DEMOCRACY (AND HONEST PUBLIC SERVICE) DIE IN DARKNESS

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Come February 1, members appointed to boards which require reporting of their personal finances to serve will no longer conduct their meetings without public scrutiny.

These boards, such as the Greater Brownsville Incentive Corporation (GBIC), the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation (BCIC), the Brownsville Planning and Zoning Commission (P and Z), the Brownsville Zoning Board of Adjustment, the Brownsville Public Utilities Board (BPUB), and the Brownsville Building and Standards Commission, had been operating in relative obscurity even though their deliberations and decisions affect public policy, the public treasury, and the cost to city residents.

Whether it's utility rates(PUB), residential and commercial construction (P and Z) , building permits,  and the outlay of the annual $5.5 million doled out for incentives to attract industry to the GBIC and for quality of life projects to the BCIC, their decisions affect all city residents one way or naother. And up to now, they have been acting in silos far removed from public scrutiny.

As a result, we had the Tenaska Fiasco where – through a Memorandum of Understanding kept secret by the participants – utility rates were hiked to raise money to fund the bonds to build a $500 million gas-fueled electric plant that never came about. Their deliberations were mostly kept under wraps and for three years after the 2017 formal and unilateral withdrawal by Tenaska from the project, utility rates were kept artificially high...and the residents in the dark. 

Would it have been different if citizens had been able to obtain the facts and watch the PUB members in action (or inaction)? 

And what about the GBIC and its then-CEO and now city manager Helen Ramirez allowing companies to get $100,000s in incentives to space-related companies and ignoring their due diligence relying on the companies' self reporting on their track records and bona fides that resulted in one company getting $500,00 without generating one job for local residents?

And would the P and Z have rejected a request from the GBIC to rezone properties to establish a steel plant  in an industrial park and instead steering it toward the Port of Brownsville where some board members had personal interests and properties? As a result, the city lost a doubling of its tax rate and 600 well-paying jobs to Sinton, which welcomed them with open arms.

And would the board of the BCIC had handed out cash bundles between $5,000 to $200,000 like Halloween candy to a select coterie of cronies and current and former city officials and their families and making up the rules as they go along if their actions were broadcast to the general public? 

"One of the things we talked about was having more transparency and I know this commission is very big on that," said commissioner Roy De los Santos, who along Bryan Martinez, placed the item on the agenda. "We have also heard from the citizens also that they would  like to see the meetings of the boards online."        

A unanimous city commission then decided that "it is in the best interest and good governance of the City to require the broadcasting of certain board and commission meetings live and make the recordings of those meetings available to the public as quickly as the technology is used for the live broadcast will allow."

However, the members of those boards still have a small window of opportunity to continue their mischief until February 1, 2024 before their every action will be broadcast for the public to see and to judge for themselves whether the boards are serving in the people's interest, or protecting their own and their friends' interests as some have and continue to do.