Many local political observers were left in wonder at the heat generated by the appointment of a board member to the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation.
A brouhaha was generated when commissioner – and GBIC board member Jessica Tetreau – said Mayor Tony Martinez had not counted her "aye" vote for Estevan Guerra to fill the vacancy left by former commissioner Deborah Portillo. Portillo was said to have latched on to one of the LNG companies as a "consultant" to help them set up shop at the Port of Brownsville.
The failure of getting three votes for Guerra resulted in the unanimous vote at the next meeting to appoint Brownsville Pubic Utility Board member Nurith Galonsky to the GBIC board. Martinez had been heavily criticized for having his law partner Horacio Barrera negotiate the city's purchase of her father Abraham Galonsky's Casa del Nylon for $2.3 million. Her appointment to the GBIC board has been eyed suspiciously as a move by Martinez to quash an audit of the BEDC said to be critical of its administration and its board and executive committee.
Besides the fact that three city commissioners had decided to get on the board after the dismal number of jobs generated by the BEDC efforts to lure them using millions of dollars in incentives, there were other complaints aimed a the BEDC board and executive committee.
One of these was the expensive travel to all parts of Central and South America – and in particular Colombia – which had been selected by former CEO Jason Hilts for the establishment of a satellite BEC office abroad.
The travel did not just include so-called "global job developers" within the BEDC staff, but also numerous elected officials and administrators whose purpose on the trips were justified by Hilts to the BEDC board and executive committee as representing entities who could help BEDC attain its economic development goals.
Instead, after three years in operation, the Colombia operations did not result in hundreds of jobs locally, but perhaps three jobs over that span for three Colombian nationals, including a Colombian "consultant" who was said to have romantic ties to the former CEO.
Photos of the trips shows Hilts and Martinez socializing with Colombian business persons, biking against a mountainous backdrop decked in cycling gear, and reports have come back of the potential for shipping tropical fruit and flowers to cold storage facilities to be built in Brownsville.The one idea that came back from Colombia was the so-called "cyclobias," bicycle events that have cost the city $100,000s.
(The picture at right during picture one of these trips depicts Colombian Oscar Ruiz Brochero, the director of a business forum, with Sandra Lopez-Langley, a Business Development Officer at First Community Bank, and Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez during a trip
The cold storage idea t, however, never happened. What did happen was that the BEDC jaunters spent thousands of dollars and had a great time in an exotic places with exotic people on the public's dime.
That – among other things we are told – is supposed to be contained in the audit report being generated by Pricewaterhouse at the request of the GBIC board. It is believed that Martinez is hoping that Galonsky and other members of the GBIC board will not make the audit accessible to law enforcement to determine whether any criminal acts might have been committed.
(Martinez, Hilts and Tony Capella also went on a whirlwind trip at taxpayer expense to Italy, Turkey and the Netherlands that accomplished nothing except give three middle-aged men the pleasure of taking a Eurasian trip on the public's dime. Hilts also traveled to Sao Pablo and Rio de Janerio, Brazil, Guatemala, Panama, Santiago Chile to perform "prospect activities.")
Blogger Jim Barton reported in his Brownsville Observer that Hilts had talked Martinez into setting up the "office" in Colombia to "promote economic development" between the two countries.
"From 2013-15, $197,000 was spent for an office and staff in Columbia, plus Hilts and crew made SIXTEEN urgent trips back to Colombia to check on the progress of economic development. As we reported in earlier this year:
"In the pursuit of economic development for the City of Brownsville, BEDC operatives traveled sixteen times to the exotic destination of Colombia during fiscal years 2013-15. While typically a combination of Jason Hilts, Gilberto Salinas (now interim GBIC CEO) and Olga Ramos made the Colombia trip, one contingent included as many as eleven.
"During those years, the BEDC spent $312,541 of taxpayer monies on travel alone. Despite the hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars spent on the office, staff and trips to Colombia, the office was simply closed without fanfare in 2015. No jobs were created for Brownsville residents. Nothing in the way of economic development ever materialized between Brownsville and Colombia."
But, according to the meme published on social media, the mayor did get us a T-shirt that says "Estuve en Colombia y me acorde de ti" or "I was in Colombia and I remembered you."
There is also talk that the BEDC allowed Hilts to make himself a $5,000 advance sent to the Colombian "consultant's" home address, an amount he quickly returned when word got out of that irregular transaction.
What else is in the Pricewaterhouse audit that BEDC board members and perhaps Martinez don't want anyone to see?