Citizens of Jasper,
When this publication went quiet, JEDCO was in the spotlight — and it remains there. The Jasper Jewel is not built around any single organization or any single set of names. It exists because public officials who spend public money should be held to the same standard of ethics, accountability, and integrity they would expect in their own private businesses. Perhaps a higher one. It simply happens that JEDCO is where the public record has required the most attention.
Half a cent. That is all it is — half a cent of every taxable dollar spent in this city. At the grocery store, the gas station, anywhere a purchase is made and a tax is collected. Half a cent, quietly added, every time, directed to an organization that most of Jasper has never had particular reason to examine.
The Jasper Economic Development Corporation was created in 1993 with a clear purpose: to take that public money and turn it into economic growth — manufacturing, industry, jobs that generate real payroll for real people in this community. The board that oversees it is appointed by the Jasper City Council, which means the people of Jasper, through their elected representatives, are meant to have a say in how it operates.
Whether they have had that say is another matter entirely.
The Jasper Jewel has not been the only set of eyes on this record. A number of individuals in this community have spent considerable time with the public documents and asking questions. What follows is a summary of what the public record shows — with documentation linked where it exists, and threads flagged where the story is not yet fully told. You are invited to read it and form your own conclusions.
Let us begin with Provalus.
In 2019, a technology company by that name arrived in Jasper with promises of jobs and economic activity. JEDCO invested public funds. A contract was signed, binding Provalus to specific commitments. The jobs did not materialize as promised. And the contract — that legally binding document, that protection for the public’s investment — was never enforced.
One might expect that when a party fails to meet its contractual obligations, some form of accountability follows. What JEDCO offered instead was a deed. In April 2026, the board voted to transfer ownership of the building on Houston Street to Provalus outright — not to pursue recovery, not to enforce the terms, but to give the company the property and be done with it. The board’s attorney explained the board’s position: “There was no option. Otherwise JEDCO did not have a legal leg to stand on.” (KJAS, April 20, 2026)
How, one wonders, does a public body with a signed contract end up with no legal leg to stand on? The contract was the leg. It was simply never used.
As of June 2026, even this resolution remains unresolved. The building — valued at approximately $3 million — sits on Houston Street, off the tax rolls, costing the city $30,000 annually in insurance while JEDCO waits for Provalus to accept the very building it is being given. Board President Bill Grant has noted publicly that “the risk they are running is that they don’t get the building. It is time to get it on the tax rolls.” Provalus has apparently not found this prospect urgent enough to respond to.
The Jasper Jewel has covered the full Provalus story in a dedicated post. Read more.
There is also a related matter worth noting here. The March 2025 legal opinion obtained by this publication through a public records request raised a question that deserves attention: JEDCO’s own attorney — the one who drafted the original Provalus contract — was later asked to evaluate whether the conditions of that contract were met.
The outside opinion was careful — perhaps deliberately so. Garza neither confirmed nor denied a conflict, noting only that when the interests of two represented parties diverge, dual representation becomes a problem. Whether the interests of JEDCO and the city diverged on what Provalus owed them, he left unanswered. That determination, he wrote, rests with the attorney — the attorney who created the contract, represented both parties, and was asked to evaluate his own work. That attorney resigned in August 2025 — with no advance notice, effective immediately. At the same meeting it was announced that the administrative assistant had also resigned. The Garza memo had been issued four months prior. The record does not explain either resignation. It simply notes the timing.
The full legal opinion is available here for those who wish to read it themselves.
While the Provalus matter remains unresolved, JEDCO moves on.
In late 2025, $160,000 in public funds was committed to bring a Bealls store to a building on the Jasper corridor — vacant for five years, owned by the family investment firm of Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan. The broker made the stakes plain: without the public money, Bealls could not come to town. The public was not supplementing a deal. The public was the deal.
Whether a Type A EDC — whose mandate is manufacturing and primary job creation, not retail — has legal authority to fund such a project was not asked before the vote was taken. The signed contract has not been released to the public. Bealls is expected to open Fall 2026.
The Jasper Jewel has covered this in full. Read more.
Also in the public record is a matter that stands apart from Bealls entirely: the Jewel Bistro Café.
In November 2023, JEDCO entered into an Economic Development Agreement with Davis McCray Group, LLC, doing business as The Jewel Bistro Café at 147 N. Main Street. JEDCO provided $111,300 in public funds for equipment, in exchange for commitments to maintain and expand employment over thirty-six consecutive months. The contract included a commercial security agreement giving JEDCO a lien on the restaurant’s equipment, and a personal guaranty from one of the business principals — meaning that if the business defaulted, an individual would be personally liable for the debt.
