8/8/2019 Rick Perry is selling the governor's office for campaign cash

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Rick Perry is selling the governor’s office forcampaign cash

On Sunday and this morning, the Dallas Morning News published exhaustiveaccounts of Perry’s management of a program called the Texas Emerging

 Technology Fund and campaign contributions he received from the recipients of state subsidies. The articles are long, so excerpts are included below.

• SUNDAY: “Perry's tech fund aided firms with ties to his donors”

• MONDAY: “Perry says innovator who's also donor deserved tech funds”

The article on Sunday highlighted some alarming facts about themanagement of the TETF and the manner in which Perry hands outthe taxpayer funded subsidies to his campaign donors.

• Rick Perry has taken over one and a quarter million dollars ($1.266 million) incampaign contributions from donors who were significant investors or officersin companies that Perry chose to receive more than $16 million in TETF

subsidies.

• Perry admitted to the DMN that "From time to time, I may knowsomeone who has an interest in a project."

• Republican State Senator Florence Shapiro was contacted about this breakingcontroversy; she was the original sponsor of the ETF legislation. Shapiro saidthat she would be willing to eliminate the governor (and Lt. Governor andHouse Speaker) from the decision-making process if politics has infected the

 TETF. She was quoted saying, "It would be preferable to getting rid of the program as a result of what is being uncovered."

•  There have been about 1,600 applications for funding since 2005,according to testimony at a state Senate hearing in July. Only about 7percent receive funding.

• DMN reported that most states avoid systems where the governor mustapprove each award "to guard against political influence."

•  The DMN reported that, "Not every state's program is as closed. InPennsylvania, meetings of the decision-making boards are openand proprietary information is still protected.”

The article on Monday focused on one of Perry’s donors and close friends,

David G. Nance. Companies that Nance founded or oversaw received atleast $6.5 million from Perry’s TETF. Nance has a history of lavishoverspending on his company’s dime and of fiscal mismanagement.

• Rick Perry and David Nance both say they are “big fans of each other.”Nance has taken Perry hunting, given him $80,000 in campaigncontributions and Perry’s son even owned 100 - 499 shares of stock in Nance’s former biotech company, Introgen.

8/8/2019 Rick Perry is selling the governor's office for campaign cash

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• In July and August of this year, tech fund awards of $6.5 million weremade to companies founded or overseen by Nance.

• In December 2008, an organization founded by Nance received a two-yeargrant of $1.9 million from the Texas Workforce Commission. A commissionspokeswoman said the grant was made at the direction of thegovernor's budget office. The funds were awarded at the same time

Introgen's bankruptcy listed a debt of $50,000 owed to the governor'seconomic development office. Introgen had pledged the money as part of athree-year, $150,000 donation to TexasOne Foundation, a non-profit Perrystarted to promote his primary business recruitment program, the TexasEnterprise Fund.

• A pharmaceutical company Nance led to international acclaim collapsed inbankruptcy in 2008 and then sued Nance, accusing him of lavish,unauthorized spending. A research scientist whose business association withNance dissolved in lawsuits contended Nance's record should persuade thestate to avoid him. "If Mr. Nance is going to handle the money, I wouldsay no," Robert Carpenter of Bastrop said.

• Robert Carpenter, a veterinarian, said Nance forced him from a company andthen ruined the enterprise through mismanagement. Nance filed forbankruptcy to avoid paying his debts, including a $74,129 court judgmentfrom a debt suit Carpenter filed. Carpenter insisted that Nance is neitherhonest nor astute. "As a businessman," he said, "I wouldn't let himtake my kid to school."

• Nance resigned from the Introgen board in March 2009. Five months later,the trust overseeing Introgen's liquidation sued Nance to recoverwhat it alleged was $669,000 in excessive personal expenditures.

 The filing listed limousine services, $900 hotel rooms, designer clothing, spavisits, wines, first-class air fares and golf equipment. It claimed Nance spent$87,000 to purchase and ship a Hummer to court a venture capitalist inEngland.