So thanks all for getting me to think about the various different ways in which this problem could be solved. I did, finally, get it fixed yesterday. Like I've been saying, this is a DEV environment and this functionality works in PROD so while I wanted to fix the problem without going this far, the thought occurred to me that maybe I should just import PROD's Provisioning Framework then point all my hook tasks and whatnot to that framework. That seems to have done the trick.
I would still be interested in know what the real problem was in case I run across it again but in the world of consulting, the method of solving the problem really doesn't matter, only that the problem is solved.