“When private prison representatives first showed up in Willacy County in the 1990s, they distributed spreadsheets promising millions of dollars a year for a county whose major source of income, agriculture, was in decades-long decline. They even suggested the possibility that all local taxes could eventually be eliminated. And because the bonds would be issued not by the county but by a quasi-governmental organization known as a local government corporation, all that revenue—and the debt to finance it—would be virtually risk-free, they said…”
https://www.texasobserver.org/south-texas-prison-riot-willacy-county-economic-future/