Governor Rick Perry will send representatives from his office to San Angelo on May 1 for a Town Hall meeting to discuss the Texas Enterprise Fund, water finance, Skills Development Fund, and the Emerging Tech Fund. May 1 is a Thursday and the Town Hall meeting will start at 11:30 am.
Local angles to this story include:
1) Hirschfeld Industries direct receipt of Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) monies, much of which has been refunded to lack of performance
2) Hirschfeld Industries indirect benefit from Skills Development Fund monies, intended to train 133 employees at their wind turbine plant through Howard College.
3) This blogger who noticed Vought Aircraft Industries abject failure to meet its TEF promise of 3,000 new Texas jobs, yet got to keep $35 million for six years before refunding the money a trickle at a time. The Carlyle Group owned Vought for the whole performance period and greatly appreciated Texas taxpayers' nondebt, nonequity capital injection with the tiniest of strings attached.
Rest assured the Governor's Office is not coming to town for PEUReport - StateoftheDivision who repeatedly showed this massive corporate handout followed by blatant lies of "jobs created." The Governor must have a new present for citizens or want to wrap up a prior project in a nice bow. Time will reveal PEU Governor Rick Perry's intent.
