Pat Cotton
                             

01/31/05  Laura Miller must think she's the Mayor of the County.

If you have been out of the country for a couple of weeks, you may not know that Laura Miller has teamed up with Bah! Bah! Blackwood to turn our city over to some tycoons in the Park Cities.  

I thought it would be interesting to check on the voter registration information on some of the people on Our Mayor's "personally" recruited team.  Many of them are not even registered to vote in Dallas County, much less the city of Dallas.
		Apparently, Our Mayor thinks the city limits of Dallas are too confining and/or a moving target because her supporters include people who prefer to sleep in other cities than Dallas, like Garland and Mesquite and Richardson and the Park Cities, of course.

How many of these names to you know? 

I'm told Ms. Barbier-Mueller is a high profile Park Cities dress designer to the rich and famous, that Gabriel is Swiss, a developer who fought preservationists to destroy St. Ann's in Little Mexico, and they are large landowners in Sunnyvale who have access to Dallas politicians through large donations, but I wouldn't know about that myself. 

Former Mayor Steve Bartlett (who forced out our last good city manager because she was doing her job) is now a lobbyist who lives in Washington, D.C.  Betty Culbreath chaired the City Plan Commission and the DFW Board and just retired as the Health & Human Services Director for Dallas County.  Laura Estrada has served on some city boards. 

Ann Fay & Kathy Hewitt are Dallas realtors and active in Dallas politics.  Don Henley is a big star who is not registered to vote under that name.  Regina Montoya has run for office in partisan races.  T. Boone Pickens is an oilman who ran for governor.  Lee Posey is Dallas businessman.  Jaime Ramon is a Dallas attorney who served in the Reagan administration.   Edith Tyloch is a community leader in NE Dallas (near Richardson). 

I'm a political junkie, but I've never heard of Bill Blase, Angie Chen, Garry Cox, Malcolm Gage, Sunhee Hong, Larry Ingram, David Jones, Wendy Lopez, Edward Okpa, Rodney Schlosser, Mark Stanley, Arnel Trovado or Kay Wilkinson -- people Our Mayor "personally" recruited to help her grab all the power at City Hall for herself. 

The opposition group, Dallas Coalition for Open Government, includes all current council members (except John Loza), former council members Donna Blumer, Domingo Garcia, Ricardo Medrano (representing Hispanic coalition), Bob Stimson (treasurer), Alan Walne (co-chair) and Max Wells.  Other members are Adelfa Callejo (co-chair), Darryl Jordan (finance chair), David Marquis, Brenda Reyes and Harry Tanner.  Representing 13 council members are (1) Domingo Garcia, (3) Jos?Plata, (4) Angela Marshall, (5) Lynn Flint-Shaw (co-chair), (6) Sharon Boyd, (7) Rev. Don Parish, (8) Linda Fantroy, (9) Rob Richmond, (10) Bill Vandervoort, (11) Irene Ramirez, (12) Dick Monroe and Max Wells, (13) Donna Blumer, (14) Michael Jung.  Pat Cotton is co-ordinating the effort.

The Dallas Coalition of Open Government are all Dallas residents, who can be found on the Dallas County voter registration list. 

Former mayors Adlene Harrison and Ron Kirk are opposing the Blackwood proposal (Strong-Arm Mayor scheme).  The North Dallas Chamber, the East Dallas Chamber, the NorthEast Dallas Chamber, the Black Chamber and the Hispanic Chamber are all opposing the Blackwood proposal.

Of the announced council candidates, only 3 are supporting the Blackwood proposal (Bah! Bah Blackwood, Danny Harrison and Linus Spiller).

You need to think about Our Mayor's list with 5 non-Dallas residents, and 8 who are not even registered to vote in Dallas County.  Just how much do they know about governing our city when they either don't live here or can't be bothered to register to vote and/or both?

It's pretty telling for Our Mayor to need to turn to Washington DC, Richardson, Garland, Mesquite, and, of course, the Park Cities for her list of supporters.  She was not elected to her office by anyone who does not live in Dallas, but she clearly has as much (if not more) regard for the opinions and wants of non-Dallas residents than for those of us who live here and voted for her.

You will be hearing some of the pro-Blackwood crowd claiming the flaws in her proposal can be fixed after the voters approve it.  That's just a big, fat lie.  Anyone saying it is either misinformed or a flat out liar.  Blackwood's scheme replaces our current Charter with a flawed Charter that can only be amended by another charter election, which cannot happen for 2 years.  A lot of serious harm can be done in 2 years.  Worse, under Blackwood's plan, the mayor can effectively keep any charter amendments off any future ballots.  No politician is going to give up power unless he or she is a saint, and saints don't run for public office.

You will also be hearing the argument that the Park Cities tycoons have a right to try to pull off this coup d'?at because they have businesses and own property in Dallas.  So what?  There are people from other countries who own businesses and property in Dallas.  Do we let them hire a couple of local lawyers to pull off a scam to take control of our city government?

Take that argument a couple of steps up.  What would happen if a consortium of European tycoons decided to take control of our federal government?  Would we say that was OK?  It's so not OK that we have federal laws prohibiting campaigns and candidates from accepting foreign contributions.

We need to turn down the Blackwood scam, so we can do something better. 

Don't get on Our Mayor's runaway train because she's on the wrong track.

sb