Category Archives: Rick Perry
Rick Perry’s campaign may be sidetracked by the Trans-Texas Corridor
By KENDRA MARR
Rick Perry’s small-government record has yet another blot.
It’s called the Trans-Texas Corridor.
The governor’s 2012 rivals have latched onto his executive order mandating the HPV vaccine and his advocacy for in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, while little has been said about his unrealized 1,200-foot-wide toll road project that would have swallowed more than 500,000 acres of Texas farmland and wildlife habitats. But as the focus of debates increasingly turn toward President Barack Obama’s jobs agenda — a plan calling for a heavy dose of infrastructure investment — that may change.
“Pay to play, cronyism — all those charges can be found right here in the Trans-Texas Corridor,” said Terri Hall, founder and director of Texans United for Reform and Freedom, a group that fought the project. “We had a Texas-sized uprising.”
In 2002, Perry unveiled his $175 billion blueprint for Texas transportation, calling for 4,000 miles of new toll roads, high-speed rail lines and pipelines “as big as Texas and as ambitious as our people.” Not unlike Obama, Perry envisioned a government role in cultivating private-sector investment in infrastructure.
But awarding new toll development to a Spanish company stoked nativist fears — and questions about a revolving door to the governor’s office. His massive land grab through eminent domain, the practice of government seizing private property for public use, incurred the wrath of farmers, environmentalists and members of his own party.
Nearly 10 years later, Perry signed the death certificate for his brainchild, scrubbing all references of the corridor project from state statutes during the most recent Texas legislative session.
“I supported the ban of ever making a taxpayer-paid road a toll road. You cannot do that in the state of Texas,” he said in an August interview with Des Moines-based WHO Radio, stressing that tolling alternatives are raising taxes, asking Washington for money or waiting for the “asphalt fairy.”
Perry spokesman Ray Sullivan said the failed initiative ultimately fostered conversations about how to fund road projects without increased taxes or relying on the Federal Highway Trust Fund.
“We would describe it as one starting a very important, robust public debate and discussion of financing and developing transportation infrastructure,” he said. “While the corridor concept is dead, the debate has resulted in more transportation funding options and high-priority projects going forward with some private financing and strong state and local cooperation.”
Tolling and public-private partnerships have helped the state’s infrastructure keep up with the big influx of people moving to the state, Sullivan said, adding that the debate had evolved in such a “positive way,” the governor “could agree with the legislature that the corridor was no longer the right approach for the state.”
It’s clear that Texas needs to do something about its crumbling and aging transportation network. The state added 4 million people over the past decade, and its population explosion isn’t expected to slow down. Nearly half of the state’s major highways are congested, and one-third of its major roads are in poor or mediocre condition, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.
At the same time, the state has borrowed heavily to fund its road projects since 2003 and will owe $17.3 billion by the end of next year.
Perry’s Trans-Texas Corridor proposal — launched during his first gubernatorial campaign — would have run from the Mexico border to Oklahoma. It was the answer to the challenges of a growing state that was expecting increased international traffic under the North American Free Trade Agreement. Perry envisioned separate lanes for cars and trucks, as well as a rail system. The project was also slated to carry water pipes and utility lines. It was the “largest engineering project ever proposed for Texas,” according to one transportation department report, promising to reduce congestion, cut pollution, improve safety and speed up trade routes.
Given the state’s budget difficulties, Perry’s financing schemes included public and private money, including some toll roads.
Republicans took control of the state Legislature in 2003, pushing the Trans-Texas Corridor project through both chambers as part of an omnibus transportation bill. But evidently, few lawmakers knew what the bill contained.
When the state Transportation Department began holding public meetings about the project in early 2004, voters were fuming at the possibility that private corporations — particularly foreign ones — might exercise eminent domain to build massive amounts of infrastructure for profit.
“His plan was meant to be bold, get one’s imagination working, and it turned out to look scary to people,” said Matt Dellinger, author of “Interstate 69,” which details the fight over the Trans-Texas Corridor.
County toll authorities in Dallas and Houston complained the state was forcing them into contracts with private companies, while voters began calling their legislators to repeal the law. David and Linda Stall, a Republican couple from Fayetteville, Texas, formed a group called CorridorWatch.org, which held meetings across the state about the details of the plan and whipped up outrage.
Environmental groups objected to the wildlife being lost, and farmers turned on the former state agriculture commissioner, calling it an abuse of eminent domain.
