A group of Odessans, including former Odessa City Council member Dewey Bryant, have formed a new political action committee they say is dedicated to providing voters facts on important issues facing them and finding leaders with integrity.
“The biggest thing we’re trying to do is inform voters with the facts,” Bryant said of Odessans for Ethical Leadership. “We want people to be able to form their opinion with the facts at hand.”
The need for such a group became obvious earlier this year when the Odessa City Council was considering whether it should seek $95 million in certificates of obligation to rehabilitate the city’s water treatment plant, Bryant said.
Before the council voted in November to award a bid for the project, Bryant said “the facts that were known were far different than those that had been presented” by those opposed to the undertaking.
Those involved in the PAC are well aware there will always be differences of opinion, but they are committed to finding people of integrity “who have a common cause and at the end of the day will do the best thing for the community,” Bryant said.
“We’re going to identify leaders who have the county and the city’s best interest at heart,” he said.
Those interests will include economic development, healthcare, education and infrastructure, Bryant said.
Ector County Republican Chairman Tisha Crow applauded the group’s stated efforts.
“Anywhere we think integrity is lacking are those areas that we focus on,” Crow said. “We have asked people and found people to run against those who are not being transparent or who are not being ethical leaders. Unfortunately, there are people we haven’t been able to remove yet.”
As for the battle over the wastewater treatment plant, Crow said she believes there was some dishonesty involved. If the city was being totally upfront about the matter, it seems as though they would’ve asked voters to weigh in on it, she said.
“Every time the government issues a debt, it should go to the vote of the people,” Crow said.
However, Crow herself has been accused of spreading misinformation on the water treatment plant issue and other campaign related issues.
During a city council meeting several city council members publicly blasted Crow for misleading social media posts and how the petition to take the debt issuance to voters was presented during the time Crow and her supporters were campaigning for a public vote. Crow’s try to force the vote failed.
Councilwoman Mari Willis said during that council meeting. “I was asked to sign a petition by a teenager. When I asked him what it was for, they told me ‘It was to make sure our taxes don’t go higher and higher.’”
“When I said, well that’s actually not what it’s for, then he said, ‘well I’ve got it in Spanish.’ I said, if it’s incorrect in English, it’s incorrect in Spanish.”
Added Willis: “My point is … it’s important to me that the integrity of the action is held to the highest regard.”
Willis said she observed the same petitioner tell another person that the petition’s purpose was to keep jobs in Odessa.
“(The way petitions were collected) may not have been illegal, but it was unethical,” Willis said.
Councilman Steve Thompson told Crow during that meeting that he had visited several local businesses where petitions were just laying around unattended. According to election rules, a petitioner is supposed to be present to witness the petitions being signed, Thompson added.
“I do believe this whole thing was done inappropriately,” Thompson said.
Crow disputed both council members’ allegations and then publicly attacked Councilwoman Detra White during that meeting while also admitting that she and another “generous donor” had paid for that petition drive.
“Y’all were giving out some very misleading information,” said White who told Crow she was embarrassed by the behavior of Crow and other local GOP board members. “I’ve been a Republican my entire life. But I wouldn’t join the Ector County Republican Board if my life depended on it. Ya’ll have done some horrible things.”
Responded Crow: “We wouldn’t have wanted you on our board. If you had run (for a board seat) we would have found a different candidate to beat you.”
Councilman Tom Sprawls challenged Crow to explain why petitioners were telling people the requested bond was for $130 million, instead of the stated $95 million. Other social media sites affiliated with the group floated numbers as high as $164 million.
Crow and other members of the GOP executive board also raised eyebrows last year when they endorsed local candidates in what have always been non-partisan municipal elections. Current Mayor Javier Joven was endorsed over Bryant and some have questioned the tactics of the GOP leadership for what they have called lies about Bryant by Crow and Joven supporters who went door to door during a runoff between the two.
Asked if the formation of the PAC stemmed in part from his own failed bid for Odessa mayor, Bryant said the things that were said about him were just “a part of life.”
In the coming months, Bryant said members of the PAC will attempt to raise more funds and supporters in preparation for next year’s elections.
Among those listed as supporters on its website are former Ector County Attorney and Odessa City Attorney Mike Atkins and former Odessa Mayor Lorraine Perryman, neither of whom returned phone calls seeking comment.
