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the promised land attention in filling the needs of our own hometown entrepreneurs, and thereby benefit the most Texans and provide the most balanced economic growth. Small business, especially minority business, has the greatest need and potentially can make the greatest contribution to progress, but TIC’s managers haven’t the slightest inclination to think small. Asked why Texas’ own companies’ expansion programs don’t receive some of his agency’s attention, Harwell pointed out that Hughes Tool and Texas Instruments \(which hardly could be called small enally “we don’t allocate any of our resources to that program.” Not only does TIC neglect Texas businesses, but also its efforts in behalf of large, national companies put Texas taxpayers in the position of subsidizing competition against themselves. Anheuser Busch, to choose one example from a few years back, certainly could have made it to Texas under its own steam. So you can imagine how grateful Shiner and Pearl and Lone Star were that TIC spent some of their tax dollars to help the national brewer locate a plant here. No one disagrees with the notion that the state ought to help create new jobs, especially well-paying ones, or that the state should promote economic growth, but TIC’s expenditure of some $2 million a year in state and federal dollars raises important questions about the proper focus of government aid and the efficacy of its expenditures. Let’s put it this way: with an eye on the bottom line, a big business itself wouldn’t invest its money the way TIC invests yours. An eye on the Legislature TIC’s management is not kept awake nights by doubts about the sureness of its course. Far from itHarwell, backed by his commissioners, is asking the 66th Legislature that convenes next January to give TIC more money than ever for its promotional operation. The TIC party line is that the increase would add up to a modest 10 percent over what it spent during the last biennium. But closer scrutiny shows that TIC actually is seeking legislative authoriZation to spend 77 percent more total tax dollars, state and federal, than the state authorized last time around, and the commission is seeking state sanction for a staff increase from 43 to 70. The commission has another change it would like the Legislature to approvein its name. Next year it will ask to be rechristened the “Texas Department of Economic Development,” which is at once more expansive and less threatening. It seems that the staff fears the current tag might cause out-of-state prospects to shy away from its entreaties because of the “regulatory authority” it implies. By whatever name, however, TIC will still be playing the same old game, and one part of its scheme for our economic future may fall into place even before the new Legislature meets: Texans will vote November 7 on a proposed constitutional amendment that would give cities and counties the power to try out a new gimmick for attracting industrytax-exempt local revenue bonds to be used to build industrial facilities. Ten years ago, when voters rejected a similar proposal, TIC stayed appropriately neutral, but this time around the commission has decided not to let its status as a nonpolitical state agency get in the way of an all-out campaign to convince the electorate that Texas desperately needs this device to induce companies to settle here instead of in neighboring Sunbelt states. Certainly, TIC’s amendment would be a good deal for the companies concerned. The revenue bond arrangement works like this: cities and counties sell their tax-exempt bonds to pay for construction of industrial facilities, then lease the plants to