“It would have claimed a lot of farm and ranch ground — some of the best in farm and ranch country in the entire state,” said Jim Sartwelle, director of public policy for the Texas Farm Bureau.
Perry’s decision to award development rights to a Spanish company, Cintra, only tapped into anxieties about immigration, free trade and border security. Conspiracy theorists dubbed it the “NAFTA Superhighway” and protested the alleged plot to dissolve the nation’s borders.
And voters cried foul when it came out that one of Perry’s top aides, Dan Shelley, worked for Cintra until three months before the company was selected for the state road project. When Shelley left the governor’s office, he signed a lucrative lobbying contract with Cintra.
But the Perry administration held its ground. Texas Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson, one of Perry’s closest advisers and friends, frequently intoned, “There is no road fairy.”
“We either build toll roads, slow roads or no roads,” Perry said in 2007.
Ultimately, the uproar forced state officials to scale back the proposal. In 2007, the Legislature dealt a blow to the main tenant of the corridor by placing a moratorium on public-private toll partnerships. In 2009, Perry’s Transportation Department officially killed it off with a “no build” recommendation on the corridor’s first segment, which was being handled by Cintra.
It was one of the most controversial issues of Perry’s gubernatorial career — yet he emerged from the fight relatively unscathed.
During his 2006 reelection, there wasn’t a strong Republican challenger to bring up the Trans-Texas Corridor. Perry, who continued to support the corridor, won the four-way general election with 39 percent of the vote.
During his 2010 gubernatorial fight, Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison aired a biting attack ad accusing Perry of tolling roads for the benefit of foreign companies. Hutchison lost, and while the Democratic nominee, then-Houston Mayor Bill White, also ran an attack ad on the project, Perry won easily.
By the recent midterm election, the issue was too old to cause much damage. Yet tea party activists were still vocally hesitant at what they viewed as the government’s big private-land grab.
Will it damage Perry’s national ambitions?
“Rick Perry talks a good game about getting government out of your life, but if there’s any utility at all for him to put government in your life, you’ve got government in your life,” said Leland Beatty, who worked for Perry’s agriculture predecessor Jim Hightower.
Hall fumes that some public-private partnerships are still alive and well in Texas — even if the corridor project is dead. “There are all these sweetheart deals for all his corporate cronies,” she said.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65031_Page2.html#ixzz1Zuxk3Llw
Filed under 2012 GOP Primary, 2012 Presidential Election, Politics, Rick Perry
Rick Perry and his cronies
Terri Hall, San Antonio Transportation Policy Examiner
With the pay-to-play Solyndra scandal rocking the White House, presidential hopeful Rick Perry is embroiled in a mountain of crony capitalism controversy all his own. During the September 12 GOP presidential debate, Michelle Bachmann exposed the money trail behind Perry’s Executive Order mandating all 6th grade girls in Texas receive the Gardasil HPV vaccine made by the drug company, Merck, the employer of Perry’s former Chief of Staff, Mike Toomey, at the time. Merck funneled money to Perry, initially $5,000, but eventually adding up to the tidy sum of closer to $400,000, sparking outrage across Texas and now the nation.
Toomey’s just the tip of the ice berg.
A recent bill pushed through the Texas Legislature benefited the company Waste Control Specialists, owned by #2 donor to Gov. Rick Perry, Harold Simmons. Just days after the bill was signed into law, Mr. Simmons wrote a $100,000 check to Americans for Rick Perry, the super PAC supporting Gov. Perry’s candidacy for president notes Debra Medina of We Texans.
Janet Ahmad, President of Homeowners for Better Building, pointed to similar problems in the construction industry. Top Rick Perry donor, Bob Perry, paid nearly $8 million in campaign contributions and sought and received his own regulatory agency called the Texas Residential Construction Commission in 2003. Gov. Perry appointed industry-connected people to that agency, including Perry Homes VP, corporate counsel John Krugh. “The resulting agency was so anti-consumer and so counter-productive that the Texas Legislature later decided to abolish it,” Ahmad concludes.
Texas for Sale
Then there’s Perry’s penchant for selling off Texas infrastructure to the highest bidder, particularly to the employer of his former staffer Dan Shelley, a Spanish company, Cintra. Shelley worked as a ‘consultant’ for Cintra (in 2004), became Perry’s liaison to the legislature during the time that Cintra was awarded the development rights to the $7 billion dollar Trans Texas Corridor (in 2005), then went back to work as a lobbyist for Cintra (in 2006). He and has daughter reportedly earned between $50,000-$100,000 on lobbying for Cintra that year.
