Rick Perry touted his Texas Enterprise Fund as a means of attracting companies to Texas to create jobs. According to Texans for Public Justice, not only did Perry fail to bring jobs, but his track record worsened.
Two-thirds of the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) projects that faced job-creation targets by 2009 failed to deliver the jobs that they originally promised in exchange for $368 million in public funding, a new Texans for Public Justice study finds. This marks a sharp increase from the 42 percent of TEF projects that were so compromised just one year earlier.
Basically, this would make the TEF a political slush fund for corporate hand-outs to Rick Perry’s buddies. According to facts provided by the Bill White campaign:
The Texas Enterprise Fund was also a part of Perry’s cash for favors scandal. Perry awarded $2.5 million in taxpayer dollars to Sino Swearingen, a company founded by Doug Jaffe. Jaffe was one of two business partners who helped Rick Perry personally pocket $500,000 in ill-gotten gains. Later, after Perry had pocketed the cash, the $2.5 million handout was terminated.
Rick Perry gave taxpayer-funded subsidies totaling $408 million to nearly 70 hand-picked companies. Of 50 subsidy contracts reviewed, Texans for Public Justice found that 14 contracts had been amended to reduce the companies’ obligations by about a third; 6 had been terminated altogether; and 19 were non-performing, troubled or weak. Only 11 companies were performing.
Even worse, is the appearance of kick-backs for contributions.
The Texas Enterprise Fund, Rick Perry’s pet program, has been questionable from the start. One of the first companies picked by Perry to receive $35 million in taxpayer dollars was was the failing drug company Lexicon, whose major investors were among Perry’s major campaign contributors.Perry gave $35 million in taxpayer dollars to subprime lenders Countrywide and Washington Mutual. Perry has also given two subsidies to Caterpillar, the company whose largest dealer is a Perry campaign fundraiser, political appointee and state contractor.
Bill White has a simple solution that makes a lot of sense.
White has said that decisions about how to allocate business incentive dollars should be in the hands of local and regional businesspeople rather than in the governor’s office.
Imagine that…local control.
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