  When Cortina's raiders found him, he was sleeping at his father's home and took a bullet through a window when he woke suddenly to the sound of gunfire and sat bolt upright in his bed.

And John "Rip" Ford, who was also served as mayor, was an officer in the Confederate States of America, later attempted to establish a separate republic made up of sections of seized northern Mexican states where southern sympathizers could go and slavery would be legal. He said the new republic would then establish an extradition treaty with Texas that would allow them to return runaway slaves to their masters.

In fact, the Cowens have extolled the virtues of these men, especially William Neale, that they convinced the city commission to set aside $190,000 to restore the dilapidated Neale home and set it up in a prominent public place where people can admire and revere the runaway slave catcher's memory.

If the city is true to form, it's going to sink cash into making the slummy-looking carcass of the building look like the Taj Mahal just as they did with the carcass of Charles Stillman's love crib – another slave owner – Laureles Ranch "house."

But odious as the sins of their fathers were, John Cowen has much to do to clean up his own "legacy" as a public servant. 

As a member of the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation (GBIC), he joined former city commissioner Nurtih Galonsky in filing a lawsuit

against the other board members after they chose Mario Losoya – the former Toyota USA director of marketing and workforce development for North America –  over their choice, Gilbert Salinas, who worked under Jason Hilts at the discredited Brownsville Economic Development Corporation.

The lawsuit failed, but that didn't stop Cowen and Galonsky from harassing the GBIC CEO and finally prompting Losoya to accept a $350,000-plus buyout after 

false rumors that there was hanky panky going on with real estate purchase by the GBIC under Losoya. An audit conducted on the charges found them baseless.

The city commission then voted to remove all seven GBIC board members and to appoint themselves as GBIC’s interim board with Cowen – who campaigned on a promise that city commissioners should not serve on any boards – as interim GBIC board chairman. They then appointed then-Assistant city manager Helen Ramirez as GBIC CEO with instructions to quickly put to use some $13 million in the GBIC budget.

“It’s sitting on $13 million in the bank and we’re not really getting a return on our investment. We were kind of spinning our wheels over there and it kind of needed to be refreshed, and I think we’re all very excited with Helen at the helm. She’s proven herself at the city to be a very effective economic developer and I think we’ll see some quick wins in the short term.” 

Cowen said Ramirez’s appointment as GBIC head is “an opportunity to streamline this thing so we get some results and a good use of taxpayer money.”

Those "quick wins" were announced seven months after Ramirez took over in February 2021 and heralded as Brownsville's splash into space-related industries which would pump millions into the local economy and  create jobs. 

A city compliance audit reported that the agreement between 9Point8 Capital was signed by founder J. Brant Arseneau and Helen Ramirez. In the agreement, the company claimed that 9Point8 Capital was a New York based corporation authorized to do business in the State of Texas.

The $1 million was to be paid in 4 increments of $250,000 with the first payment within 5 days of the effective (signature) date then one at 6 months, one at 12 months, and the final at 18 months of a 3-year agreement.

In other words, the GBIC and Ramirez agreed that the company was going to get full payment of the $1 million halfway through the length of the contract.

Under that agreement, the auditors reported that 9Point8 Capital, an advisory company, was supposed to create local employment (20 full time equivalent jobs – 15 back office and 5 hatchery jobs), create a business “hatchery” to help startups find funding, fund space program scholarships at University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), and bring capital investment for space startups within the city limits of Brownsville.

And he dangled a $10 million carrot promising to bring in that much from the space-related companies and manufacturers he attracted. Ramirez and the city took the bait and doled out the cash.

By the time that the GBIC and the city attorney found out that Arsenaeu and 9Point8 Capital had not complied with their obligations under the agreement, and that they were not registered in New York or licensed to do business in Texas, they had already handed them $500,000. The audit then revealed that Ramirez, trying to get a "quick win," disregarded accepted managerial practices by directing GBIC staff to rush the process.

The auditors reported that: "We did find a note indicating accepting self-reporting from the grant recipient would be acceptable in determining compliance. We deem the internal controls were inadequate because of the lack of policies and procedures and reliance on grantee self-reporting."

Despite her glaring incompetence, Cowen and a majority of the city commission voted to hire Ramirez as city manager to replace Noel Bernal, her mentor who left for Colorado, at a $244,504 annual salary. 

Even before that debacle and loss of $500,000 with nothing to show for it, Cowen was also named as a prime suspect in divulging GBIC's plans for a steel plant to be built on land under acquisition by Losoya. The realty company discovered that the plots of land necessary to bring the plant to Brownsville had already been grabbed by a Patricio Sampayo, Cowen's buddy on the Brownsville Housing Authority and a land speculator.

Losoya told investigators of the Cameron County District Attorney's Office and the FBI that Cowen twice asked him 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 Sampayo.

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 the 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.

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.

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 for Sampayo on the land scheme? A neat $864,000. When GBIC could not deliver the real estate needed, the company took their steel plant and jobs to Sinton, Texas, and said in an email that the unavailability of the land was the reason.

Is this the kind of "quick win" envisioned by Hizzoner?

There is another peccadillo that Cowen has in his quest to leave his family's lasting "legacy."

When the overwhelmingly Hispanic residents of historical E. Fronton Street opposed the renaming of their street to the McNair Family Drive, Cowen – who said he was "fact-driven" – insisted that there be a process for their demands to be heard on the renaming of the street. The residents complied with the "process" by gathering signatures for a petition and showed that more than 75 percent of the property owners were against the name change. However, McNair applied pressure on the city commission and a majority – including Cowen – knuckled under and, despite his promise – sided with anglo McNair against the residents.

Will Cowen emulate his predecessor Trey Mendez and leave under a cloud of suspicion he personally benefitted from his public position?

Like we said at the beginning, a legacy is a hard thing to carry, and leaving a lasting one is even harder. Cowen has until May 2027, when his term expires, to salvage his family's.