Two key bills that just passed the Texas Legislature and signed into law by Perry further illustrate the crony capitalism and pattern of governance in the Perry Administration, both of which will benefit Cintra, in particular.
SB 1420 makes 15 Texas roads eligible for public private partnerships (P3s) that sell- off Texas sovereign land/public roads to private entities in 50 year monopolies. P3s involve public money for private profits (including gas taxes and other public subsidies), contain non-compete clauses that penalize or prohibit the expansion of surrounding free routes, and put the power to tax in the hands of private corporations that result in toll rates as high as 75 cents per mile ($13/day or like adding $15 to every gallon of gas you buy). It’s selling off Texas to the highest bidder, which is the MOST expensive, anti-taxpayer method of funding infrastructure.
Four road projects under SB 1420 have already been awarded to Cintra. In fact, every single P3 for roads in Texas has gone to Cintra: SH 130 (segments 5 & 6) and I-635 and the North Tarrant Express (comprised of multiple projects, primarily on I-820) in Dallas/Ft.Worth. All have been heavily subsidized with gas taxes and other public money (see pages 2 & 3), yet Cintra walks away with a sweetheart deal and guaranteed profits. Despite Cintra’s shaky financial situation (its debt rating just got lowered due to fears of the Cintra-controlled Indiana Toll Road going into default), Perry’s highway department continues to press ahead with these extremely controversial and unpopular privatization projects.
Perry’s connection to Cintra explains why he endorsed Rudy Giuliani in the last presidential election. At the time, Giuliani’s law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, was the legal firm representing Cintra in its bid to takeover SH 121 (which eventually unraveled) in the Dallas area. Giuliani’s investment firm was purchased by an Australian firm, Macquarie, another global player in P3s at the same time his law firm was advising Cintra on the SH 121 deal. While many social conservatives were baffled by Perry’s backing of Giuliani, it was no surprise to those following the Trans Texas Corridor and Perry’s push to privatize Texas freeways.
Balfour Beatty enters the scene
Perry likes to brag ‘Texas is Open for Business’ and here’s what that means to property rights and taxpayers. The second key public private partnership bill, SB 1048, Perry signed into law will mean Katie-Bar-the-Door on selling off virtually everything not nailed down. The bill was written by lobbyist Brett Findley on behalf of another infrastructure firm, British company Balfour Beatty, and it will allow all public buildings, nursing homes, hospitals, schools, ports, mass transit projects, ports, telecommunications, etc. to be sold-off to corporations using P3s. Unlike the 50 year cap on road P3s, SB 1048 gives no limit on the length of time a P3s can last or whether such broad authority expires.
Two particularly anti-taxpayer provisions in SB 1048 are the fact taxpayers secure the private entity’s debt (2267.061 (f)) and that it authorizes public subsidies for private profits by raiding taxpayers’ money through loans from the State Infrastructure Bank.
Michelle Malkin called P3s corporate welfare. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are P3s and required massive taxpayer bailouts. P3s socialize the losses and privatize the profits. These contracts also eliminate competitive bidding and grant government-sanctioned monopolies (with guaranteed profits) to the well-connected.
Public interest not protected, kept secret
These contracts can be negotiated in SECRET, without financial disclosures (like financing, the structure of the ‘user fees’ or lease payments, viability studies, public subsidies, or whether or not it contains non-compete clauses or other gotcha provisions). There is no meaningful public access to P3s before they’re signed, and the few guidelines created simply exist to advise governmental entities outside the public purview.
Eminent domain for private gain
P3s represent eminent domain for private gain — the source of much of the backlash to the Trans Texas Corridor, where P3s were the financing mechanism that granted these private entities the control of not just the facility, but the right of way/surrounding property where private companies make a killing on concessions. A plurality of Texans don’t like the idea of foreign ownership of our public infrastructure and they dislike eminent domain for private gain even more.
Of course, it started with the Trans Texas Corridor, known at the federal level as high priority corridors, corridors of the future, or the NAFTA superhighways. Just in Texas, it was to be a 4,000 mile multi-modal network of toll roads, rail lines, power transmission lines, pipelines, telecommunications lines and more. It was going to be financed, operated, and controlled by a foreign company, Cintra, granted massive swaths of land 1,200 feet (4 football fields) wide taken forcibly through eminent domain.
