Newly-minted UT Regent James Dannenbaum, a smallish man known as Jim to his friends and family, has a humble presence. Regent John Barnhill, who attended UT with Dannenbaum in the 1950s, sang his "smart and serious" old pal's praises at the induction ceremony for the new regents in November (although Dannenbaum exhibited his not-so-serious side in his acceptance speech, dryly thanking his secretary for filling out his regent application). Dannenbaum, one of three regents appointed by Gov. Rick Perry last year, graduated from UT in 1957 with an undergraduate degree in civil engineering. He went on to a job at the company his father started, Dannenbaum Engineering Corporation, and has worked at its helm since 1972. Meanwhile, he's a pious Texan, active in community and state committees - he's served on councils such as the U.T.M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Board of Visitors, the UT Chancellor's Council Executive Committee, the Texas Tax Reform Commission and the UT Health Science Center-Houston Development Board, among others. In 2004, the Texas Society of Professional Engineers named him Engineer of the Year. With all of his accolades and community service, Dannenbaum doesn't encounter negative publicity often - even though his name is attached to the utter failure of a multimillion-dollar bridge project in Brownsville.
In 1991, the Brownsville Navigation District pledged $15.4 million to Dannenbaum Engineering to build an international rail bridge from Brownsville to Matamoros, Mexico. Sixteen years later, there's no bridge. There's not even an embryo of a bridge. No one's even pulled out a hammer.
The hold-up, Dannenbaum wrote last year in a letter to Martin Arambula, chair of the Brownsville Navigation District, lies on the Mexican side of the project. But the letter suggests that Dannenbaum is optimistic that the bridge's construction will commence any day now. According to The Brownsville Herald, he's just waiting for the "imminent" approval of a Mexican company he hopes will sponsor the project and navigate it through the hoops of Mexican government.
But here's the thing: Grupo Respira, whose blessing Dannenbaum is eagerly awaiting to get things going, has precariously close ties to the regent. In fact, "Grupo Respira" might as well be Spanish for "Dannenbaum Engineering," and the last thing on both companies' minds is a bridge.
Over the last decade or so, most of the money given to Dannenbaum Engineering by the BND was wired by the firm to various Mexican "consulting" companies in which top Dannenbaum engineer Louis H. Jones and officials from Grupo Respira hold major stock. According to the Herald, these corporations are in talks to merge with TBX Resources, Inc., a Dallas-based company that develops oil properties.
All practicality has not been lost, though. Last February, the BND and Dannenbaum Engineering agreed to let bygones be bygones and forget about the wasted millions - that is, if Dannenbaum Engineering agreed to $2.9 million worth of work on the U.S. side of the bridge at no cost to Brownsville.
But in December, Brownsville attorney Peter Zavaletta filed a lawsuit on behalf of Brownsville's taxpayers to reclaim the millions of dollars the town invested in the bridge and cancel its contract with Dannenbaum Engineering. Dannenbaum, meanwhile, gets to sit back, relax and be recognized for his accomplishments while side-stepping the public scrutiny limelight from the ghost bridge of self-interest. Has he found solace at the University of Texas, too?
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