Revisiting Rick Perry's Corporate Welfare Giveaways

 
Alex MacGillis at ProPublica takes a look at
 Rick Perry’s Texas Giveaways.

Read TPJ's 2010 report on Perry's Enterprise Fund grants.

Watch Your Assets:Eminent-Domain Billionaires Spark West Texas Pipe Lying

The Texas Railroad Commission repeatedly misled the public about its involvement in two controversial gas pipelines.  After repeatedly claiming that it had no role in the project, the Railroad Commission quietly approved permits to allow ETP to condemn the land of hundreds of ranchers. Explaining such takings to the commissioners' xenophobic GOP base could be rough--given that the purpose of the pipelines is to supply gas to Mexico's state-owned electric company. 
 Read the Watch Your Assets report.

Watch Your Assets Report:Abbott Confronts Contracting Crisis

The contracting reforms that Gov. Greg Abbott issued in January appear to have had such limited impact that they probably would not have prevented the 21CT scandal that prompted them. Public-Information records from 13 state agencies suggest that such policies already were in place at many agencies, according to TPJ’s new report.
Read the new Watch Your Assets report.

TPJ Urges Apple CEO Tim Cook To Reject Corporate Welfare To Ease Apple’s Excess Cash Problems

Texans for Public Justice sent Apple CEO Tim Cook a letter today, urging the head of the world’s wealthiest company to reject a $21 million taxpayer grant offered by Governor Rick Perry to expand Apple’s operations in Austin. TPJ asked Cook to also decline another $14.5 million in incentives that the City of Austin and Travis County are considering giving to the technology giant.

Apple is struggling to find ways to dispose of an unprecedented $100 billion in cash reserves. TPJ notes that Texas tax dollars will only exacerbate this excruciating cash surplus. Given that Apple is choking on too much cash, TPJ advised Cook to stop taking corporate welfare.

Read TPJ’s letter to Tim Cook.

CON JOB: Report Finds Most Texas Enterprise Fund Grantees Failed to Deliver in 2010

New TPJ report finds that most of Governor Rick Perry’s Texas Enterprise Fund projects failed to deliver on their 2010 job promises. The study analyzes compliance reports filed by 65 companies that received $350 million to create Texas jobs in 2010.

Read the press release.

Read the full CON JOB report..

Phantom Jobs: Governor Perry's Enterprise Fund Falls Further Behind On Its Promises

Two-thirds of the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) projects that faced job-creation targets for 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.

Read a one-page summary of the report.

Read the full TPJ report -
Phantom Jobs: The Texas Enterprise Fund's Broken Promises.

Download PDF of TEF recipient compliance reports covering 2009. (Large File)

T. Boone's Oil & Water Law Don't Mix

T. Boone Pickens' water company is urging the Texas Supreme Court to model state water law after Texas laws that govern oil and gas. Pickens' water-law scheme is a recipe for disaster if you don't happen to be an octogenarian billionaire.


Read the report

Governor Perry’s Pet Jobs Program Suffers Its Own Recession

Many projects receiving millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies through Governor Rick Perry's high-profile Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) failed to meet their contractual job-creation targets as the recession took hold in 2008.

An analysis of 45 TEF projects that received a total of $363 million in tax subsidies finds that a growing number of TEF recipients defaulted on their job-creation pledges in 2008, with even more defaults expected for 2009.

Key findings of TPJ's analysis reveal:

* The Governor's Office has awarded $363 million to 45 TEF recipients to create or maintain 47,735 jobs. These projects claimed 31,319 jobs in compliance reports covering 2008.

* Just 13 of the 45 job-related projects reviewed were performing well.

*As of October 2009 the Governor has penalized 11 TEF grantees for defaulting on their job creation commitments. These penalties, totaling $647,100, amount to just 1 percent of the $64 million in TEF funding that they received.

* The Governor has imposed the "death penalty" on just two TEF projects despite the fact that many other TEF recipients have qualified for termination.

* In February 2009, Perry declared that the TEF program had created 54,000 jobs since 2003. More than one-third of these jobs are pledges that have yet to materialize.


Read the full Watch Your Assets report.

Wal-Mart Deep Discounts the DFW and Houston Areas

Slashing prices on the way to becoming the planet's biggest corporation, Wal-Mart has not skimped on everything. The company is the retail industry's top spender on Washington and Austin lobbyists, who seek to minimize Wal-Mart's taxes even as they hustle Wal-Mart subsidies that come courtesy of other taxpayers. The latest "Watch Your Assets" report analyzes Wal-Mart subsidies in Texas' major metropolitan areas, uncovering $33 million in taxpayer transfers to the retail king.