Called the biggest land grab in Texas history, it was going to gobble up 580,000 acres of private Texas land (the first corridor alone was to displace 1 million Texans) and hand it over to well-connected global players using PPPs, who would gain exclusive rights to determine the route and what hotels, restaurants, and gas stations were along the corridor in a government-sanctioned monopoly for a half century. It was the worst case of eminent domain for private gain ever conceived.
Property rights shredded The Trans Texas Corridor, and P3s in general, represent an imminent threat to private property rights. While lawmakers repealed the Trans Texas Corridor from state statute only months ago due to the public backlash, the corridor lives on through these P3s.
Continue reading on Examiner.com Perry & his cronies: The Shelley-Cintra-Giuliani connection – San Antonio Transportation Policy | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/transportation-policy-in-san-antonio/perry-his-cronies-the-shelley-cintra-giuliani-connection#ixzz1YgNIsDOA
Longtime aide a key link between contributor and Perry
AUSTIN — Although never mentioned by name, Austin lobbyist Mike Toomey’s presence was felt keenly at Monday’s Republican presidential debate when Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann harshly criticized Gov. Rick Perry for his 2007 executive order mandating that Texas teenage girls receive an HPV vaccine that would have been worth millions in sales to Toomey’s client, Merck Pharmaceutical.
Calling it “flat out wrong,” Bachmann noted Perry had received campaign contributions from the drug maker and questioned Perry’s motives. “Was it about life or about millions of dollars to a drug company?”
Perry’s response — that he was “offended” by Bachmann’s suggestion that he “could be bought for $5,000” in campaign contributions from the drug maker — belied the powerful role that Toomey, a Houston native who once served as Perry’s chief of staff, has played in the governor’s political career. From advising Perry on personal legal issues to paying $10,000 to help the Green Party siphon votes from Democrats, Toomey has been a loyal and constant Perry political ally throughout his career.
$29,500 from Merck
The governor’s reply also drastically understates the amount of money that has flowed from Toomey and Merck to Perry’s campaign coffers.
Campaign finance records show that Merck has contributed $29,500 to Perry during his entire tenure as governor, $22,000 of it prior to his 2007 order.
According to a new report by Texans for Public Justice, the pharmaceutical giant also has kicked in $377,000 to the Republican Governor’s Association since 2006, the year Perry became involved as a driving force behind the organization’s fundraising. The RGA has given Perry $4 million, more than any other source of funds during his decade in office, according to TPJ.
Toomey has contributed more than $48,000 to Texans for Rick Perry since 2000. He also serves as a lobbyist for other corporations and groups with political action committees that have been generous to both Perry and the Republican Governor’s Association, a position that offers him considerable clout in Austin.
“When Toomey spoke — whomever he spoke on behalf of — he spoke holding a huge purse,” said Houston attorney Mark Lanier, who has sued Merck Pharmaceuticals over the drug Vioxx, a painkiller alleged to have caused heart attacks. “Not simply a purse of money, but a purse of potential money, people willing to step up and give, should the need arise.”
In particular, Lanier said Toomey is “joined at the hip” with not only Merck, but Texans for Lawsuit Reform, which has contributed $221,000 to Perry and “a boatload of money” to Republican lawmakers who favored limiting lawsuits.
Perry’s February 2007 executive order mandating that Texas girls receive an inoculation of Gardasil, a drug to prevent cervical cancer, was blocked by the Legislature after a storm of protest. Lanier said Perry’s Gardasil decision was part of a national public relations effort by Merck to stem negative public opinion associated with Vioxx.
Merck won’t comment
Lanier recalled a New Jersey court hearing in January 2007 in which Merck lawyers pleaded with a judge to be allowed to tell jurors how the company was curing cancer with a drug soon to be mandated by many states. “If they could not influence juries, they tried to influence juries outside courtroom with this national campaign that they were wonderful people,” Lanier said.
Less than a month after that court hearing, Perry would become the first governor to mandate the vaccine.
A Merck spokeswoman declined to comment about Perry’s order or Toomey’s influence. Toomey could not be reached for comment about Bachmann’s charges Tuesday, but a spokeswoman for Perry denied any link between the executive order and political considerations.
