So Jim Schutze points out that the Dallas Morning News quoted the head of NTTA as saying Dallas taxpayers may have to fork over more for the toll road than the $84 million already pledged. As Schutze notes:
That flies straight in the face of repeated promises throughout the campaign. Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert insisted repeatedly that he had secured a personal handshake deal with the tollway authority by which they agreed never to seek more money from Dallas taxpayers. It was the thing Leppert kept saying he was “comfortable” about: no more money from Dallas taxpayers for the toll road. Ever.
This DMN story ran the day after the Trinity election. Schutze got confirmation from the NTTA that the interview was conducted nearly a month earlier. He says (and it certainly looks like) the paper suppressed the story until the after the vote. Since managing editor George Rodrigue has twice defended his paper against Schutze’s charges of pro-toll-road bias, I look forward to his thorough explanation of how this happened. Even got my popcorn ready.
18 comments
Who is ready to recall Tom Leppert? I vote that Angela Hunt take over as mayor. She may not be the most liked person in Dallas, but she is certainly respected for bringing up a number of toll-road issues that had been suppressed in the past 10 years. I don’t want to pay more taxes, as I pay my fair share now in property taxes.
I say make the people who use the toll road pay for it. $5 at each toll station sounds reasonable. If you are so concerned about saving time, $5 should not be such an issue…time vs money. After all, how many Dallas residents will really use this stupid road? It will be mostly interstate travelers, then daily commuters from the ‘burbs.
The fact that D is printing this is almost as bad as the DMN not printing it in the first place….I find it humorous that only now does D wants to get anti-establishment on the tollroad when the vote is over.
This is despicable. I hope D does its part to take the DMN to task over this.
It’s not D being anti-establishment, it’s about pro-truth.
If by pro-truth you mean Leppert’s lap dog, then I stand corrected.
Can we PLEASE get another daily newspaper in Dallas?
Its time for me to dump the DMN, and get the Star-Telegram every day.
The DMN reported that (a) the toll road will be build in a floodway (b) it will be designed as to not flood (c) the preliminary designs are 35% complete and have not yet been approved by the Army Corp. The only people who didn’t see this coming are the ones who take the ’short bus’. This will be an expensive road that will not generate enough tolls to cover it’s cost. After all it bypasses downtown by directing traffic to US175. How many of you need an alternate route to Seagoville or Wilmer Hutchins?
Is anybody really surprised by this information? It’s business as usual in the great city of Dallas!
Maybe it’s not a reasonable explanation, but I love Alibaster Abthernabther. He gives excellent advice.
http://alibasterabthernabther.blogspot.com/2007/11/every-toll-road-has-its-thorn.html
Well the main thing for the Dallas Whoring News is that we did not elect a gay mayor.
Jackson
I’m sure there could be a number of reasonable explanations to why this was withheld.
For example, perhaps the DMN was busy with Abthernabther’s list of “leisure activities”?
My eyes nearly shot out of my head when I read that story… I mean, I already knew that to be the case, but the DMN had been dancing around it for months… choosing to quote the Mayor saying how “comfortable” he was, rather than actually doing some actual reporting and checking with the NTTA itself.
Now, it looks like they did, found out the truth, then stuck it in a drawer until the election was over.
Nice one, Mr. Decherd!
Wait…we’re getting a tollroad? I had no idea.
To be fair, the Morning news is tied up with other issues right now. For example, Steve Blow posted this to “Bold Types” this morning:
“Question of the day: Trade schools
Here’s what I’m wondering today: Have any of you attended one of those vocational schools advertised so heavily on daytime TV? Or know someone who has? Or ever hired a graduate of those schools?
I watched a little middle-of-the-day television recently and was absolutely astounded by the nonstop ads for the trade schools.
I hope I’m wrong, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the schools are just one big, expensive come-on for lost souls dreaming of success.
Am I wrong?”
No, Steve, you are not wrong. But I think this is the question of the day: You know those ads for natural viagra on TV during the day? Why do they play the same ad twice in a row a lot of times? Do they think we won’t even remember that we just saw it? Next question of the day: Is that what “Head-On” is for?
Wait, can’t we just take the $84 million out of the “$1 billion in funding” that Leppert exhorted us not “to leave sitting on the table”?
This make my head hurt, peeps. I may need to take a page from the Abthernabther playbook.
To be fair, JimS, Blow infuses the subject with his trademark folksy charm. Also, he makes himself, the journalist, part of the story, which has been a trailblazing stylistic innovation since 1964.
The City council, city officials, and Mayor’s office, are going to soon learn the hard lesson that Big Media has learned in the past few years and thats that with the rise of Bloggers and the mass access of material on the internets, there is a rising ‘new’ check and balance system in place for the public to turn to when they may feel they are getting snowballed. Because of that, the public scrutiny on the Trinity Project will be the likes of which we have never seen in this city.
This Nov. 7 post shines daylight on Steve Blow and his keen sense of journalistic thirst for the truth.
“I said in an earlier column that I have struggled to imagine what the toll road would look like when built along the downtown levee of the river.
Well, a day or two before the election, I was watching a TV news report on it. And naturally it featured aerial shots of the floodway. I looked at those ribbons of highway bridges crossing the floodway and suddenly realized that each one is about the same size as the proposed toll road — if not larger.
So what will the toll road look like? I think you can just take one of those ribbons and lay it alongside the eastern levee to get a pretty good idea. And looks to me like that will leave lots of park to enjoy.”