Erik Spanberg of The Charlotte Business Journal provides the best overview yet of UNCC transit study and the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce’s involvement therein, primarily Chamber president Bob Morgan.
The highpoints:
UNCC’s Dennis Rash says it was “dumb” and a “mistake” to have done what University officials did in hiding Chamber participation. The city of Charlotte’s Washington-based lobbyist Holland & Knight was called on to provide pro-transit sources. “Holland & Knight told Morgan that this center was founded about 10 years ago to combat the libertarian, anti-tax guys across the country,” Rash wrote in an email. Chancellor Phil Dubois told Spanberg that the university does not typically fund such studies. “It isn’t very frequently that we call upon our centers to do studies for free, but there are occasions where, if we think it’s important enough as a public-policy issue and our researchers have (available time), we will do it.”
Just to be clear, the University did not receive any other request via email for a study on Charlotte’s transit system except those 23 questions sent from Morgan to Dubois. Rash took the request, ran with it, pitched it as a centerpiece of a pro-transit “PR campaign,” and got Edd Hauser to do the study and be the out-front, face of the study.
As the study was being prepared, CATS officials were given access to the study and asked for comments. Chamber and CATS officials received pre-release copies of the study. The Chamber’s participation in the study was not noted in the final study, nor was that of CATS.
For whatever reason, the study is riddled with factual errors and features the city’s own doomsday budget scenario from a March 26 city council meeting for no obvious reason.
One crucial matter of fact still unknown is if the Chamber requested any changes to the study, what they might have been, and whether they were made.
Let’s see what the official University “review” of the process turns up. If anything.