The restaurant has since closed. The LLC has been dissolved. The board has voted to pursue collection of the public funds. What that effort yields remains to be seen. The Jasper Jewel will return to this matter in a dedicated future post.
Now, dear reader, we arrive at perhaps the most quietly remarkable finding in this entire record.
When the City of Jasper commissioned an outside legal opinion on JEDCO in early 2025, one of the questions concerned the employment of then-JEDCO Director Kenneth Brooks and whether his employment documents were legally created. The outside attorney set about answering it — and in doing so, went to look up the City of Jasper’s Ethics Code.
There was no Ethics Code.
Frank Garza of Davidson, Troilo, Ream & Garza wrote: “I will have to determine if the City has an Ethics Code and if it applies to JEDCO members. In my review of the City’s Code of Ordinances in the MuniCode, there is no Ethics Code online.” (Full legal opinion)
The questions raised about Kenneth Brooks’ employment were never fully answered.
A forensic audit of Jasper city operations released in October 2025 examined Provalus-related financial activity from 2019 to 2023. The auditors declared no fraud. That declaration deserves a closer look. What they did document was the absence of conflict of interest disclosure forms, and evidence that a city employee benefited financially during those same dealings. “No fraud” is not a clean bill of health — it is a description of what auditors can prove under a narrow legal standard. What it also describes, unmistakably, is a set of conditions under which wrongdoing would have gone undetected. The safeguards that would have caught it were not there. Worth noting: the audit covered the years 2019 to 2023 — precisely the period during which the Provalus contract was active and the decision not to enforce it was taking shape. The documentation that would have supported accountability was not there then. Three years later, when the board voted to deed a multi-million dollar building to the company that never met its obligations, its own attorney explained that JEDCO had no legal leg to stand on. One does not have to look far to understand why. (KJAS, October 14, 2025) (Full forensic audit)
Four days after the Provalus deed vote, Tena Wright and Pam McDonough — both of whom had voted against the transfer — submitted their resignations. Wright’s statement was unambiguous: “I can no longer, in good conscience, continue to serve under these circumstances.” She cited the board’s rejection of a forensic audit of JEDCO itself and described a fundamental misalignment with the organization’s values regarding accountability and transparency. (KJAS, April 24, 2026)
McDonough’s resignation came with documentation. What she found and recorded: approximately 30 years of records stored in unsecured, disorganized conditions. Open meeting and executive session recordings missing for several years. Company files removed without authorization by a consultant, who then provided them to a former interim executive director. A transaction in which JEDCO sold a 94-acre Rail Park for $500,000 and subsequently purchased 20 acres from the same party for $235,000. Incentive payments structured to benefit landowners rather than the companies meant to be creating jobs. And a pattern of agreements that did not comply with Type A economic development corporation law.
These findings did not come from a critic on the outside looking in. They came from someone on the inside, looking at the records — filed in writing, at the time of her departure.
That is worth sitting with.
No two situations in this record are identical. The Provalus contract is not the Jewel Bistro agreement. The Bealls vote is not the attorney question. Each has its own particulars, its own timeline, its own set of circumstances. But patterns do not require identical facts — they require repeated shapes. And the shapes here repeat. A contract that exists on paper but not in practice. Public money that flows out and does not return. Questions that arise at precisely the right moment — and are not asked. Accountability that is present in language and absent in action. One need not be a forensic investigator to recognize a pattern. One need only be paying attention.
The men and women who hold seats on any public board are not there simply to raise their hands. They are there to ask the questions that protect the public — to scrutinize a deal before it is approved, to read a contract before it is signed, to demand answers before the vote is called. The standard for stewardship of public money must be higher, not lower, than what one would apply to one’s own affairs. That is not a suggestion. That is the job.
This publication did not begin again because it was looking for something to write about. It began because a question arose that deserved a public answer. On June 24, 2026, KJAS reported that in a private meeting held after a regular board session, newly appointed board member Bob Milner was offered the position of interim Executive Director. In that same meeting, the board voted unanimously to name him treasurer as well. One board member. Two additional roles. One private meeting. The Jasper Jewel found that worth asking about and found considerably more than it bargained for.
The watch continues.
— The Jasper Jewel