Mayor Pat McCrory has now handed Charlotte city councilman John Lassiter the job of running around to local media outlets trying to convince them that the Sky Will Fall should the public get to vote on the transit tax repeal.
First, this is an odd political campaign that has one side conceding defeat eight months before voters go to the polls. Let’s get the issue on the ballot and see what happens.
But no. Here comes John to make Pat’s tired point that 60 to 70 percent of transit tax funds the bus system. Yes, everyone knows that, John. We also understanding that CATS spending spree already has taxpayers on the hook for $260 million in debt for the South Blvd. line. How that is an argument to continue what we are doing escapes me — and probably most sane folks.
Then it hit me that Pat and John and Pam and Jennifer are merely doing to local taxpayers what CATS has done to them for years. Namely, this in for a dime, in for a dollar non-sense; cynical little poison pills that force money to be spent on bad ideas.
Except that local officials have added several zeroes to the gambit. Instead of CATS telling the city council, “Let us spend $90,000 more on our office space or you are out $400,000” it is John Lassiter trotting out to say, “Let us spend $9 billion on transit or be out $260 million.”
How cynical. How pathetic. How dishonest.
Serious, committed public servants could have an alternative financing plan cobbled together within 48 hours of the transit tax repeal. Would it be easy? No. Would it mean change? Yes.
Would it save Charlotte from bankruptcy? Absolutely.
