1/31/08  Our Mayor needs one.

Phones were ringing hot and heavy this afternoon, starting with Mayor Leppert calling council members from Mexico to request their support for a very lame idea that surely came from Con Jerk/Ron Kirk, who seems to have the Mayor's ear or other private parts.  Not being one to sit on a fun story, I quickly shared the news with Jim Schutze, who immediately went into his ace reporter mode, which resulted in the very fun "Be Ware: Mayor Tom Leppert's Trying to Get the Former City Manager on DART's Big Board.  You should stop right here and read Jim's blog, then come back from my comments.

That is exactly the response everyone has when they first hear this news.  "Your kidding, right?" 

In case there is one DallasArena.com reader who doesn't remember what John Ware did to us, let me refresh your memory.  Mayor Con Jerk and former City Manager John Ware had a fiduciary responsibility to Dallas taxpayers to make a deal for us that would bring the most revenue into our city coffers in exchange for building a new arena for two billionaires.  Kirk and Ware gave away the store and everything on the shelves.  They gave Hicks and Jr. all the proceeds from the arena naming rights, which pretty much paid for what little the two billionaires were contributing.

Con Jerk and his puppets on the council even forced DART to change the alignment it had been committed to build for over 10 years so that the light rail would only benefit Victory and not the Crescent development or existing residential in Oak Lawn, Turtle Creek and Uptown.  The morons in the Uptown PID did not fight it.  The morons in the West End who endorsed Hicks and Perot's campaign to rob Dallas taxpayers suddenly were to be denied access to light rail by the very billionaires they had foolishly supported.

We will never know how much Con Jerk/Ron Kirk actually benefited financially as a result of his assistance to Hicks and Jr., but we know how well John Ware did.  Just a few months after the rigged election that levied a tax on car rentals in the city of Dallas, John Ware resigned his position as City Manager and took a job with Tom Hicks that doubled his city salary.  He went from making a quarter of a million annually from Dallas taxpayers to making a half of a million annually from Tom Hicks.  Not bad for selling out Dallas taxpayers.

With all the embarrassment of the Lynn Flint Shaw saga, the last thing DART needs is to have John Ware on its board.  They need someone who is squeaky clean, and that would not be John Ware. 

Yes, it's been 10 years, and there are those who think we should forget the past and look to the future.  As some wise woman once said and is often repeated by wise men, "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it".  We know John Ware's history, and we should not repeat it.

DART is already in the hole for almost a Billion dollars.  We don't need John Ware on the DART Board playing shell games.  He's too smart.  You will never hear me call John Ware dumb, but I will certainly assert that he is integrity-challenged.

Thanks to the Mayor's pressuring the DART Board to elect Lynn Flint Shaw as its Chair, Dallas will now not have the chairmanship for at least 2 or more years.  The Board has elected Randall Chrisman as its new Chair.  He represents Carrollton and Irving.  I guess that settles the question about Irving not getting its light rail as scheduled.  It's ironic that the Mayor's early power plays have come back to bite his hiney.

I'm still ambivalent about Lynn Flint Shaw.  As a mutual friend said recently, Lynn got caught up in the rich crowd that was using her as their token Black person.  She thought they were her friends.  They were using her.  The last concert I attended at the Meyerson, Lynn was listed on the Board of Directors, way up there at the executive level.  When I went to the Meyerson's website tonight and tried to pull up their Board list, the page was not available.  That's the way it is with those rich people - one day you are their favorite little token, the next day they don't know you. 

Lynn really screwed up.  No doubt about it.  Folks say the DA is letting her plead a misdemeanor on the fake letter/forged signature fiasco, which means she probably will not go to jail.  If burglars and drug dealers don't have to do jail time, it doesn't bother me if Lynn only gets a slap on the wrist.  Jail time could not be as hurtful as what is happening to her in real life.  She is ruined, socially and financially.  That might not be enough punishment by some people's standards, but her social standing was part of who Lynn was.  Taking that away from her borders on cruel and unusual punishment.

John Ware did a lot more harm as City Manager than Lynn Flint Shaw could ever do.  His double-dealing on behalf of his future boss resulted in the loss of our convention business and the slow but certain death of the West End.  The tax he pushed to be levied on car rentals and Dallas hotel/motel room rentals killed our convention business, which was the beginning of the end for the West End. 

Please don't think I am exaggerating.  John Ware was ruthless as the City Manager.  He could make Machiavelli seem altruistic.  The last thing we need is for him or any other past city manager to start being named to important boards or commissions, which would be incestuous at the least and dangerous at best.

Everyone is trying to figure out who recommended John Ware to Mayor Leppert as a candidate for the DART Board.  I say it has to be Ron Kirk.  With the backlash this is causing the Mayor, he may not put so much stock in Ron Kirk's suggestions in the future.

I usually weigh my criticism of Mayor Leppert with the caveat that Ed Oakley would have probably done the same thing.  In this case, I don't think so.  Ed would know better, and would have lots of people on a list for any vacancy on any board or commission to be filled by him or the council as a whole. 

It doesn't speak well for the Mayor to be so ignorant of recent Dallas history.  Dallas taxpayers are still paying for mistakes and misdeeds from John Ware's regime as City Manager.  We don't need to compound DART's problems by turning John Ware loose on them as a Board member.

sb