“Gov. Perry hates cancer and his only motivation on this issue was protecting life,” said spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger. “He is proudly pro-life, and on this issue, which was never implemented, he erred on the side of life.”
1993 land deal
Toomey and Perry served together in the Texas House in the 1980s and have been linked ever since, from Perry’s personal finances to his public legacy.
Toomey acted with Perry’s power-of-attorney in a lucrative 1993 land deal. Perry bought a 9.3-acre lot in the West Lake Hills area and sold it to Michael Dell less than two years later for $465,000, a 281-percent increase from his purchase price.
When Perry angered doctors in 2001 by vetoing a measure meant to prompt insurers to more quickly pay doctors, there was speculation that Perry vetoed the bill, in part, as a favor to Toomey, who was a lobbyist retained by Texans for Lawsuit Reform and Cigna, a health maintenance organization.
Toomey called that “a crock” and said he had not talked to Perry about the measure.
Toomey stepped away from lobbying to become Perry’s chief of staff in 2002-04. When Toomey resigned as chief of staff, he went back to lobbying.
Toomey went with Perry on a controversial trip to the Bahamas in 2004 with large GOP donors, other staff, anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist and political adviser Dave Carney.
Gov. Perry’s Proposed Road in Texas Had Few Friends and Could Still Take a Political Toll
The less the Trans-Texas Corridor is brought up during the Republican presidential primaries, the better for Rick Perry.
Although it was officially killed in the most recent Texas legislative session, the proposed massive transportation and infrastructure project and ensuing debacle could still end up being a thorn in the governor’s side as he preaches his anti-big government mantra on the campaign trail.
As originally proposed and backed by Perry, the state of Texas would have taken more than 500,000 acres of private land to build the 1,200-foot-wide toll road. The majority of those acres were agricultural lands and wildlife habitats, and many are part of the state’s Blackland Prairies, some of the richest farmland in the country.
“It was so expansive and so wide, unlike any highway ever built. It was an enormous size,” said Terri Hall, founder and director of Texans United for Reform and Freedom, a group that has opposed the project. “A fully built-out interstate is only about 400 feet wide. It was a huge land grab.”
There is no argument that Texas needs to do something about its roads. In the past decade, Texas has added more than 4 million people to its population, stressing the transportation infrastructure well beyond state coffers.
The state’s population is projected to grow further, and most of the growth is expected to occur in the north-south corridor from San Antonio to the Oklahoma border.
To fund road projects, Texas has borrowed heavily, and its debt will be $17.3 billion by the end of 2012 for road repairs made since 2003 (Greenwire, Aug. 17).
In 2002, Perry proposed the $175 billion, 4,000-mile Trans-Texas Corridor, which would have carried Texans from the Mexico border to Oklahoma. Perry envisioned separate lanes for cars and trucks, and a rail system to be built in the middle. The project would also have potentially carried water pipes and utility lines.
With the state’s budget difficulties, “the tolling aspect was one of the selling points from Rick Perry’s perspective,” said Ken Kramer, director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club.
Once Republicans took control of the state Legislature after redistricting in 2003, the TTC was pushed through the House and the Senate as part of an omnibus transportation bill that allowed for the private funding of public highways, the tolling of such a road and the use of eminent domain to acquire land for the project.
“It was not until lawmakers got back home that they discovered what they had done and there was going to be pushback,” said Harvey Kronberg, editor of The Quorum Report, an online Texas political tip sheet.
And there quickly was plenty of pushback. Environmental groups objected to the wildlife habitat that would be lost and advocated for expanded public transportation rather than allowing more cars. Others objected to tolling as a means to raise money to build highways.
And when Perry awarded the development rights to a Spanish company, Cintra, there were complaints that foreign interests were taking over American roads and that Perry was rewarding his cronies. A former legislative director of Perry’s, Dan Shelley, went to work for Cintra after leaving the governor’s office.
Jim Sartwelle, public policy director at the Texas Farm Bureau, said that his organization is not necessarily anti-toll road. For farmers and ranchers, the problem with the project was the taking of so much agricultural and ranch land — and the fact that Perry himself is a former farmer heightened their outrage. Some of that land had been in families for hundreds of years.
“Agriculture’s biggest concerns were property rights concerns,” Sartwelle said. “What happens if the state takes a large piece of property and cuts it into two pieces? It leaves a landlocked piece with no access. Now the land’s not worth as much. … It was an extremely emotional issue to many of our members.”
