The Dispatch ran a big old puff piece today about the LEDC and what a wonderful job they are doing. The title of the article is “The Cost of Growth“. Naturally, it fails to mention a single cost of this “growth” and only mentions the perceived benefits.
It is typical of government drones at every level (federal, state and local) to only look at the “benefits” and ignore the costs of their “good deeds”. They do it all the time. We also see the same tendency with Covid policies, global warming policies and many others. The notion that government drones can create “economic growth” is ludicrous.
A typical overpaid government bureaucrat like LEDC Director Mandy Walsh or City Manager Finley deGraffenried would look at a half-empty swimming pool that needed filling and decide to pump water from the deep end into the shallow end and then pat themselves on the back for a job well done. The rest of us should know better.
Luckily for my readers, I actually DO have a detailed list of all the costs and will be taking this article apart piece by piece over the next few days.
First a few “growth” facts! Lampasas has grown 7% over the last 20 years, according to census numbers. That is 0.37% per year. Not exactly a torrid pace.
Over the last ten years, Lampasas has grown 9.1% – or less than 1% per year.
During those last 20 years, the LEDC has skimmed over $4.4 MILLION DOLLARS in sales tax funds from the taxpayer – much of that was wasted. You can read some of the details here: OUTRAGEOUS Tidbits From LEDC Non-Profit Filings.
In addition to that $4.4 million, there has been a LOT of other money thrown at “growth” as well. Over the last 4.5 years, LEDC Director Mandy Walsh’s salary, health insurance benefits, retirement benefits, training seminars, and travel to conferences where they sit around making up buzzwords and singing karaoke has cost the taxpayer nearly $500,000.
Yes – that’s half a mil (and counting) to have Mandy hold the august title of “Economic Development Director” – WELL over $100,000 per year. To a lot of small businesses, $100,000 is a ton of money that could definitely help. Instead it is siphoned off from productive society and then set on fire paying a woman to run around and act like she is “directing economic growth”. It would be a funny joke if it didn’t involve six figures of taxpayers money being set ablaze every year.
Other costs? Well, the City spent $120,000 for a “comprehensive growth plan” from Halff Associates consultants. This is at LEAST the third time they have hired someone to “plan” the economy for them (Angelou Economics hit them for $25,000 back in 2002, for example).
The City also spent $100,000 handing out cash with NO strings attached to a bunch of businesses for “Covid” last year – even though the feds were doing the same. They spent another $31,000 handing out more cash to help with utility payments during Covid – including to Burger King, a giant publicly-listed corporation.
Want more costs? I got em!
Mandy’s LEDC also has another cash giveaway scheme called “Life Safety Grants”. This involves the LEDC paying businesses to help them cover the costs for the intrusive regulations and codes they face from….wait for it….the SAME City government that Mandy works for!
Brilliant! Mandy has handed out over $25,000 for this as well – including $20,000 to a single business. In case this is confusing, here is how it works:
Let’s say an entrepreneur wants to start a business in town. He notices there are a lot of empty buildings sitting around. He offers to buy one from the owner. But he finds out that it will cost him $60,000 to “bring it up to code” and install whatever wildly overpriced sprinkler system or firewall or whatnot that the City of Lampasas demands he install.
In a fair and free market, the buyer of that building and the seller of the building need to come to an agreement on how to proceed. Either the seller lowers his price to make up for the fact that his property is not up to code and never will be OR he refuses to budge and lets his property sit there as an eyesore (*cough**Lucky Ranch**cough*) while he makes property tax payments on it for the rest of his life. End of story.
But NOW, we have Mandy inserting herself into the equation. She tells the entrepreneur “Hey, don’t worry buddy – here is $20,000 in tax dollars stolen from other taxpayers! We will help you with a “Life Safety Grant” so you can meet all the onerous demands of the guy who sits in the office right next to mine over at City Hall!”. Mandy and the LEDC get to look like heroes who are “growing the economy”, the property owner gets bailed out a little bit instead of selling at a market-clearing price and Mandy gets paid over $100,000 to play this role of hero.
Like I said – they are pumping water from the deep end of the pool into the shallow end and congratulating themselves for filling up the pool. It would be like the owner of HEB taking all the money out of his cash registers at 3pm and walking out into the parking lot, handing it all out to bums, and then letting them go inside to buy groceries! Look at how much business we generated!
Of course, in the real world, you go bankrupt doing that. Luckily for the LEDC, they don’t live in the real world. They have a magic money tree called “the taxpayer” they can continually soak while pretending the help them.
Quite the scam. We’ll dive even deeper in the next part.