Read the report

Trans Texas Corridor: Politicians Get Burned Paving Texas Backwards, From the Top Down

The Texas Department of Transportation declared Governor Rick Perry’s controversial vision for the $175 billion Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) officially dead. While the governor's grand dream has vanished as a political target, some of the toll roads will live on. The path to these roads was paved with $3.4 million in campaign contributions and up to $6 million in lobby expenditures. While the rush to toll roads creates windfalls for some contractors, the benefits for Texas motorists and taxpayers are unclear.
Read the report

Race to Subsidize Movie Industry Sucks in Miscast Texas Taxpayers

Texas taxpayers are being conscripted into an epic battle to see which state treasury will give movie producers the fattest subsidies. Film lobbyists now are preparing to press state lawmakers to triple Texas' current subsidies in an effort to compete with states that pay up to 40 percent of a film's budget. In addition, few Texas taxpayers realize that they underwrite television programs and even pick up the tab for TV commercials promoting Fortune 500 companies!

Read the report

Imminent Domain: Will Austin Voters End Retail Subsidies?

In 2003, the City approved $57 to $65 million in publicly-funded subsidies to the Domain "lifestyle" mall in north Austin, operated by mall behemoth Simon Properties. The Stop Domain Subsidies coalition is asking voters to approve the ban on retail subsidies, which let the city funnel taxpayer money to retailers that are competing with local businesses instead of investing the funds in public services that have recently faced budget cuts.

Read the report

'Governor Handout' Trashes the Bailout

Texas Governor Rick Perry has sown confusion with recent contradictory statements about the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. His populist aversion to "using taxpayer dollars to bail out corporate America" is surprising--given the hundreds of millions of tax dollars that his administration has doled out to private businesses that include subprime mortgage giants.


Read the report

How Midland Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Corporate Dole

In 2001 Midland's conservative voters swallowed concerns about government economic planning to approve a tax to promote economic development and diversification. The Midland Development Corp. has awarded millions of tax dollars to handpicked companies to diversify Midland's dependence on oil, however, these big-ticket investments have been spectacular flops. Now the agency increasingly invests in the booming oil industry--which needs no government aid.

Read the report

Privatizing the Lottery Raises Gambling Stakes

Last year Governor Rick Perry proposed selling or leasing the Texas Lottery to collect a quick payout of somewhere between $14 billion and $20 billion. Projections that the financial and gambling industries have submitted to the governor's office make clear that the state cannot raise a payout of this size unless gambling is significantly expanded in the state.


Read the report

Lax Oversight Plagues Private Prisons

For its own facilities, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice dutifully maintains records on such matters as the number of officers each facility employs and which employees have been disciplined. The agency does not collect this data for its privately-operated facilities, which cost the state over $200 million a year. Despite squalid conditions at a youth detention center which led to a cancellation of its contract, private prison corporation GEO Group continues to operate nine corrections facilities in Texas.
Read the report

State Development Fund Rewards Hype: Incentives Great, Penalties Few For Companies That Overstate Their Benefits

The Enterprise Fund has awarded $233 million - almost two-thirds of its total grants - to companies that have publicly announced layoffs or have failed to meet job requirements of their agreements with the state. Companies with layoffs or meager job growth are often protected from facing penalties. The three companies that have been required to return a portion of their grants for failing to meet job targets have collectively returned less than one percent of their total grants.

Read the report

Austin's Not-So-Smart Growth Subsidies

The City of Austin is doling out $117 million in publicly financed incentives to attract a select few businesses to the mushrooming metropolis, but many businesses are flocking to the city without the benefit of taxpayer-funded handouts. An analysis of the city's seven economic development incentive deals shows that the costs of these incentives often outweigh the city's optimistic estimates of their long-term benefits.

Read the report

T is for 'Taking': Did Texas Sell T. Boone Pickens Powers of Eminent Domain?

A political shopping spree may have accelerated the efforts of Dallas billionaire T. Boone Pickens to hijack sweeping government powers of eminent domain.

Read the report

Gulf Coast Polluters Dominate School Tax Breaks (Part 2 in a 2 part series)

Texas school districts have awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in property tax breaks under a 2001 law. The law was ostensibly designed to lure businesses to develop in districts with low property tax revenue. In practice, the biggest tax breaks are going to oil refineries and petrochemical plants to expand existing facilities within property-rich districts on the north Gulf Coast.


Read the report