More METRO absurdities

THE CHRON'S MIKE SNYDER APPEARS TO BE handling transportation reporting these days (he'll never be mistaken for Rosanna Ruiz), and the METRO cheerleading beat has some new offerings:

1. Outgoing METRO Chairman David Wolff said, apparently with a straight face, that he expects Houston and other municipalities to repay all the Mobility Funds METRO has handed over since 1987 -- $1.6 billion. Wolff said, "Originally, it was Metro's money. It was taken away in the '80s." Actually, it was originally taxpayers' money, but that's a nice display of METRO's entitlement mindset.

2. METRO board member Terence Fontaine, appointed by former Mayor Bill White last June, has resigned so he can take a job with METRO!

Fontaine resigned Thursday after six months on the board and will start work Monday as head of a new group focused on system performance and compliance, spokesman George Smalley said in a news release. Parker will name Fontaine's replacement on the nine-member board.

In his new job, Fontaine said Saturday, he will develop data that measures the most important elements of the transit agency's performance, such as on-time bus arrivals.

On-time bus arrivals?? A couple of paragraphs down, Snyder hints at a data measure that is surely more pressing than on-time bus arrivals: declining ridership. Readers of the Chronicle probably have no idea METRO continues to see monthly declines in riders and revenue, and we won't hold our breath that Snyder will actually report that information in any substantive way. The declines are a big reason why METRO needs the mobility funds repaid -- it faces a huge cash crunch with the voter-unapproved METRO Solutions plan ballooning to $4 billion.

Locally, is there a greater political cesspool than METRO? There are contenders out there, but no other local entity can claim the title of Numero Uno.

UPDATE: A certain someone emailed Kevin Whited (can't say whom, but the emailer's name rhymes with Bike Rider) to say that my post is incorrect. Apparently Chairman Wolff didn't say he wanted mobility funds repaid; rather, he wants them stopped. But that's not what Mike Snyder's blog post initially said this morning. Here's the blockquote of what Snyder originally wrote:

Wolff said he knew it would be unrealistic to expect Houston and other recipients to return the money all at once. But they need to start talking about a schedule and conditions for doing so, he said.

Emphasis added. I got that blockquote from the cached version of the post. The reason we need that is because this is what the blog post says now:

Wolff said he knew it would be unrealistic to expect Houston and other recipients to stop the general mobility payments all at once. But they need to start talking about a schedule and conditions for doing so, he said.

Emphasis added. How in the world does a professional journalist make an error like that? I mean, that's a sea change difference in meaning! And as a nice touch, nowhere in the post is there any indication the wording was changed. Just one of those *poof* things Chron.com loves to do.

Posted by Anne Linehan @ 01/24/10 06:24 AM | Print |

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