Perry spent two terms as agriculture commissioner in the 1990s, his first statewide post. He was elected lieutenant governor in 1998 and became governor after George W. Bush was elected president in 2000.
Leland Beatty, who worked for Perry’s agriculture predecessor Jim Hightower, looked at the TTC as Perry betraying the state’s agricultural interests.
“Once he became lieutenant governor, agriculture never mattered in any way, shape or form,” Beatty said, who also is the retired communications director for the Environmental Defense Fund. “He had always been a big property rights fan, he was always talking about farmers’ right to defend against condemnation. Once he became governor and had a big chance to do the toll road deal, he didn’t care.”
The project became one of the most controversial issues of Perry’s tenure as governor. But while it generated a lot of acrimony and played a huge role in state legislative elections, Perry emerged relatively unscathed.
“There was a lot of screaming and yelling and complaining, and legislators just wanted to eviscerate the TTC. But there was no penalty against Perry,” Kronberg said.
When he was up for re-election in 2006, Perry had no effective Republican primary challenger to bring up the issue. He won the four-way general election that year with 39 percent of the vote.
By that time, the pushback against the project forced state officials to scale back their proposal. One part of it, Texas Highway 130, was begun as a tolled bypass around Austin. The scale was nowhere near that of the original plan.
The TTC concept was shelved in 2009 when legislators decided not to pass a public-private toll bill that would have made it possible. In the 2010 gubernatorial election, Houston Mayor Bill White, the Democratic nominee, did run an ad attacking Perry over the project, but bigger issues dominated the dialogue, and Perry won easily.
“Talk has died down because it was so thoroughly trashed by so many people,” Kramer of the Sierra Club said.
This past legislative session, lawmakers passed a bill repealing the TTC, ending years of dispute.
The mood of the Legislature was, “If it ain’t dead already, we’re just going to formally say we’re putting a nail in this coffin,” said David Weinberg, president of the Texas League of Conservation Voters.
Filed under 2012 GOP Primary, 2012 Presidential Election, Politics, Rick Perry, Texas
Rick Perry’s Texas Miracle—for Corporations
Over the past several years Gov. Rick Perry has crisscrossed his home state, bragging about the Texas Enterprise Fund, his economic program that has given millions of taxpayer dollars to corporations such as Caterpillar Inc., Texas Instruments, and Home Depot. The TEF program is supposed to draw businesses to the state and create jobs. It has been a centerpiece of the so-called Texas economic miracle Perry now touts on the presidential campaign trail.
But there is a problem behind his happy Texas tale: The program appears not to have worked nearly as well as Perry claims. The governor has repeatedly overstated how many jobs it has created, according to several Texas-based advocacy and research groups. Moreover, Perry’s office has stonewalled attempts to get clearer information about the program’s lackluster results.
In January 2010, Perry’s office claimed that TEF had created 54,600 jobs since it began in 2003. But company-reported data shows that, by the end of 2009, fewer than 23,000 jobs could be attributed to TEF. And two-thirds of TEF-backed companies failed to meet their job targets. The program handed out nearly $440 million during that period.
But the Perry administration hasn’t exactly gone hard on corporations that have fallen short. In 2007, TEF awarded Lockheed Martin with nearly $5.5 million; in return, the company promised to create 800 new jobs by the end of 2008. Subsequently, Lockheed quietly renegotiated its deal with Perry’s office, agreeing to just 550 new jobs from 2007 through 2014, explaining the lower number as a result of “federal cutbacks.” In exchange, TEF also lowered its grant to Lockheed to $4 million unless the company managed to meet its original hiring target of 800. Meanwhile, Perry’s office didn’t collect any clawback penalties from Lockheed—while continuing to report that it had created 800 jobs.
This scenario—Perry’s office allowing companies to amend their job targets while continuing to tout the higher, unrealized target—was replicated in more than a dozen other instances in 2009, Texans for Public Justice (TPJ) found. The group’s 2010 report drew on campaign finance fillings, company-reported hiring data, and the Perry administration’s own numbers.
The program also suffers from a conspicuous lack of transparency, according to Andrew Wheat, the research director for TPJ. Wheat says that his colleagues intended to use government data from 2010 to assess the program, but they were forced to rely on numbers from 2009. “We put in a request to get that data covering 2010,” he said. “We’re still waiting.”
