Go for Transit Glory: Keep moving toward regional system

Dallas Morning News | Editorials:

"Tuesday, elected officials from nine North Texas counties will meet with the state legislators to begin a dialogue that will determine whether this region enhances its future glory by building a seamless regional transit system. Most local leaders recognize the need; more than 300 of them signed on last year to a strategy for addressing it. But the Legislature, faced with retooling school finance, balked at the proposed funding mechanism: a locally approved half-cent sales tax. The question on the table now is: Do these public servants collectively have the foresight, the resourcefulness and the will to make regional rail a reality?"

In a word, no. Our public servants are responsive to the voters' mood. And that is shaped by an obsessive abhorrence to taxes. Until that is broken, expect our schools, our public transport, our environment, our communities to slowly decay and die, presided over by public servants doing just what their constituents demand of them - cut taxes.

'You get what you pay for' is true in the public sector as well as the private sector. So, what will break that anti-tax obsession? Good government. Unfortunately, the headlines from Washington (Delay, Abramoff, "Duke" Cunningham) to Dallas (DISD car allowances, vendors' yachts, etc.) give voters no reason to believe that their tax dollars will be well spent, no matter how worthy a cause regional public transportation might be.