I feel Ms. Sparkman's pain
If you ever find your self perusing the Midland Development Corporation's website for any real information about their actvities you will be sadly disappointed.
A large portion the content there are stats and figures cut and pasted from other sources (Texas Workforce Commission, ACCRA, The Perryman Group, etc). Which is okay because the potentially subsidized will need this information when doing their research.
What is notably missing, however, is any information concerning the finances of the Development Corporation and any information of any detail concerning already in place incentive deals.
I can understand that the MDC needs to be secretive about any ongoing development deals so as not to tip off other communities that are also bludgeoning tax dollars out of their citizenry in order that they too may play on a level playing field. But why no information on any done deals?
Trace Engines is owned by a lot of area investors and has been here for a while now and I was looking to see if the MDC had come up with that company's incentive subsidy yet....perhaps a nice package for the second anniversary of their arrival here.
Literally, there is zero information on anything that the MDC has done in the last four years.
The Monthly Report is just a re-hash of labor statistics (augmented with pretty graphs!). No finances. No information on the cost of running the MDC. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
The News area of the website is made up of articles cut and pasted from MyWestTexas.com. And even those articles are cherry-picked. Conspicuously missing are the articles that mention the failure of deals like TMP, W Power & Light, and most recently Countrywide Mortgage.
So I begin to feel Ms. Sparkman's pain when she says:
"This is one of the great mysteries of how things work in city government. I've tried for 3 1/2 years to get specific information from the economic development group with the chamber to find out exactly what they've been paid in the way of administration costs."
The good news? There is a chance to perhaps get hold of at least some of that information.
From the official agenda for tomorrow's MDC Board Meeting:
7. Consider a resolution appropriating funds from the Midland Development Corporation's fiscal year 2006-2007 budget to be used for promotional purposes, as authorized by Section 4A of Article 5190.6, Texas Revised Civil Statutes.
[snip]
10. Receive and discuss the monthly expenses and financial report from the Midland Chamber of Commerce.
Perhaps she should attend the meeting and ask for a copy of these two reports. She will either get them on the spot or her request will be turned down in front of God and everyone. Either outcome will provide valuable information.
UPDATE: It has been pointed out to me that the MDC website is actually an award-winning one at that and has earned a star for providing....wait for it...."development information".
UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: Sometimes I just love Google. Search Term: "It's a major award!"
15 Comments
Well, go Stephanie. The tide is finally turning on this economic development nonsense. If they'd only listened to us from the beginning, aye? She and Wes are both critical of it at this point, which is definitely a good thing.
It is interesting how the call centers have become slight (but definite) undesirables now.
Undesirables is too strong a word...but there was a definite distancing from them by more than one candidate.
My question is this: What has changed that call centers were a good idea then but aren't so much any more? Or is it that they have discovered that call centers were never that great to begin with...something we discovered only through experience (and taxpayer money).
dignan:
I am not as interested in the individual staff salaries as I am on 1) how much tax money is flowing into each of the companies that the MDC is cutting checks to and, 2) how much the development contract is worth to the chamber every year.
It would be interesting to know the total value of all subsidies and contracts (development, Midland Center operating, etc.) that the city is paying the local chamber.
Since the MDC has 10 million this fast, all we have to do is wait a few years and use the money for that other boondoggle they want The 60 million dollar convention center, maybe they can get a discount for paying cash.
Walser, I now have the information. Bob McNaughton provided me with everything for which I asked - and I have some more questions. I'm going to put the info on my website in a few days, but how's this for an appetizer?
According to city records, the Chamber has received a total of $2,488,842 in administrative fees since 2003, and $632,331 for marketing since 2002.
Site Admin, you are absolutely right. If you'll remember, however, I've been pointing out the idiocy of bringing in call centers and calling them 'economic diversification' since nearly the beginning of the epidemic.
ss
Major Award? For $15 a month is it more like:
[after cracking a secret code]
Ralphie: [Reading it] Be sure to drink your Ovaltine. Ovaltine? A crummy commercial? Son of a bitch!
This is not new. I have advocated from the day I have been on city council, call centers only make my hamburger at Michael's and Bob's more expensive.
If you want information call your councilman or the mayor. There is nothing to hide.
Bob McNaughton will give you more info than you can digest. I am amazed at all of these conspiracy theorists. Call me I will get you all the info you need as well.
"According to city records, the Chamber has received a total of $2,488,842 in administrative fees since 2003, and $632,331 for marketing since 2002."
Wow. That is some kinda private/public partnership going on there.
Three million bucks in fees and marketing since 2002.
Question: Has any ED 'incentee' gotten anything close to what the chamber itself has gotten from the taxpayers?
With all due respect, no one is claiming a conspiracy and we have gone out of our way to make clear that we (Well contributors as opposed to Well commenters) do not believe that there is anything untoward going on by the council nor by the MDC board.
What we see is an expensive program that is largely ineffective being operated and defended by those that (we believe) would criticize such an operation at any other level of government, say, state or federal.
In other words we see a program that is described as "tax and spend" governmental largesse when others do it and "investing in the future" when we do it.
The point of this whole exercise was not to point out that we think the numbers can't be gotten. They can. Ms. Sparkman got them and every one of us believe that we could, if we had called you, gotten them from you with no problem.
The point was that it could not be found anywhere on the MDC's own website and that we believe that there is a good reason for that, i.e. one places on their website what they really want people to know or are even proud of.
Truly, compared to the time spent re-packaging other people's statistics for use in each "monthly report" how hard would it have been to post the historical expenditures along with them?
The time it took to open the spreadsheet orginally from Mr. McNaughton, re-format it slightly to adjust for a standard page width and then convert it to a PDF file and then upload it to our servers was less than 10 minutes.
Posting the numbers to the MDC website is technically very easy and I have shown that time and/or manpower would not be an issue as far as coverting these numbers and posting them for public consumption.
Which leaves only the possibility that it was a conscious decision to not post the numbers on the website.
Having seen the numbers now only re-enforces my guess as to why they decided not to publish them.
Clearly, the real problem is not a conspiracy, I agree that nobody here is claiming one, yet all stand accused. The real problem is that the Chamber and MDC needs at least one more employee to handle this newfangled excel worksheet conversion to pdf and upload to website thing. That ought to be an easy enough position to fill at $60k/yr.
Maybe that employee could take an hour or two and scan the agendas, minutes, audits, budgets and "non-privilaged" development contracts into .pdf files too.
The City of Midland and Midland County don't seem to have a problem in that area. I can see most of this information at the County going back to 2000-01. The City of Midland's is good for the last year, it seems their archives link is dead.
No kidding. I want to see exactly what Trace Engines...a company I would be hard pressed to believe would end up anywhere else but here given their massive local ownership...did or has to do to end up getting $400,000 dollars in public funds.
Trance Engines has received $856,000 in public funds. There is this matter of a $456,000 Texas Enterprise Fund grant.
Check out the figures in the "Total Project Return" column of the TEF Grant Listing that you linked to.
Look at the types of numbers they claim as a return on their investment...500%...600%...some "Return Percentges" literally in the thousands...of PERCENT!
You guys and gals out there that are familiar with real world business ROI's...does a claim of an average return for FY 2006-2007 of freakin' 864% strike you as anything other than total bulls***?
While one shouldn't have to go this far to get public information, if someone wants to know salaries being paid out by MDC funds, you can FOI the Chamber and City.