What Is the Texas Energy Center? (Tom Delay's slush fund?)

[Robbien]

Is the Texas Energy Center a taxpayer-financed boondoggle for the oil and gas industry, or an economic development driver of new jobs and cutting-edge technology? Consider these facts:

• The TEC has received $3.6 million from Gov. Rick Perry's economic development slush fund and is guaranteed federal funding over the next decade as the "host facility" of a nonprofit consortium called the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America, whose members include Halliburton and Fluor Corp. Former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay is credited with slipping the consortium provision into an omnibus energy bill that Congress passed in 2005. The last-minute insertion prompted a written complaint from U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, a ranking Democrat on the Government Reform Committee, who called it a "$1.5 billion giveaway to the oil industry, Halliburton, and Sugar Land, Texas."

• The founders of the TEC hold strong ties to former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay.

• The TEC is managed by DeLay's friends at the Greater Fort Bend Economic Development Council. The TEC has no executive director, no Web site (the original Web site was taken down in 2005), and no proof of the 365 jobs it claims to have created.

• The TEC, the Fort Bend economic development council, the Fluor Corp., and a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root, all lease office space at the same prestigious address (along with Sunoco Logistics and a TXU call center) – One Fluor Daniel Drive in Delay's hometown of Sugar Land.

more
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A401181

[maddezmom]

1. K&R

sending this to a few Friends in TX