Alongside his coverage of the slowly-brewing water shortage facing Texas, the San Antonio Current's Greg Harman recently added his voice of reason to the toll road debate. Perhaps, he suggests, the real issue is not whether an unpaid citizen activist is unduly influencing a public official, as raised by a recent San Antonio Express-News request for private emails between MPO Chair and Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson and Terri Hall of TURF and Truth Be Tolled, but whether or not a double-taxing, big money-profiting toll road over the Edwards Aquifer is really in the best interest of San Antonio's long-term urban plans.
As Harman says:
"If there is a story at the MPO, it has long been about the intersection of private gain and the public good. From the cashing in of Perry cronies on the now-slumbering Trans-Texas Corridor to TXDOT and MPO skirmishes over tolling 281, pressing highway needs mean there is the scent of mad money in the air. Perhaps, the Express should listen to their readers when they suggest they should instead be shooting for MPO board members who may be overly influenced, I don’t know, by the monied interests at work and not gunning for two ideologues bridging a yawning political divide through their mutual distain for the notion of double-taxing residents for a functional roadway."
Read the rest of the article here.
