Art Pope responds to Ed Williams’ Sunday column on the John Locke Foundation and the transit tax repeal effort.

I read and re-read Ed’s column and it seemed to be primarily about trying to de-legitimize opposition to the transit tax as the creature of some out-of-town, dogmatic entity. Yet, once again, Ed winds up joining the defenders of tax by refusing to defend the facts of the current plan — as embodied by the $470 million North line that will be lucky to take two (2) percent of the traffic off of just I-77 by 2030. Turns out the rigid dogma is all on the side of the pro-taxers. We Must Keep the Tax. Why? Because We Must!

Not terribly convincing.

Update: Here’s Rev. Mike’s take on Charlotte’s great right-wing cabal. He does not seem very moved either.

Bonus Observation: A much bigger problem for Ed Williams’ op-ed page that day was a very sloppy column from Lowe’s Motor Speedway counsel and community outreach point-man Chris Kouri. In it Kouri tries to argue that repeal of the transit tax would put Charlotte on the path to “repeat the mistakes” of Los Angeles.

As we’ve pointed out here, it is the current $9 billion transit plan that has us on the way to making the same mistakes as LA by building an expensive light rail system that will soon require either additional revenue (what LA did) or massive cuts in bus service (also what LA did).

Also, recall that the NAACP won $5.5 million from the city of Los Angeles in a civil rights case over precisely the issue of building light rail lines in wealthy, white areas while cutting bus service to poorer black and Hispanic neighborhoods in order to pay for it.

As a result of its bad choices, Los Angeles actually has lower overall transit ridership than it did 20 years ago. Of course, you know that if you came to the Randal O’Toole event in Charlotte last week. If you didn’t, view the whole thing here.

Another interesting fact that Kouri omits is that LA initially had a half-cent sales tax that was supposed to fund all of it transit needs. Then it started building trains shortly after voters approved the tax in 1980. By 1991 transit officials said that they needed another half-cent. Voters said yes to that as well. By 1998 voters had enough of cost-overruns and continued congestion, and voted to bar any more county sales tax revenue from being used to start new train lines.

Gee, which decision looks like the mistake to you? What is the take-away for Charlotte do you think?

Here’s the best part of Kouri’s op-ed, however. On the same day Ed Williams is warning readers about the connections and background of transit tax opponents, a few inches away on his editorial page he fails to identify Chris Kouri as the 2002 Democratic nominee for the NC’s 8th Congressional district.

That year, in fact, the Observer endorsed Kouri over Robin Hayes, so it is not a secret down on Tryon Street or among the political junkie set. Yet no one felt that your average reader should know about that background and connection.

So I guess it follows that it could not possibly be relevant that Kouri’s campaign got $14,000 from the Teamsters, the same Teamsters who drive CATS’ buses.

FEC records also show Kouri received another $9,500 from the United Transportation Union and other transport PACs, about $15,000 from various steel and ironworker PACs, and $4000 from MoveOn.Org. Of course there was also the local who’s who of the power elite lawyers, bankers, developers including Parks Helms, Harvey Gantt, and Hugh McColl contributing — as one would expect — to the Democratic candidate for the U.S House.

Yet none of this was worth indicating to readers of Kouri’s ode to the local transit status quo.

Nor was it worth a mention that Kouri sits on the board of University City Partners, along with UNCC Chancellor Phil Dubois and Save the Tax Campaign Committee member Michael DeVaul.

Like its Center City Partner cousin, UCP is a major backer of light rail, in this case the $750 million Northeast line. In fact, it is only a slight oversimplification to say the NE line’s main function would be to link the Center City municipal service district with the University City municipal service district in one glorious higher property tax belt.

But by all means, let’s not confuse voters with the facts. Let’s just keep telling them that Charlotte cannot possibly be “livable” without the transit tax.