Leading Off (1/25/10)

1. An eyebrow-raising report in the Star Telegram Sunday says nearly $1 billion in transportation funds were spent on things other than roads, but Dallas Morning News transportation reporter Michael Lindenberger counters that it all needs to be taken in perspective. That’s eighteen years of spending, Lindenberger writes, or about $55 million per year – not huge dollars in the transportation world. I wasn’t quite scandalized by the piece because I tend to think that renovating the Hill County Courthouse, restoring the Battleship Texas, and funding the Woodall Rodgers Park is much more interesting than adding lanes to freeways.

2. I feel for places like Plano and Irving who have been dutifully donating a half-cent one cent sales tax to DART over the past few decades, while their neighbors spend the same a half-cent paying-off sports teams and businesses to relocate to remote, netherworld places with names like “Frisco” (thus further straining our transportation needs – and essentially keeping me from becoming a game-attending FC Dallas fan). So allowing new cities to join DART at a discounted rate sounds like a good idea. But from the pseudo-socialist, draconian-loving, suburb-ruing perspective, outlawing the half-cent sales tax economic development slush fund would do a better job at leveling the playing field. Let the hate ensue in the comments.

3. We’re getting excited for the Super Bowl in 2011, which is shaping up so well places like Florida are getting nervous. Little did we know the NBA All Star game, which will be in town next month, is going to make the “Super Bowl look like a bar mitzvah.”

UPDATE: DART’s Morgan Lyons fact-checks me: DART members donate one cent of every sales tax dollar to the transportation system, not a half-cent. I’ve corrected the post, and my former newspapering self has rapped my knuckles.