Tom Whitehurst

Regional teamwork takes a hit

   The regional approach to economic development is dead; long live the regional approach. Last week, state Sen. Carlos Truan's proposal to give San Patricio County a seat on the Port Commission died. This death resulted from wounds inflicted, over the past three months, by folks from neighboring Nueces County.
   Part of the bloodletting involved the portrayal of San Patricio County as an undeserving interloper that would be getting something for nothing, having spent zero to build the port. San Patricio County also was portrayed as a longtime bad neighbor because of an old boundary dispute. Thick binders full of court papers from the dispute were thumped and hefted at a Nueces County Commissioners Court meeting in March, to demonstrate the neighboring county's un-neighborliness.
   "I was surprised by the virulence of the attacks on San Patricio County when we weren't the issue," said San Patricio County Judge Josephine Miller.
   It left her feeling less than warm and fuzzy about the concept of regional collaboration on economic development, she said.
   "Do you think that after what was said, we're going to look forward to sitting at the same table?" she said. "Long-term relationships have been damaged."
   Truan's legislation would have given San Patricio County one seat out of nine on the port board. In exchange, its residents would have had to join their Nueces County neighbors in paying any property taxes levied henceforth through the port, which they never had to do before.
   That may sound like a good deal to your average pocketbook-voting Nueces County taxpayer - letting your neighbor help pay your taxes, at the same rate that you pay, in exchange for being able to outvote her 8 to 1. But apparently it's not. In a newsletter, under the headline "Capelo kills port bill," state Rep. Jaime Capelo said that Truan's bill "provided no benefit to Nueces County."
   Still, from San Patricio County's perspective, I couldn't help but wonder why one port appointee would have been enough?
   'I am upset'
   "The senator told us what we could have," Miller said. "And if you can't get the legislation introduced without the senator, you say, thank you, senator.
   "I have seen one person make a difference. Gandhi was one person. I was never upset by one person. I am upset by no person."
   Upset enough, in the heat of the moment, to doubt the future of regional collaboration, but pragmatic politician enough to recognize that it'll blow over, eventually.
   "Strange things happen in politics," she said.
   The death of the port bill will not cause the Corpus Christi Regional Economic Development Corp. to rethink the word "Regional" in its name, chief executive officer Ronald Kitchens said.
   "That was about representation, and what we do is about economic growth. And I haven't seen anything that the port has done that has hurt the region economically. The port hasn't done anything parochial. The way it has been managed in the past has been very regional in its benefit. I think that'll continue."
   Long live the regional approach.
  
  

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