Check out the lobbyist for this mess:

[Ilsa]

http://www.caller.com/ccct/local_news/article/0,1641,CCCT_811_2975852,00.html
(Registration may be required.)

Packery, Brownsville port in apparent bidding war
By From staff and wire reports
June 19, 2004

When Corpus Christi's Packery Channel lacked federal funds earlier this year, some blamed efforts to fund a project at Brownsville's port. Now that Brownsville's money is in jeopardy, officials there blame the Corpus Christi project.

SNIP

Peter Zavaletta, chairman of the Brownsville Navigation District, called a news conference Friday to protest what he said was a loss of $10 million for the Brownsville project from President Bush's 2005 budget.

"I think basically there are two competing projects," he said in an interview before the news conference. "It appears Sen. Hutchison is intending to remove money from this project and put it instead in the Packery Channel."

Hutchison spokesman Kevin Schweers said Brownsville officials are misinformed.

"Senator Hutchison has not removed funding for any Brownsville project. The problem is (the Brownsville Navigation District) has yet to take any of the necessary steps to get this into the congressional budget."

Funding for the Brownsville project has been entwined with funding cuts for Packery Channel as the two have wound their way through the House and Senate.

In the latest congressional action, Hutchison's office has secured money for Packery as the Energy and Water bill moved through Congress. On the Brownsville project, the Senate has taken the money out.

SNIP

In March, a line item in the President's 2005 Army Corps of Engineers budget caught a lot of the Coastal Bend by surprise: $9.5 million in construction money for a ship channel in Brownsville, but no money for Packery Channel in Corpus Christi.

It surprised the Army Corps of Engineers, which had not been given the opportunity to put the project through its normal vetting process and environmental rigors.

And it surprised advocates of Corpus Christi's Packery Channel: Why would $9.5 million for Brownsville suddenly appear in the president's budget when none of the required studies were done and the project hadn't received congressional approval? Packery, which was 20 percent complete, needed $11 million more in federal funds that had already been authorized.

The president's budget did not surprise Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, who said Friday he has been working on the project for five years with Randy DeLay, a Brownsville lobbyist and brother of House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay.

SNIP

Randy DeLay is a lobbyist for many private and government agencies, and Ortiz recently spoke on his behalf to members of the Nueces County Commissioners Court, which has allocated $1.2 million to hire DeLay and possibly another lobbyist for help in protecting local military bases from closure.

In Brownsville, DeLay has received at least $130,000 from the Brownsville Navigation District to help develop a commercial port facility. It needed a deeper channel to increase the kinds of ships that can carry products to and from the port.

SNIP

Though the Brownsville money appeared in the president's budget, it was removed from the Senate's Energy and Water Committee budget when several senators objected to the way it had been slipped in. Soon after, Packery advocates found out that their dredging project would get another $3 million this year.
SNIP

[acmavm]

1. Randy DeLay? Oh well, some say criminal behavior is a genetically

inherited trait.

[librechik]

2. some say if you have powerful relatives, you are in a position

to steal more than any inborn inclination could ordinarily get you.

[TexasSissy]

3. Any time you have the names Hutchison and DeLay involved

in a project, you KNOW nothin' goods gonna come from it.

I know. Hutchison is MY senator, too. And the DeLay family, well, the whole nation knows something about their ethics and "moral clarity."

[Moderator]

4. Ilsa

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