Governor Perry Appoints A Competitiveness Council
On December 5, 2007, Governor Rick Perry created a 29-member Competitiveness Council and asked it “to identify impediments to global competitiveness and make recommendations for how Texas can improve its economic footing for long-term, sustained success.”
In naming the members of the new council, the governor pointed out that economic prosperity increasingly depends on the “right combination of talent, technology, business climate, infrastructure and markets…”
Given the importance of “infrastructure” to economic development, the make-up of the council is interesting to say the least. Despite the fact that cities provide a healthy chunk of all the state’s infrastructure (city streets and bridges, water supply, wastewater treatment, solid waste collection and disposal, police protection, fire suppression, and on and on), not a single member of the Competitiveness Council is a city official.