Yes, I almost fell down at Kroger when I saw the headline yesterday morning. Dallas’ Only Daily Newspaper, which has been shilling for the toll road for so long and doing it so hard that some of us thought that the paper wanted to have the road named for it, now says that city officials, including former Mayor Park Cities, withheld safety and financial information from the public before the 2007 referendum.
The story is behind The News’ paywall, but the gist is that emails and other documents that the paper got from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers pretty much confirm what M Streets councilwoman Angela Hunt, Observer columnist Jim Schutze, Wamre and myself have been saying for almost five years. The road isn’t safe, and there isn’t any money to pay for it. So why are we building it?
No, I don’t have any idea what’s going on. Maybe someone at The News had a pang of conscience. Maybe someone realized that it was hypocritical to criticize federal earmarks for similar projects elsewhere while defending earmarks for the Trinity. Maybe Leppert or city manager Mary Suhm ticked off someone at the paper, and this was payback.
Regardless of the reason, I’m glad to see it. If there was any doubt the toll road was dead, this should end it. And I wonder what they’re thinking at D magazine, which has been shilling for the highway as hard as The News.