Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory is starting to flip out over the choo-choo.

First, we learn that Mecklenburg County Commission Chairman Parks Helms was, or says he was, much more in the loop on the rolling disaster that is the South Blvd. light rail light. Helms says he knew months before McCrory did that things were amiss.

Then we have the Mayor trying to pour cold water on the transit tax repeal by telling WBT this morning that repeal would mean that property taxes would have to be raised to pay for CATS bus service. Oh, really? Even with the dedicated transit tax money coming in via the recent hike in the car rental tax?

It is becoming clearer and clearer that the choo-choo crack-up is merely the boondoggle inside of the larger scandal. That larger scandal is the fact that General Fund property tax money is being used, will be used, to build the $160 million Wachovia Arts Tower. In plain sight and quite brazenly, city and county officials conspired with the Uptown crowd to spread the lie that the car rental tax funds the arts projects.

This lie was told to in order to make the public think that police protection and roads and other clearly higher priority city line items could not be funded without a property tax hike. In reality, the property tax hike was needed to pay for the Wachovia Arts Tower. In other words, to local officials and the Uptown crowd, the Wachovia Arts Tower was their highest priority, a view not shared by the broader public — indeed anyone with a brain.

Any repeal effort focusing on the half-cent transit tax would make it impossible for the Mayor and the Uptown crowd to duck responsibility for the financial shell game they have been running for years — really ever since the construction of the new Convention Center in the mid-90s.

This is why they will fight so hard and say absolutely anything to stop from having to get into the particulars of city finance over the past five, 10, 15 years. This is why the half-cent sales debate is about much more than one or two or five transit lines. It is about trying to force the city and county back onto a sane fiscal path before it is too late.