Sour Grapes over Trinity Petition

[Editorial]

Last Sunday, City Secretary Deborah Watkins certified that Council member Angela Hunt did, in fact, gather enough valid signatures to proceed forward with a vote on whether the Trinity project should include a high-speed toll road down the middle of it or not.

Bright and early Tuesday morning, Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert announced that the city attorney was sending a bunch of signatures to the District Attorney because of suspected fraud.

I had two questions: "why" and "why so publicly?"

I mean: if there was fraud, why not investigate it quietly and then make the media splash when indictments are handed down--if there's a violation of the law.

Apparently, I'm not the only one concerned about the publicity. Yesterday, District Attorney Craig Watkins announced he was a little bit perturbed by the situation as well.

According to the Dallas Morning News, Watkins was quoted as saying: "It was just kind of disingenuous for it to be published in the newspaper before we had a chance to even look at it."

Let's recap the whole Trinity petition history so we're all on the same page.

Hunt, and numerous others, became concerned when the city started planning to move a high-speed toll road from it's original location (outside the park) to the middle of the park. Hunt and company drafted a city ordinance designed to prevent this--and decided to give Dallas voters the choice (since the majority of the council opposed it).

In order to give the choice to voters, at least 10% of them (registered voters) would need to sign a "petition" simply saying "I want to vote on this." Let's get this straight: the petition was not a vote--merely a document saying "I want a say in this--yes or no."

Now here's what gets me: former Dallas council member Craig Holcomb and his group, Sink The Petition: Save the Trinity, wasn't concerned with "yes" or "no"--their goal was to keep Dallas voters from having a say in the issue!

Perhaps Holcomb's group should have been more aptly named something like: http://www.ShutUpDallas.com (hey, I'm a big believer in truth-in-advertising!).

Voters voting on things?

I have apparently been under the mistaken impression that this is what a Democracy is all about.

Remember Blackwood (the failed Beth Ann Blackwood, so-called, "Strong Mayor" proposal that went down in flames)?

The Blackwood Mayor affair was about a handful of people who re-drafted the Dallas City Charter in secret, then hired a marketing agency to collect signatures, and let Dallas voters have a say about their secretly re-drafted charter.

It failed by an embarrassing 60%-40%.

But, regardless of the process to get it in front of the voters, you and I had a say in it.

So back to Hunt's petition: She needed a little over 48,000 signatures. She turned in 80,000.

It would have been highly statistically improbable, absent overt fraud, that this petition would not be certified.

As of Sunday, the voters will officially have a say--unless Holcomb, et.al., can find a reason why 32,000 signatures (the difference between 48,000 and 80,000) are fraudulent.

10, or 100, or 500, or 1,000 or 10,000 fraudulent signatures won't do it.

So instead of concentrating on silencing voters, my advice to those opposed would be: why not spend the time constructively?

Rather than sour grapes, what I'd much rather be hearing from Mayor Leppert and the rest of the opposition, is why I really do want a high-speed toll road running down the middle of the nice, beautiful park--complete with sailboats and picnicking Dallasites.

There may be a good reason, and I'll listen to it!

I want to see the artists renderings of how the beautiful urban park I voted for 10 years ago will look when it is built (when?).

Show me why voting to keep the toll road out of the park will "sink" the project.

Let's get down to brass tacks and open minds instead of sour grapes and intimidation.