Even if Perry’s office disclosed its TEF numbers more expediently, Wheat argues, the game would still be rigged. “Imagine what the bean counter’s job is like,” he said. “On the one hand, you’re supposed to be conservatively protecting taxpayer dollars and imposing clawbacks, basically enforcing a contract. On the other hand, you know that this is the centerpiece of your boss’ campaign. So it has to be presented as a success.”
Don Baylor, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, says there is no way to verify Perry’s claims more broadly. “It’s quite simply not possible to know whether these companies would have come to Texas without the cash,” Baylor says.
One thing is clear, though: Perry paid for a sizable chunk of TEF at the expense of Texas’ unemployed. Because the Texas Legislature is required to submit a balanced budget every two years, any new spending programs must be offset by an equal amount in spending cuts. So in 2005, to offset spending on TEF, Perry created a 0.1 percent employer unemployment insurance tax. To offset that increase, the general unemployment insurance tax rate was reduced by 0.1 percent. From 2005 to 2009, that resulted in a transfer of almost $162 million from the unemployment fund directly to Perry’s TEF fund.
Politicians of both parties are clamoring for clarity on TEF. Last year, former gubernatorial candidate and mayor of Houston Bill White, a Democrat, called for a formal audit of TEF spending on a biotech lab based at Texas A&M University, Perry’s alma mater. His objective was simple: to get a clear explanation of why certain companies had been allowed to reduce their employment goals after they’d already been awarded TEF money. “We asked for basic information, such as whether companies had met the original projections or commitments for increased employment they had submitted to the state when wanting the taxpayers to finance their businesses,” White said. His call for a public audit was ignored.
State Republicans also take serious issue with Perry’s program—especially tea party members like Rep. David Simpson. “It’s legal plunder,” Simpson told Bloomberg. “You can’t avoid the appearance of impropriety when you take money from everyone and you give it to a select few.”
That problem is only compounded by the fact that over the years, a number of the the program’s beneficiaries—including huge banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America—have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Perry-associated PACs.
Filed under 2012 GOP Primary, 2012 Presidential Election, Politics, Rick Perry, Texas
Ron Paul Campaign Presses Perry on Big Government Record and Fake Rhetoric
LAKE JACKSON, Texas– 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul’s campaign continues to challenge Rick Perry in the lead up to tonight’s Republican presidential debate. Campaign Chairman Jesse Benton released an open letter to Gov. Perry focusing on his record as Texas head of state, pointing out inconsistencies with his new Tea Party rhetoric. See text of letter below.
Subject: Rick Perry Can’t Handle the Truth
An open letter from Campaign Chairman Jesse Benton
Dear Governor Perry,
After our campaign’s first ad highlighting your Big Government record and support for liberal Al Gore, your campaign is attacking Dr. Paul – missing the point of why your past is important.
We don’t think the fact that you used to be a Democrat is the big problem here. The real problem is that, too often, you still act like one. Even you yourself, Governor Perry, said of your party switch, “I will still vote the same principles, only with an R after my name.”
That’s the kind of thinking that has our country teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. We cannot afford to nominate someone who thinks the letter next to their name is more important than what they believe.
Governor Perry, let me be clear: It is not that you supported Al Gore that worries us.
It is that you supported Hillary Clinton’s health care plan.
You pushed for federal bailout and stimulus funds.
You support welfare for illegal immigrants.
You tried to forcibly vaccinate 12-year-old girls against sexually transmitted diseases by executive order.
You raised taxes twice.
And, state debt has more than doubled in your tenure as governor, pushing Texas to the brink of our constitutional debt limit.
It’s that you supported ALL of these bad ideas that are inconsistent with how most Republicans understand conservatism, yet you now try to swagger your way into the Tea Party.
Governor Perry, with all due respect, you have used great rhetoric. But you will have to answer to the voters of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and across the country as to why that rhetoric does not match your record.
For Liberty,
Jesse Benton
Campaign Chairman
Ron Paul 2012
Filed under 2012 GOP Primary, 2012 Presidential Election, Politics, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Texas
Rick Perry Death Penalty “cover-up”?
Was an innocent man put to death? Did Rick Perry attempt a “cover-up”? You decide.
Perry removed commissioners prior to the report from the Texas Forensic Science Commisision.
Filed under 2012 GOP Primary, 2012 Presidential Election, Politics, Rick Perry, Texas