Mike Collier (Courtesy of campaign)
Mike Collier, the Democrat running for comptroller, lambasted his Republican opponent Sen. Glenn Hegar Thursday for voting against an early attempt to put tighter audit measures on the Texas Enterprise Fund.
The State Auditor’s Office released a report last month on the TEF, a fund started in 2003 to entice businesses to move or expand in Texas, which found that Gov. Rick Perry’s office had doled out more than $220 in taxpayer dollars to companies that never submitted applications or specific promises to create jobs.
In the fund’s early years there were several attempts in the Legislature to place greater scrutiny on how the money could be used. In 2005, Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, proposed an amendment to a bill related to the enterprise fund that would have, among other things, required that companies meet specified performance targets (i.e. create X many jobs) before receiving the total TEF grant.
Hegar, then a representative in the Legislature, voted with other Republican and Democratic members to table that measure—effectively killing the amendment.
“Hegar kept climbing the political insiders’ ladder by voting down Enterprise Fund reforms, and he still refuses to be transparent about how he will fix these broken systems,” Collier said.
Hegar’s campaign did not provide comment.
The two candidates are scheduled to debate in Austin Oct. 29, details here.